Despite all my best intentions, I seem to be lucky if I manage to write a post once a week. I am so lame.
We’ve been having torrential downpours here for over a week. Huge puddles of standing water in the roads, lakes in all the fields, and the ditch around our lot is running with water all day. We’ve had armageddon clouds and grey skies for what feels like forever. Yesterday, there was actually about an hour or so of sun right in the middle of the day when I went for my lunch walk, and today, it was only spitting a bit when we went out, though it turned dark and began bucketing down again about an hour later.
Got the okay on my Christmas vacation time off, and I got everything I asked for, which means about 2.5 weeks off for only sacrificing 4 vacation days. WOOT! Thanks, Christmas and New Year’s, for falling in the middle of the week. Axis very kindly gives us two in-between days. They call them pinch-days here, …I actually can’t remember what they’re called in the States. Bridge-days? It’s the Friday after New Year’s, and the Monday before Epiphany.
I’m feeling the need for some time off, though I’m not desperate, and I’ll have Thanksgiving week as well, so all in all, I have a lot to look forward to! I’m hoping to get some Christmas shopping done soon, so that I can take things home with me and not have to mail them.
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Karin is considering doing a year of high school in the States, but we found out today that she will for sure have to re-do the year here in Sweden. There is no way around it and no way to test out of it. A year of high school in the States counts for nothing, grade-wise, here. So she has to decide what to do, and she’s really torn. If she has to repeat a year, she’ll be behind all her friends. But the experience and the fun she’ll have in the States (with the expectation that she has the RIGHT kind of fun…) are very tempting.
Hard to give her advice as well, since I’m torn myself. I have always thought it would be great if my kids could do a year or so of school away but at the same time, I dread them leaving, and as far as I’m concerned, they can just as well stay here. I can’t imagine my life, or my daily routine, without them. Sounds pathetic, I’m sure, and I know every parent has to face it sooner or later, but—and this is something I NEVER thought I’d say—right now, I choose later.