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.

Before I write about todays awesomeness I realized today that I totally forgot to write about something else awesome that happened last week, on my fifth montheversary. Nine days ago the girl and all the other fifth graders from her school at the beach, having a beach party. I was sitting there and watching her. And when I was watching the big waves I saw a huge dolphin jumping like 1m above the wave. It was not just me that was impressed beyond measures, everyone else that saw it was shouting stuff like: ”OH MY GOD!! DID YOU SEE THAT?!” Of course I took out my camera and wanted to catch it on film, but it only happened one time more and that was of course in between my films. It was still amazing and I’ve never seen anything like it!

And now about today. My Sunday started at Moonlight Beach at 9:30 am when I was leaving firewood at one of the firepits to make sure I had it in the evening, drove back home, skyped with my mom and then went to the gym. After that I picked up Sarah and then Daniela. When I drove to Daniela my GPS wanted me to go on a tiny tiny road with a lot of big holes and bumps. It wasn’t even asphalt. Horrible!

Finally off to the beach, we arrived at 4:30pm and I was super lucky with a parking spot. But when we got there someone else had put his firewood at our pit. But after a little talking they went away and took another one and we still had the one closest to the ocean.

Right away me, Sarah and Jessica went into the water. First time this year and I’m embarrassed it took this long… At first the water was super cold and I couldn’t understand why there were so many people in the water. But after a short while it was nice and we were jumping around in the waves. I dived in the waves and my hair is all salty now. I love it!! Unfortunately it smells like smoke…

Everyone was there at 6pm nad we started the fire and grilled our marshmallows. I tried doing a few S’mores but I think I like the marshmallows just like they are more. But it was still very good!

When the sun was setting Moa got restless and really wanted to play some beach volleyball. But forgetful me totally forgot to bring my ball. But we could borrow one from some guys that were sitting next to us. Me, Moa, Karin, Victoria, Sarah and Giorgia played until we couldn’t even see the ball and it was so much fun.

The last hours of the evening we spent right by the fire continuing grilling the marshmallows, talking and constantly saying that we couldn’t believe that that was really happening. It was a magical evening! In total we were about 10 au pairs. We have to do this more often!

Yesterday I played beach volleyball at Ponto beach. It was not many people there and I played really badly until the last two games. My serve was awesome, floaters for once! Directly me and Sarah went to Carlsbad State beach (the beach north of Ponto) to go to my LCC meeting. Talked a little with the other two girls there and then sat down at the beach watching the surf contest (that’s very California apperantly). It was the Annual Carlsbad Beach Fest and it was a very nice event. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my sunscreen and we had to buy firewood for today so we only stayed for an hour.

I will probably miss the next meeting and the meeting after that in August will be stand up paddling. I’m really looking forward to it!

Carlsbad Beach Fest. Carlsbad. This was the first time for me at Moonlight Beach in Encinitas but I will definitely hang out there more from now on, it was a very nice beach!

I had a great evening with four other au pairs girls. First we met up at IKEA to eat the Swedish midsommer smörgåsbord. It was as good as the Easter buffe, but I was dissapointed in the dessert, they didn’t have any delicato chocolate balls! It was nice anyway and especially since majority of us weren’t Swedish.

After we decided to do something so we drove to Fashion Valley, apperantly there is a movie theatre there. I had no idea! We wanted to see This is the End but it was sold out so we saw Epic. I really wanted to see that one so I was satisfied, it was a cute movie! But when we bought the tickets the girl who was selling us the tickets told us: ”are you sure you want to buy those, it’s a childrens movie”. But in fact, almost everyone in the room were adults.

This morning the kids’ mom took them to the dentists and after that the boy had a playdate almost all of the afternoon so me and the girl played a lot of battleship. She was really good at it and won big time! When the boy was back home we made Fathers Days cards and then I drove all the way down to IKEA without the GPS. *proud*

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.

On my way to the airport I saw this registration plate. In Swedish it’s hilarious: Fjärta saker! I can’t believe we only paid $250 per person flight+hotel. Renaissance Hotel downtown was awesome! View from our room. Big Matt’s Breakfast. The place itself wasn’t so special but the food was yummy. Scottsdale
Scottsdale Fashion Square. A really nice shopping mall. Tempe (pronounced Tempee) was a really nice town just outside of Phoenix (or maybe it was part of Phoenix, I don’t know). It was pretty and they had a lot of bars. Chase Field right after a baseball game. Diamondbacks vs San Fransisco. This is a funny story. We were told Selena Gomez was the cause of this mob. So that’s what we told people that asked us. After ten minutes s guy asked a girl just in front of us who it was, and she told a completely different name, she was in the musical Wicked, don’t remember the name. So embarrassing!! A two hour walk from the light rail station to the Desert Botanical Garden. Not ten as the guy at Starbucks said… Finally we got there!! I am still super amazed by all the hummingbirds here. This one was drinking from a tiny waterfall in the park. A lot of green trees everywhere. Alice Cooperstown. From the outside it didn’t look like much but it was cool inside. Kinda lika Hard Rock Cafe with signed guitars on the wall and so on. But it was more like a sportsbar with really big flat screen TVs showing the baseball game. The food was really good!

This is where we spent our last three hours in Phoenix. The weather was perfect, 105F, low humidity. In the shadow looking at hummingbirds drinking from the fountain. The perfect ending on a very nice weekend in Phoenix!

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.

In exactly seven days my mom will be here. I can’t belive it! It was more than five months ago we said goodbye to each other at the airport in Gothenburg. And when she is back in Sweden again in four weeks, half my time here in the United States is over. And everyone keeps telling me that the last six months goes so fast. And I thought the first six went fast… I’m very excited anyway and I’m really looking forward to spending three weeks with her!

This evening was spent in Del Mar with au pair friends. We had dinner at Sammy’s Woodfired Pizza and Grill. Me and Moa shared a pizza. My half was a hawaiian pizza and hers was the same without the pineapple and with some extra fries on it. The waitress thought that was super funny, she had never heard of that before. I bet she told everyone in the kitchen about it. When it was ready to be served and it was on the counter everyone walking past it was staring and laughing, haha!

After, all the Swedish girls (me, Moa, Karin and Kristel) except Victoria went to Starbucks to hang out a little. Really nice!

The working hours of today was pretty rough. Well, not too bad actually, the girl wasn’t feeling so well so we were at the house the whole day. She was watching TV most of the time while I was outside with the boy in the afternoon. He was really absent minded today and didn’t listen to anything I said and that’s what made my day tough. Normally he is the sweetest kid ever, but when I said something today, he answered and then didn’t react at all to it because he didn’t listen… I’m really glad that was a one time thing, I can only imagine how hard this job would be if I had to deal with that every day. I’m so blessed to have these two kids. So sweet, helpful, adorable and well behaved! But they are humans and have days that are worse than others, like all of us.

Super healthy lunch and my not so healthy dinner (with Moa’s weird half)…

I totally didn’t have time to write anything last Friday when I had my fifth monthiversary. But I have it today too, five months in the family. Crazy crazy!

The girl had ear pains this morning so I had to take her to the doctors office but that was no problem at all. It was red so she got a prescription for medicine. Since she didn’t feel so well we didn’t really do anything today except rest.

I made an early dinner today, at 4:30 pm already because the girl had a dance recital at 6:30. It was a very long show but it was fun. First the tiny kids danced ballet. I think they might have been three or four. So adorable! Then the older kids came and they were so good! The girl was second last and I was really impressed by her. She was really good. She has been dancing Jazz this semester and their song was Trouble with Taylor Swift.

Now I’m back home and I will head straight to bed, I am so tired still. Pictures will be up another day. Good night!

So much going on, too little time to write. Yesterday I came home around midnight after a very nice coffee with Moa and the day before I got home at 3am after a really nice weekend in Phoenix, Arizona.

My weekend started on Friday afternoon when I left the house to pick up Jessica, Karin and Victoria down in Del Mar. Me and Jessica were going to Phoenix and Karin and Victoria were going to San Francisco. Awesome that our flights left approximately the same time both Friday and Sunday. So we were environmental friendly and carpooled.

The flight to Phoenix was only for an hour but I slept almost the whole way. When we got there we called the hotel and asked how we were gonna get there. Use the light rail they said. Very easy, we just bought a ticket and sat on that nice train for 20 minutes in to downtown. I love the public transportation system in Phoenix, you can go on the light rail and buses how much you like for a day for only $4.

The first time we were out in the ”real” air we couldn’t stop laughing. Oh my god, it was perfect! 99F in the middle of the night, a warm breeze and it really felt we were in a tropical climate. Because of the low humidity it doesn’t feel as warm as it was. If it were 99F here in San Diego I think I would die. But in the desert it was perfect!

The hotel was located in the center of downtown and was awesome! $250 for that hotel and flight was pretty nice. The next day we got up pretty early, I took a shower and then we walked to Matt’s Big Breakfast a few blocks away. Bacon, scrambled eggs, hash browns and toast. Yummy!

After that we took the light rail to Tempe and from there a bus to Scottsdale Fashion Square. It took about an hour to get there but it was worth it. The mall was really nice and even though I didn’t buy more than a knitted cardigan and a t-shirt from Hollister on sale and a perfume it was nice walking around inside. Outside it was about 106F.

After that we walked around a little in Tempe. Also a very nice place with a lot of bars. Unfortunately Jessica is under 21 but that was probably for the best anyway :).

Back to Phoenix downtown and the hotel for a while and then going to Hard Rock Cafe. It was almost empty because of the Diamondbacks baseball game across the street. I had the local burger and that was the best burger I ever had, too bad it wasn’t the Californian local burger. It was teriyaki sauce and pineapple on it. I bought a shot glass and now I have 6 glass in total.

When we walked back to the hotel we saw a group of a lot of people waiting for something. We asked someone and they said they thought it was Selena Gomez. We waited for a while and then we heard someone say it was someone else that was in the Wicked musical. Never heard of her so we waed back to the hotel and got to bed.

Sunday was warmer than Saturday, more like 110F which is about 43C. But it wasn’t too bad. We had a small breakfast at Starbucks and then took the light rail out to Papago Park. We asked for directions to the Desert Botanical Garden and were told it was about a 10-15 minute walk. We got lost, asked at the Phoenix Zoo and eventually found it. But that was two hours after. We drank so much water and my feet (in stupid sandals) hurt like hell. I didn’t have so much trouble with the heat, the feet on the other hand, after that day they were killing me. We walked around in the park for a short while then got a lift halfway back which was awesome! Nice Americans.

Directly when we got back to downtown we walked to Coopers’town. A restaurant owned by Alice Cooper. Empty as HRC because of the baseball game but it was nice not wating for a table. The food was good, I had a club sandwhich. It was cheap too, $10! The cheapest dinner I’ve ever had I think.

When we were so full we almost rolled out of the restaurant we had like three hours to kill so we sat at a small plaza where there were pretty fountains where kids played around in. We had comfy chairs and spent the rest of our visit in Phoenix there. It was awesome!

The flight was delayed by 15 minutes but that was okay because Karin and Victorias flight was delayed by an hour. Kinda sucked to wait at the San Diego airport for an hour in the middle of the night when we already were so tired.

I got home at 3am and yesterday I had to work for more than 10 hours. It was a rough day. And my feet made it even worse! They were so swollen yesterday I could hardly walk. I guess it was because of all the water I drank yesterday. My knees were dead too.

Today it’s better, I slept with my feet held high, but it still feels stiff when I’m bending my knee or twisting my ankle. By tomorrow it should be gone completely!

This morning I was up at 7am just in case the kids would wake up early. My h-mom left extra early because she have to be home at 4pm to get the girl dressed and ready for her dance recital tonight. It’s 8:30am and the kids aren’t awake yet. I think I have to wake them up pretty soon, the boy has a swim lesson in 40min.

As usual I took a lot of photos but I don’t have time to upload them now, so they will come up tomorrow or later this evening! Phoenix is a very nice city and I loved the tropical warmth. It was a very clean city and with a lot of fun nightlife. Unfortunately, as we didn’t have a car, we couldn’t see Sedona and the ghost towns, but I will probably go back to see those some day :). I had a great weekend and I’m glad I went to Phoenix, a not so typical travel destination!

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.

I had my last PT session today but my trainer thought I had another one. And since he planned for two sessions he told me he could give me 15 minutes of free consultation next time I had time, which will be on June 19th. He told me a little about how to move on from now and the most important thing is to change movements every 4-6 weeks so you have time to see improvements. I got a new circuit to do for one and a half week and then I’m on my own. That will definitely be a challenge!

When we were done he wanted to see my body fat percentage and I was afraid of what it was gonna say. The scale said 141 lbs, not a happy number. But when the body fat percentage said 19.9% I was happy again. That is almost 4% less than in April! So even if I’ve gained weight I’ve technically lost 8lbs of fat. Muscles weigh more than fat! A happy day. Now I just need to continue this and hope I will start losing weight so I can get in my pants I brought here. I have until the fall!

He also told me that I have to start doing yoga like once a week. I’m not flexible enough in my hip for the squats, haha!

Before my PT session I showed Moa some excercises since she’s not used to using machines. It was fun and we are gonna start working out together once a week or so from now on. That will be fun.

I also got the cooking book he told me about. It’s a cookbook for the fit food lover with healthy recipes. I love it just by looking in it, everything looks so delicious and it’s less carbs than in ”normal” food. I think my mom will be the test subject to my new cooking before I dare trying it on the kids, haha!

The girl had her 5th grade graduation today and oh my god what a big deal that was. In Sweden it didn’t matter, but here it was almost as big as ”studenten”. They had a cermenoy outside where the teachers held speeches. Then there was a huge breakfast for everyone in the cafeteria. I actually wasn’t too bad, I had a lot of fruit and half a banana/chocolate muffin. It was very nice, but in my opinion too big for 10-year olds. The boy has his kindergarten graduation tomorrow, we’ll see what that will be like.

Last night I realized that I’m leaving for Phoenix tomorrow evening and I haven’t even started packing yet. So unlike me! But I will do it right now before I go to Starbucks to hang out with the girls :).

Me and the girl baked brownies after school today. They were delicous and very pretty! But it took me some time to cut out all those petals from fondant…

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.

It’s crazy how much I have going on all the time, even though I want to update my blog every day I don’t have time anymore. It’s fun though, I’ve really gotten myself a new life here :).

Yesterday morning was my first tournament in a very long time. I wasn’t nervous at all, but I actually felt confident. I’ve developed so much just in these four weeks and I don’t mind the wind and the sun so much anymore. I’ve also improved my hustling skills but my big weakest link is still the short ones right at the net.

I played with Chad and we played really well together again! The first two games we won. The third we lost by 15-13 (every game was only one set to 15), the fourth we lost as well, 18-16. And that was the poolplay. After that the elimination started. And we lost right away with 15-5 or something. Embarrassing but nice, because that meant we could eat. Grilled burritos for lunch at the beach after hours of playing was pretty nice!

Today was an awesome day too! I had a really nice sleep-in until 11am, I skyped with my mom. I can’t believe it’s just a little more than two weeks until she gets here. I can’t wait!! Then I went to the gym. I was hoping to do my routine, 20 minutes of intervals and spend some time in the jacuzzi/sauna. But I only had time for the routine before I hade to drive to Fashion Valley to met up with Moa. Jessica and Pernille were supposed to come too, but they had to work. But me and Moa had a really great time anyway. We got our table earlier since we only needed a table for two. I hadn’t been at the Cheesecake Factory since April. For dinner I had Chicken Pasta from the Skinnylicious menu and the cheesecake today was Dutch Apple Caramel Streusel Cheesecake.  I love that restaurant, everything is amazing there!

Since the time was only 6pm when we were done we decided to walk around in Fashion Valley for a while. We found a really nice loose knitted shirt we both bought, but in different colors. When all the shops closed we sat in her car for like three hours, maybe it was even four, just talking. I’m really glad I’ve found her :).

This upcoming week is the last week of school for the kids. I will have a new schedule the week after, and that is gonna be nice. I’ve been doing the exact same thing for five months, it’s time for a little change. And I will have another change when school starts again in September. It’s very nice with three different schedule during this year. I can imagine it would be a little monotonous otherwise.

Now it’s time for a little sleep, goodnight!

The original cheesecake, baked apples, caramel and brown sugar cinnamon walnut streusel.

I came home very late yesterday so I will write about this super important thing that happened yesterday, I ate sushi for the first time ever. And I loved it! I went out with Moa, Jessica, Larissa and Pernille and we had such a great night! First we met up at a suchi restaurant in Mira Mesa where we all ordered different sushis and then shared. After that we went to Starbucks and Cold Stone. I wanted ice cream but I was too cold for it so I had a coffee too, haha! We were there until very late but after me and Moa got stuck outside talking for an hour while watching three policecars with a lot of policemen surrounding a car with young people in it. I wonder what happened!

I’m really happy that I found Moa at Starbucks that random Sunday evening some weeks ago. She is so sweet and we clicked right away. It’s awesome since we’re both gonna be here for many more months :).

I got home around 1am and today I had to get up at 7. It wasn’t too bad though, I was really excited about the beach volleyball tournament!

To be continued…

I had a really nice evening at Starbucks today with Moa, Jessica and Larissa. We talked about everything between heaven and earth and preliminary decided some things, like a weekend in Santa Monica in July, Hawaii in January. Both Moa and Jessica are coming to the tournament on Saturday which is gonna be super fun! I’m really looking forward to that. For the first time ever I actually feel that I might have a chance of getting far. But I’m not gonna say too much.

Swedish school today was nice, they had ”graduation” with Swedish summer songs and a lot of fika afterward. The kids were super cute in their fine clothes. One of the moms also came up to me and jessica and told us that there were a Swedish family that wanted to join the Swedish school and they had an au pair who was looking for friends. She is gonna give her our numbers, always fun to expand friend circles :).

At the gym today I talked a lot with my PT. I am working out a lot, I’m eating enough calories but I’m still not losing weight. So he told me that I really have to cut down with the carbs. It’s gonna be hard bu the told me about a cookbook with nice recipes with more protein and less carbs. I just ordered it and I hope it’s gonna help me. It’s hard finding things to replace the pasta with, but I’m gonna try.  I’m not gonna cut all carbs, but gradually try to replace it with something else, like quinoa and vegetables.

Now it’s time to sleep.
Friday tomorrow again! 🙂