I got home from Liverpool early on Monday afternoon and jumped back into the fray of family life with scarcely a moment to exhale. That evening Petra’s class had an end-of-year grill party out at the local beach, where we spent a couple of hours fending off mosquitoes and biting gnats while the kids ran around and roasted hot dogs. Tuesday morning was the last day of school for everyone, so I dealt with all that morning craziness–for which I am seriously out of practice–before coming back home to try to catch up a bit on email and the like for the few hours I had to myself. Later on, I multi-tasked getting dinner ready and fighting with Petra about whether or not she was going to soccer practice. I was victorious on both fronts and after dinner I took Petra to the soccer field then stopped for ice cream with her on the way home.

Yesterday was the “official” end of school, with the singing and ceremony in the church. I know I’m a terrible grinch for saying so, but skolavslutning is not a particular favorite of mine, probably mostly because I didn’t grow up in Sweden and don’t have any connection to the tradition or the music. In any case, it didn’t last too long, and when all that was done I went over to the school to rummage through the lost and found for any clothes and whatnot that the kids might have left there over the course of the year. The mountains of forgotten items were formidable and I was left wondering how so many parents had missed new, good quality rain- and snow-wear. Some of the stuff was so nice that I was tempted to do a little “shopping”, but in the end I left with just the one (?) rainboot of Brynja’s that is our rightful property (for all the good it will do us; who knows where the other one has ended up).

All of that finally concluded, I made a quick trip to town for lunch with my friend, Debbie, who’s heading off to the States next week and will be gone for most of the summer. It’s kind of weird to think back on the earlier years of our friendship, when we were both at-home moms with a bunch of little kids. We used to have a lot more time for baking and coffee-drinking back then, but now that we’re both productive members of society–and still with a bunch of kids–we don’t get to see each other so much. We keep saying that we’re going to rectify that, but our schedules just don’t want to cooperate. I guess one of these days we’ll both retire, then we can catch up at last.