Nice Progress Reports!

The kids' school

The kids only had a half day of school this morning so Max and Tabitha were looking forward to an easy day.  Calvin also only had a half day of school but had to stay at school afterwards for 4 hours of taking the PSAT.  

I have learned that my daily mantra seems to be "I will try".  The kids or Josh or just myself will ask me to accomplish some task, whether it is big or small, my answer has always become, "I will try".  Knowing full well that I cannot guarantee anything but I can certainly try!

Today, I managed to take Coco in to the vet and to get her vaccination done so that she can be boarded while we take a small trip in two weeks.  I was also able to make her reservation at the kennel AND to buy our sleeper car train tickets!  We have decided that the kids and I will take a sleeper train up to northern Sweden, to Luleå for a few days during the week of fall break since Josh can't get any days off but we want to see where he has been working for the past two years!  Should be fun, although this morning, they had snow on the ground in Luleå.

After school, Tabitha and her friends (both local and American) went shopping for the entire afternoon.  And, since Calvin was taking his PSAT, Max and I had the afternoon to ourselves.  We received progress reports on all of the kids today and they were all truly excellent.  All of the teachers commented on how hard working our kids are, how quickly they are assimilating to their new school and how quickly they are catching up.  We were thrilled to read it all so Max and I decided to celebrate.  I let him choose a restaurant for lunch and he decided that he was just in the mood for a good, ole' American hamburger.  We decided that the best place to truly get American food when you are away is the Hard Rock Cafe.

Since we live within one block of the one in Stockholm, it was a great choice.  Max was thrilled with his big, old burger and fries and I had a wonderful chopped salad.  As much as we love foreign food, sometimes the old stuff tastes awfully good!  After eating, we decided that we needed to walk off some of heavy food so we strolled out in the cold to find an American "goodies" shop that I had heard about. It turned out to be just a tiny store with mostly American candy but also American standards that you can't find elsewhere like pancake mix and pop tarts.  But, it was so expensive, we didn't find anything that we just had to have!