The rest of the family has arrived :-)

On Wednesday the rest of the family arrived: my brother (Raimo) and my nephew (Linus). It is the first time ever when all the siblings plus the only “nibling” (new word for child of a sibling) is gathered in one place. It has been difficult for us since my sister (Monica) lives in California (since 30 years) and I have spent the last 15 years of vacation on other exotic places. But NOW we are finally here. It is about time – Linus just turned 16 and I don’t think he wants to travel with us “oldies” for that much longer. J

I spent Monday and Tuesday cleaning the house to prepare for the arrival of the two. I can’t say that I enjoy cleaning, but sometimes you just need to it. So there wasn’t that much to blog about in the beginning of the week. ;-) Cleaning isn’t and will never be interesting.

Before they arrived I went and checked out the gym across the street.  Raimo, Linus and I share the interest for exercise! The gym is big, not very new, but has a lot of –for us – new machines! I tried it out a couple of times before they came and decided it was good enough and bought membership cards for the summer. Luckily Raimo and Linus really liked it. They liked it so much so we have been there the last 3 days. All our bodies ache since we are using new machines and my body is in total chock. I haven’t been to the gym for more than a month.

Linus likes to shop – A LOT!  Raimo and I like to tag along. Monica is working, so she is excused. So our days at the moment looks pretty much like this:

·         Breakfast No 1

·         Gym

·         Shower

·         Breakfast No 2

·         Shopping

·         Late lunch

·         More shopping

·         Late Dinner

·         Almost falling asleep at the dinner table

·         Surfing/e-mailing if there is any energy left

Today we have decided to take a day off shopping. We are invited to a common friend for dinner. We are really looking forward to it and we don’t want to be tired when we are there, so we need to save some energy. We will hit the gym though. J

One of my successes this week was that I bought all my winter hiking clothes (around 40% cheaper than in Sweden) and sent them to New Zealand. It wasn’t a lot, around 2,5 kg, but that is a lot more to carry in an already very full back pack. It cost USD 58 to send it, but it is worth the price NOT to carry it via Fiji to New Zealand. I will send some clothes to Sweden also. It is too much fun to shop here I California, especially since they have my sizes (and my size is actually one of the smaller ones ;-) ). In Asia they don’t carry sizes for big Scandinavian women. ;-)

Anyhow – I’m looking forward to a lot of fun days with my family. J