I’m feeling okay now but I didn’t want to try my luck and go to the gym today so I spent my morning at home, reading a little, watching Two and a Half Men, talking with mom. No nap though, so I was a little bit extra tired this afternoon. I am starting to stress out a little. I can request my flight home to Sweden already but before I do that I have to talk to my hostfamily and I really want to book Hawaii before I request anything. And I don’t have anyone to go there with… Maybe I can convince my mom to come back, don’t think it will be too hard, I mean, who doesn’t wanna go to Hawaii?!

I finished the last Percy Jackson book today and started reading The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. I have been wanting to read them for a while now, and since the movie came to the cinemas five days ago I felt it was time to do it now. The last eight books I’ve read (except Narnia which is so easily written it’s ridiculous) have been written from a first person perspective and this is from the third. Not used to it and it’s very confusing sometimes, especially when they switch person just like that.

Hmm, what else… The boy is starting to get sick. His nose has been super runny these last two days, his eyes are a little bloodshot and he is exhausted. Poor thing. But I guess this is what it’s like having kids in a family, when school starts they get sick. And with the girl’s pneumonia and my fever and their love not keeping them away from me and each other… Hope it’s just a cold!

Oh yeah, they title. Starbucks Wednesday is back. Today it was way too hot (I’m sure it was at least 85F) for a warm Chai Latte so I had it iced. I’m still surprised how good that one is.

Dinner was spaghetti with meatsauce, my favorite dish here. Right after my hostmom picked up the girl from soccer practice and I stayed home with the boy helping him getting ready for bed.

And now it’s time for me to go to bed. I’m slowly getting used to the early mornings, but I know myself, I’m not a morning person so I need to be asleep by 11pm at the latest to be able to get out of bed at 6am!

I was still feeling very crappy today, so no gym. Instead I spent all my free hours in bed skyping with my sweet cousins (who are getting too old, I can’t believe they are already 16, almost 15 and 13 in just a few days!), reading and sleeping. One moment feeling cold and the next super warm. It’s a little bit annoying to take off and on a hoodie all the time. Most of the times I’ve felt like I’m burning up though. I hate feeling like this. I picked up the kids from school and was prepared to take both of the kids to soccer practice, but my hostmom said that she could take them so I could rest some more. Very sweet of her! So I slept almost the whole afternoon too until the boy rang the doorbell a million times when they got home at 6pm. The girl told me that he was crying in the car because he wanted me to go with him to his practice. Next week I promised him!

I’ve also talked to one of the Swedish girls, who arrived the same day as I did in January, about going to Vegas together in October. I’m trying to convince the Swedish Sarah to come with us. It would be so awesome to have a Swedish party weekend in Las Vegas!!

We’ll see if I will be able to get some sleep tonight, last night I had a really hard time falling asleep. But now I will at least go to bed and continue reading the last Percy Jackson book (there are more, in  series 2 but I won’t start reading those until October when the next book comes out). Or maybe I will just keep watching Rise of the Guardians.

This day was really crappy. First I found out that the couple renting my apartment back in Sweden put stuff down in the storage room which was flooded last week. Everything got destroyed. Mom will be an angel and call my insurance company and help me with everything.

Then I couldn’t keep my eyes open and I was freezing like crazy so I slept the whole afternoon and was super unsocial with our guests. My hostdad came in to me right before dinner asking how I was feeling and when I say not too good he felt my forehead and told me I was really warm… Just typical. He gave me two Advils and an hour later I was feeling better. I’m still very warm though.

We had leftover from the party for dinner, almost as yummy today. Then we gathered around the fire table they bought just a few weeks ago and grilled S’mores. Katta and her boyfriend Tobbe are really nice and it’s too bad I couldn’t hang out with them more, they are leaving tomorrow.

When the kids went to bed I refueled the car and bought some ice cream. Since I slept so much this afternoon I figured it would be hard sleeping early tonight, so I will watch some True Blood while eating my favorite Ben & Jerry’s, Phish Food. It’s okay, I’m sick!

The party night on Friday was really nice, the movie in the backyard was a huge success and it was surprisingly good quality. Too bad I had a headache most of the night so I couldn’t really socialize much. I think I have to look it up, and I might as well look up my knuckle that’s been hurting for more than a month too, while I’m at it.

Yesterday I was supposed to do the Color in Motion 5k run down in San Diego, but once again, I was the one who bought a ticket, and people said they wanted to join, but then didn’t… So I decided I didn’t wanna do it and went to Ponto to play some beachvolley instead. I didn’t play too much because of my extreme muscle soreness. But the three games I played with Chad wasn’t too bad but after that I just lay on the beach reading and finishing Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth.

In the evening Chad took me to a sushi restaurant. It was very nice and the food was really good. Raw fish is good!

Today I have nothing planned. I’m alone in the house, the family and the old au pair that’s visiting this weekend just went to the pool, but I have a headache (big surprise) so I will just stay here, maybe drive somewhere nice and quiet.

I have dreams quite often, but for some stupid reason I don’t write them down. So tonight I dreamt about a super huge meteor shower where rocks as big as soccer balls fell from the sky… It was really cool but scary and I was afraid I was gonna die. Two days later I remembered about the meteor shower and my first thought was that I had to put it in my blog! And I was so certain that it was real life. Maybe that’s why I felt like I should write it down here, haha! Don’t remember much about what happened more than that though.

When I had dropped off the kids at school this morning I drove to the gym for the first time in months. I started with 30 minutes on the elliptical which was really hard with some resistance, there was some sweat for sure. So I had to rest for a few minutes before I could continue with a little strength/cardio. Three/four strength exercises, low resistance, no rest between each exercise. Really tough when I hadn’t worked out in a while. I was nauseous afterward and now, like 9 hours later my arms and legs are starting to feel like spaghetti. Wonder how well it will go to play beach volleyball tomorrow.

After the gym I made a good couscous salad with fruits and then took a nice, long and warm shower. The rest of the afternoon (I had three hours after I was done at the gym, awesome!) I read and watched Two and a Half Men.

Today’s Pia’s birthday and tonight there will be a house party at our place. Three of the girl’s friends with families will be here. There will be food and cake and my hostdad bought a projector so they are gonna watch a movie in the backyard later.

I think summer is finally here. It took a while but now it’s been warm for two weeks straight! Today it was low 80 and it was perfect. But waiting in the car in that heat wasn’t so nice…

I didn’t do much today, I tried the drop off lane at the girl’s school and I think that is what she wants me to do from now on. I read in my freetime, halfway through The Battle of the Labyrinth now. In the afternoon the boy was at a playdate and me and the girl looked for cupcake recipes. Her mom bought her an amazing cupcake/pie book with so many funny recipes. Like high heel cupcakes, animals, holiday themed. But we decided to find a recipe online instead, both for a normal vanilla cupcake but also cream cheese frosting. Tomorrow there will be a party at our house with the families of four of the girl’s best friends.  So the two of us is gonna bake the cupcakes after school for the event.

The afternoon disappeared so fast and before I knew it my hostdad was home making naan bread pizza, which is so delicious!

I was right, now that the kids are back in school, the days just fly by and once again I’m seeing the end of my year approaching a little too fast for my liking…

Last night I watched the first Percy Jackson movie and I have to say I’m really dissapointed. They had changed the whole story and everything was so different. So now I’m not sure I want to see the second one… With The Hunger Games though, it was exactly the same and I wasn’t disappointed at all.

Yesterday I was home the whole day with the girl because she was sick. It was a long day but still okay. When she’s not feeling well she can’t really do anything which means I get to rest. Today was a long day too, but I had the morning off. Wednesdays are early-release days so the kids get out of school one hour earlier. But I still had time to be at the pool for a couple of hours, finishing Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse.

Tonight my hostdad told me what the boy did in school today (he rarely can answer me when I ask him what he did in school, he forgets). So they were writing or talking about their families and the boy said he had five family members. My hostdad looked at him when he was explaining; five? “Yeah, Alexandra’s the fifth!” That’s sooo adorable, my heart melted!

It’s been a weird day today, it felt like I had just started being an au pair because my hostparents were with me almost the whole day. But I am so glad they were, it would have been hard finding the girl’s new school, know where to park and how it all worked. But now I do. Unfortunately I won’t be able to try it for myself tomorrow because she has 102F temperature (39C) so she has to stay home tomorrow.

My new working schedule looks like this. I start working at 6:30am. I empty the dishwasher and prepare the kids’ lunches if I didn’t do it the afternoon before. Breakfast for the kids at 6:45 and then I take both of them to the girl’s school which starts at 8:02am. Then back again to drop off the boy at his school, it’s nice that he still goes to the same school as before, so I know what where to park and everything, but now he is one of the big kids, a first grader! When he starts at 8:45 I get off work until 1:30pm when I have to drive to the girl’s school and pick her up. Then back again to the boy’s school which ends at 3:10pm. Home, eating snacks and doing homework and then play until the parents get home around 6:30pm. It’s gonna be a lot of driving this fall, and a lot of time waiting in the car.

On top of this they have activities after school some days too. The girl has soccer practice twice a week, the boy has it once, and they both are going to Swedish school once a week. Don’t know if it’s any more than that yet.

Anyway, the girl was super excited when we got to her new school this morning, she was running around like I don’t know, saying hello to friends, comparing schedules and so on. And she was still very excited when we picked her up. I think she is gonna enjoy middle school!

The boy didn’t say much about school as usual, but I got the feeling that he liked it too.

In my freetime today I got my B12 shot and bought something for my brother’s birthday last week. I haven’t had time to send it until now, so tomorrow it will finally be on its way. I also had lunch at IKEA since I was already down there for the shot. Meatballs with mashed potatoes, creamy sauce and lingonberries. Yummy! I also took a quick tour inside and looked at china, I have to buy a new set when I get back to Sweden. I also find a really nice and big picture of San Diego skyline. I hope they have it back in Sweden, it would have been so awesome to have that on my wall!

Oh right, my headache still won’t go away. Almost every day for 10 days now. It’s not fun anymore 😦

Now it’s dinner soon and after that I’m going to Starbucks to say a final goodbye to Giorgia. I’m gonna miss her!

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

Not updating the blog for a while can mean two things, either I haven’t done anything or too much. Weekends are mostly the later. My plans on Friday night were sushi and the movies with Chad. We saw The Wolverine and it wasn’t at all like the first or the other X-men movies, but it was good and worth seeing.

No beach volleyball on Saturday, it was too hard to get out of bed, the movie on Friday did not end until like 12:45am. In the afternoon on Saturday I didn’t do anything special, just stayed in bed reading. On Friday I finished the last Narnia book and started reading the second Percy Jackson (which I finished today).

My neighbor asked me if I wanted to go to the baseball game on Saturday afternoon/evening. I wanted to go and asked Chad if he wanted to come along, even if I knew he wasn’t such a big baseball fan. He came along anyway and we ended up having a nice time, even though we missed the train and had to drive there instead. My hostdad and the boy went to the game too. My hostmom and the girl were supposed to go as well, but the girl just found out she had pneumonia. Poor girl! So we sat with them for a while. We didn’t stay the whole game, so we left after the 8^th inning. The Padres were in the lead with 5-2 and the game ended with 8-2.

Today I spent the day in bed reading as well. And at 5pm I was at Giorgia’s goodbye party. I can’t believe she is going home already! It was a really nice evening and her four kids were super excited to have 20 nannies in the house. When I arrived they showed me where I could park and screamed “Nanny party over here!” so we should know where it was. They also served us food during the evening and took away the dishes. I don’t remember the ages, but even the youngest (maybe 4-5) helped serve us. The oldest girl kept hugging everyone all the time too. So adorable!

I got home at nine and just now I got my schedule for next week. The girl starts school an hour earlier than in the spring which means I will also start earlier. But I think I will get used to it eventually!

Now it’s time for bed and Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse!

I just finished my last day of work for this summer. On Monday I will have a new schedule which will give me time to start working out again. Some days I might even have time to be at the beach for a few hours when the kids are in school.

This day was pretty slow too, the girl had 102F (39,5C) this morning and spent the whole day in bed watching Netflix. The boy had a playdate in the morning and during that time I finished the last Narnia book and started the second Percy Jackson. When he got home again we had some time to kill before lunch and we played Creationary, a Lego game, and it was really hard. Leftovers for lunch and then the boy had a lot of things to do in the afternoon, like a dentist appointment, meeting his new first grade teacher and a birthday party, so I was here with the girl and my day ended with me and my hostdad picking up my car from the service.

Now I’m reading while waiting for better times (=plans)…