Invitations to Tage’s birthday do went out yesterday, so it looks like we’re having a party on Sunday whether we like it or not. We’ve invited nine pre-schoolers, and so far I’ve got nothing planned besides the Batman cake that Tage requested months ago. With any luck the weather will be decent that afternoon so we can herd them all out to the park next-door and let them wear each other out for an hour or so. That’d be as good a fifth birthday party as any, I guess.

As concerns the weather currently, we’ve got some sort of heat wave going on here and it’s nigh onto unbearable. I can hardly believe I used to bask in 100-degree heat in my southern Idaho days; for the past few years anything above 70 (about 20 degrees celsius) just does me in. This being Sweden, our house isn’t air conditioned, of course, which means that staying in has been out of the question these past couple of days. Yesterday we loaded up the kids and took them to the beach at Byske, about 30 miles north of here, then we stopped in town for dinner and shopping on the way home. Today it was down to the in-laws’ for fika, then out to the local beach, then into town again for more dinner and shopping. Were making such a habit of this that I’m afraid if the weather doesn’t turn for the colder soon we’re liable to end up in the poor house.