Today was the last day of Olof’s vacation. I don’t envy him having to return to the daily grind after having five weeks off. That must be a hard adjustment. I know it’s going to be a hard adjustment for me to have to resume full-time at-home mom duties instead of sharing the kid stuff more or less equally with him for the past month. Lydia still has a week-and-a-half of summer vacation, at least, so I don’t have to give up my sleeping in indulgence just yet.

After staying up late to finish the wallpapering of the living room, we got up this morning and put the final touches on the paint in Lydia’s new room. We haven’t cleaned up or moved the furniture into either room, yet, but I’m happy with how the walls turned out:

After we’d had enough home improvement for the day, we decided to go out to Olof’s parents’ cabin and pick blueberries. When we drove up we saw that his parents had had the same idea, and we ended up staying out there for a few hours, picking berries and taking a long fikapaus (coffee/sandwich/cookie break).

It was a nice afternoon, even though we all came away with more than our fair share of mosquito bites, and purple fingers, too (or, in Lydia’s case, purple knees).

Tage had a great time, running up and down the long path to the cabin, working on getting his “forest legs,” and learning how to pick blueberries. He wasn’t half bad at picking them from the bushes, but it didn’t take him long to figure out a better method — taking them from Olof’s and my buckets!

By the time we left just before seven o’clock this evening, he’d worn himself completely out. The only one of us who was more exhausted was Asbjørn, but he waited until we were home to go down for the count. Tage succumbed a bit earlier:

He was still sound asleep when we got home and I took advantage of the free hour or so that afforded me to clean the berries and divide them up in freezer containers. Now all that’s left to do is decide between blueberry pancakes and blueberry pie.