Halloween Friends

At school today, the kids were encouraged to dress up for Halloween and were motivated by the offer of movie tickets for the class with the biggest participation.  The boys did not get into it nearly as much, but Tabitha went over to her friend, Hannah's, house at 7 a.m. this morning so that they could get ready together after days of planning.  This is what they came up with.  We don't know what they are exactly but they had fun with it and their class had 100% participation!

I spent the morning with my walking club.  We did our 10k walk around Djurgården in the gorgeous sunshine and 50 degrees.  It was perfect!  We topped it off with fika at our favorite cafe.

We often see men walking together pushing baby strollers when we are walking.  It became quite the topic of conversation today as many of the women who have lived here longer explained to us that Swedish men seem to be more involved and in tune with their young children than in any other country.  New Swedish parents are given 18 months of maternity/paternity leave when they have a new baby.  3 of those months must be taken by the man or they actually lose that paid time.  The norm seems to be that the woman takes the first year and then the man takes the last 6 months.  A child cannot go into daycare until he/she is 12 months old.  Hence, the reason that many men are out and about with their babies and the reason that many men are very in sync with their kids!  What a concept! I also discovered that almost all families are dual income.  It is extremely unusual for one parent to not work at all.  Daycare is heavily subsidized by the government and if you work, you automatically get 40 hours of daycare subsidized.  Of course, if you don't work, you can still get 30 hours of subsidized daycare.

When I got home from my walk with my club, I grabbed Coco and took her out for our usual uphill walk in the park across the street.  The day was just too beautiful to not enjoy every minute!

It is now officially fall break!  The kids came home from school and guitar lessons and are now relaxing. They don't have school again until Monday, Nov. 4.  Everyone is pretty excited!