Wander & Nest

The last couple of weeks in Gothenburg have been relatively quiet – school, work, playgrounds, etc. But the quiet will be short lived because starting this weekend we have 3 months packed with visits and trips. From mid-April to mid-July we have 7 family/friend visits or trips within/near Sweden. And somehow it feels like we’re adding something new every other day. We’re really diving back into adventure for the last 3 months of sabbatical. Wow… only 3 months left.

The visit season kicks off tomorrow when my mom arrives in Gothenburg from California. We’re so excited for her to get here! Every day for the last week Mara and I have been counting down the days until she arrives.

Our routines in Gothenburg are looking much more like our New Zealand schedules than France, and that’s 100% because of childcare. Mara is doing great at school, she’s even starting to understand some Swedish. I’ve been able to add regular group exercise back into my schedule, which is so great on so many levels. I found a pilates studio that’s just a 3 minute walk from our apartment and the classes are taught in English! Wylie and I have also been able to bring back our Friday afternoon hang out times. We started that in New Zealand and couldn’t wait to have that time again. We’ve explored a bit of the city, found good lunch and Fika spots, and even went clothes shopping together last week.

We had a nice family day on Saturday. We went to Universeum, an interactive science museum complete with a rainforest and tons of kids activities. We ended up buying an annual pass so now we have annual passes for two family museums that happen to be next door to each other. Mara refers to each of them as “the kids place” and she has such a blast on these mini adventures.

After the museum, we had some unexpected sunshine so we went to a park. Ironically we went to the rain playground, which is designed to be more fun for kids while it’s raining, but Mara still had a great time playing in the puddles. Side note: the rain gear here is top notch! But her beloved, now duct taped, rain boots from K-mart in NZ that she insisted on wearing today are not quite the same quality, but they somehow survived another day.

Don’t let these few pictures of sunny days fool you, the weather has been pretty rough – at least for me. So much grey, wind, cold, and rain. Admittedly I have very low resilience to less than perfect weather, so it’s been a little rough to keep my spirits up when it’s so unpleasant outside. But it does make the sunny moments that much better. It’s incredible how I just instantly feel like life is better when the sun shows up! The number of surprise sunny days, despite an all grey forecast, seems to be increasing so hopefully that trend continues. And we’re even starting to see some leaves and blooms on the trees – instant mood booster!