supermarkets, weddings and holidays

Temp +12, sunny

It is a beautiful day. A complete contrast to yesterday and I am shocked at how fickle my mood is in response to the weather! I am pretty much skipping along, smiling at everyone. I think that the weather at the end of the winter affects my mood more than that at the beginning. We had such an amazing summer last year that a couple of weeks of rain really didn't matter too much. Plus I really enjoyed the run up to Christmas which sort of masked the darkness. It is so warm today, its a throw all the windows and doors open day.

Today, like friday, we had errands to run, so ended up in the supermarket. Naomi is so thrilled to ride in the trolly with Lilja in the baby seat - that it is the easiest place (other than swimming and town) to get her to leave the house for. Here are some things I love about the supermarkets here..

1. Small
2. Limited choice (but just what you might want, the list of things for people to bring when they visit from the UK gets less as time goes by, you get used to living without things and there is actually more and more choice- not always a positive thing)
3. Bread (all the bread is uncut, they have self service bread slicing machine thing, there are always end bits you can pick up for the kids to chew on, so far this has always been a massive treat and staves off the demands for sweets by the check out).
4. Paying for bags (OK I actually think this is great, you get good proper bags, they don't break, you don't take more than you need)

We are in the process of planning our next holiday. Living 'abroad' this always presents the dilemma- do you go and visit family or travel in Norway or go somewhere else. As the family increases in size and age and the budget diminishes our options are becoming a little different. This time we have a wedding invite, which we have procrastinated over no end (sorry family!). I will not bore you with our tooings and froings over this, mainly to do with transport, length, where to go, how much to spend etc. For us to go to a wedding in the UK we really need to make it a holiday as well. We are as far as booking the ferry to travel across. We have yet to decide where to spend the week before the wedding.

Seeing life through the eyes of a nearly 3 year old is quite amazing, this will be Naomi's first wedding and her first overnight trip on a ferry. She is now old enough that she can deal with past and future a little more and we are starting to talk about our adventure.. Although, when we took the local ferry the other day she started to get a bit worried that we were going to sleep on it and why didn't we have the green bag (our big travel bag) with us and when was the wedding!. Anyway, she knows this far that we are going to sleep on the boat and we are going to the wedding and we are starting to talk about all the people she knows that will be there. We are reading Katie Morag stories and in one of them Granma Mainland gets married to Neilie Beag and it is giving us plenty of opportunity to talk about dresses and dancing and confetti and staying up past our bedtime!