Wow, yesterday was a long day. What we thought would be a leisurely one-hour drive to Umeå with plenty of time for lunch and maybe even a bit of shopping before our appointment turned into a two-and-a-half hour trip through a blizzard, with so little visibility that at times we were creeping along at 30 kilometers per hour.

We got ourselves to the Migrationsverket office a couple of minutes past the scheduled time, and our caseworker actually met us at the office door and held it open for us! The good thing was that there was no waiting. Lydia and I went in first and he asked Lydia a couple of questions, including how she liked having a little brother (Det går bra, fast jag inte litar på han.*), then he sent her back out to the waiting room with Olof while he interviewed me. It was pretty quick and painless, lasting maybe ten minutes with no unexpected questions. Then it was Olof’s turn, and he had essentially the same interview that I did. After that, we all waited in the waiting room for another ten minutes or so, and then the caseworker came back and returned our passports, complete with permanent residence permits affixed. Yay! Practically speaking, the permanent permits don’t change our lives one way or another, but it’s nice to have that hurdle out of the way. Next stop, citizenship!

While we were getting the kids bundled up again and getting our things gathered together, the caseworker came out of his office wearing his coat and said, “I’m going to sneak out now, too.” After he left, Olof and I felt a bit guilty that we had kept him waiting if he had someplace else he needed to be, but his being in a hurry no doubt contributed to us getting out of there so quickly, so we didn’t feel too guilty.

Once we had that mission completed, we walked downtown and did a little bit of shopping. I wish we would have had more time, because I always like to shop in different towns, but we wanted to hurry and get to Andrea’s because they were expecting us and we had been looking forward to seeing them.

When we got to Andrea’s, Olof stayed with the kids and Andrea and I made a “girls only” trip to Myrorna (the Salvation Army thrift store), where I got some cool, funky coffee cups (which the clerk eye-rollingly informed me were tea cups, when I asked why I hadn’t gotten the advertised 50% discount on coffee cups) and a couple of other things. I wish our Myrorna were as big as the one in Umeå (and don’t even get me started on the one in Skärholmen — that store gives me a huge case of thrift-shopping envy!).

When Andrea and I got back to her apartment, Matt was just getting home from work, so we all went in and had a great dinner together and a couple of hours of hanging out and chatting. Lydia and Zach play so well together, and they were really sorry to have to say goodnight when we left.

Luckily for us, the weather had cleared up considerably during the evening, and we had a more or less normal trip back home, even though there was over a foot of new snow waiting for us and Olof had to shovel the driveway before we could park the car and get to the house. Poor guy. It should come as no surprise to anyone that his parents came over, even though it was almost ten o’clock at night, and helped him shovel.

Today is a day for rest.

*“It’s fine, but I don’t trust him” (complete with norrländsk grammar).