Silent, I know.  I’ve been terrible about keeping my blog updated.  But don’t worry, thanks to good old Dad, the guilt about not posting every day has overcome me and here I am.  You can all thank Dad for this post.

I had a big, long, semi-entertaining post written up on Sunday, a long, long post detailing the evening prior where I went out with the neighborhood ladies and we played Bingo and I won a 200€ pot.

But alas, all the details of Spanish Bingo - and trust me, there were many, including accusations of vomiting, the Spanish call for a waiter, overenthusiastic Americans, and really, really cute boots - were zapped into the black hole of the internet where my emails and posts go every so often.  So you don’t get to hear that story.

Instead, the story I shall tell this evening is of one 5 (almost 6!) year old sweet, cherubic perfect little angel, one who manages to make her father and I tear our hair out of our heads (mine just grows back faster).

Just before I went back to the States for my class, I helped both kids organize their rooms - teaching them what goes where, how to take care of it, all of the basics of keeping their room clean.  When I got back, it was back to where it had been before, and Anja being Anja, absolutely NOTHING was clean in her room.

I asked both of them to clean their rooms over and over and over.  Isak’s was slowly but surely getting cleaner; Anja’s, on the other hand, didn’t get any cleaner.  In fact, if anything, it got messier.   She would do anything to get out of it, including going to sleep 5:00pm.  Finally, I told her if it didn’t get done, all of her toys would be gone.

And that’s where it ended up.  After days of threatening, I finally took away all of her toys - every last one of them.  Every Barbie, every PlayMobile piece, every baby doll, every stuffed animal, everything.  All that’s left is a stack of books and a tray of crayons.

As I put all of her stuff into bags (just going through everything in the room on the floor took about 3 hours!), and she stood in the doorway with a continuous 80 decibel scream, she cried, stomped her feet, told me she would do it “now”, and so forth and so on, until everything was clean and packed up, at which point she sniffled, put her chin up, and said, “Mamma, my head feels sour now.”

So that’s what’s been going on on the Anja front.  Isak is doing well and has started piano lessons which he really seems to enjoy.  He’s doing well in school, though he has a very hard teacher this year and his grades have slipped a little but that’s nothing a little financial incentive hasn’t helped.

On a completely unrelated front, we did our taxes today - the first time EVER we have done our taxes this early (I usually take advantage of the 3-month extension afforded to military members stationed overseas).   Our tax refund was one to make our jaws drop.  That means this weekend?  I hit IKEA!