What to do, what to do???

Now this is a first. 6 more days till election day and I still have no idea what party to vote for. Even considering to cast a blank vote. Empty. Yep, maybe not voting for any of the parties.
Can hardly believe I´m even considering this, let alone writing about it.

I´ve always said one should use his/her vote. Have a say. Be responsible. Honor the fact that you have to right to vote and the chance to make a change.

I feel like I´m somewhat betraying my own values if I don´t vote for on of the parties running for government. BUT....I also feel betrayed.

I feel betrayed by the party that I voted for last time and which screwed up. Badly! I feel betrayed by all other parties which keep saying they´ll fix things, without having a clue as how to. I feel betrayed by my bank, which gambled with my money and lost all my savings, and I feel like and a**hole for trusting all these people with my future.

Oh how I wish we will soon again hear my People say: "Thetta reddast" (it´ll be o.k.). But then again, that is somewhat was got us into this mess!

Summertime and the living is easy

Well not quite yet, but hopefully soon it will be summertime and living will be easy. I will have the entire month of half of May, and the entire months of June and July + half August off. Can I tell you how much I look forward to just hanging out, oh yeah and shuffeling the kids from soccer camp to soccer camp? This has been one hell of a winter and I can not wait for it to be over. I just wish that the summers here were real summers, with the sun burning so hot through my body that it would keep me warm for a few of the early winter months.

I have a mini solution for that problem though. This year, the solution is called BARCELONA. Hubby, me and almost 100 000 other people singing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh-ACkYmdc4 live at Nou stadium. Five romantic nights in this gorgeous city with NO kids, just us, the sun, some tapas and lots of Sangria :)

Can´t wait!

Know what it feels like to wake up on a Sunday morning in your 10 year old bed, next to your hubby of 12 years with a bunch of kids between you? Knowing that once you get out of bed you will make breakfast, then lunch, then hubby will walk the dog, you´ll take the kids to visit grandma and at the end of the day you´ll contemplate for a very short time what to have for dinner, before deciding on pizza? Probably even with the same toppings as last time, and the time before that. Knowing that this is pretty much the track of your life? Marked by some unwritten rules about the convienience of routine and the "easy way out".

Every week, sometimes every day and lately almost every hour I vow to myself to break out of habit. "Just do it" is a phrase I would use a lot, until I came across this article called "Why didn´t Nike just do it?" and I thought maybe it isn´t so easy after all.

But "not so easy" does not mean "not doable", right? And so I continue to seek inspiration. Try to convince myself that travelling around the world with 5 kids is a real option. Not an easy task I can tell you. First I was amazed and inspired by http://www.soultravelers3.com/ but had to admit that while these people are way too cool, kind and fun to follow, they aren´t exactly in the "same boat" as we are since they only have 1 daughter. But then they told me about http://blogs.bootsnall.com/kiwifamily/ a family with 8 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) children and a grandpa travelling the world and now I seriously have an itch....

The rythm of my life

´78-MOVED from my mothers womb and into this big, crazy world. ´80-MOVED from Reykjavik, Iceland to, Kuwait City, Kuwait. ´84-MOVED from Kuwait City back to Reykjavik, Iceland. ´87-MOVED from Reykjavik, Iceland to Obertshausen (near Frankfurt), Germany. ´92-MOVED from Obertshausen, Germany to Reykjavik, Iceland. ´94-MOVED from Sævarland, Reykjavik to Skipasund, Reykjavik. ´99-MOVED from Reykjavik, Iceland to Copenhagen, Denmark. ´05-MOVED from Copenhagen, Denmark to Reykjavik (Hafnarfjördur), Iceland So, what does this mean you might ask? It means that it should soon be time to move again! I have no idea when exactly, where to or for how long, what to do there are what to do with life here in Iceland in the meantime? I just know that my heart will stop beating if I don´t continue in a rythm that even just slightly resembles the first 30 years of my life.

15 years and 15 reasons

Today, my best friend and I have been a couple for 15 years! These are 15 reasons why I love him with every part of my being. Nobody else can make me love as much, laugh as hard, fight as strong. He has given me the greatest gift, the gift of life. 5 beautiful children. When I´m feeling down, even if it´s because of him, there´s still noone else I´d rather be with. He always gives me his last piece of Rolo :) He walks a mile in the pooring rain to get me cookies and milk. He doesn´t get jelous of my love for Mickey (that counts for a lot). He is an amazing dad to our kids. He cleans the dog poop in our garden. He can come up with even crazier travel plans than mine. He always treats me like I´m the only girl in a room, even when I´m not ;) He will give me a foot or back rub whenever needed, or wanted! He helps the kids with math, knowing I´d rather go to the dentist. He tells me my homemade jam is even better than his mom´s! He will let me sleep in every weekend. He has held my hand through one c-section, four child births, 1 miscarriage and the death of my mother. He knows my dreams and disapointments, has me in awe and admiration and is the love of my life.

25 random things about me ;)

I have lived in 4 countries. (Iceland, Denmark, Germany and Kuwait). I got pregnant with my first son when I was 15. He´s 14 now and I have since given birth to 4 more children. I have concieved children in 3 different countries, lol. I studied Intercultural Management at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. I have memories attached to the song "Hotel California" from just about every period of my life. I studied Spanish in Sevilla, Spain, in 2001. I can not blink with one eye. I got engaged in a cemetary. I´m a total Disney freak and have been to 3 different Disney parks (Disneyland California, WDW and Disneyland Paris). I learned to sing opera for 3 1/2 years. I´m one of the "bad" parents who has taken their children to Las Vegas. And LOVED every minute of it. I´ve had 2 waterbirths. I hardly ever play my beautiful piano which is a little over a 100 years old. I saw David Cook, American Idol, last December at Disneyworld, lol. I have a dog, which I often wish I didn´t have.*Guilty* I would love to go to Cuba. Preferably soon. When I was a kid I threw a temper tantrum so bad that my mom made me miss my first ballet recital. I once planned to get a MC licence. But I crashed head first into a wall before my first class was over and I dropped out. I have a "thing" for Lenny Krawitz. First gift I recived from my now husband was a real, white mouse. A week later there were 11 babies in the cage (wonder if that was sign of what was to come?). I only once played hookie as a kid, to protest the gulf war. I slept through an entire show at the Beijing opera, China. I will not drink Jack Daniels EVER again. I´ve kept this promise for a long time. I once had lunch next to former Soviet leader Gorbachov. I once played a drunk wife who cheated on her husband with handsome young marines in a school play.

Imagine...

I was just reading minivanmom´s (www.morethanaminivanmom.blogspot.com) post about her son getting an "action plan" in school for daydreaming and it not only made me mad, but actually sad too. Have we really come to the point where we are going to punish children for having a lively imagination? Are we going to discourage them from having dreams? Do we, as a society, really think that these children will just imagine and dream during "after school hours"? We do not need our children to learn everything by the book. These kids are great at Googling and there is a wealth of information out there, accessible for them almost at any time, any place. We need to give them the tools to use this knowledge, filter out what is "nice to know" and "need to know" information. We should be helping them reach their goals and pursue their dreams. NOT telling them it´s wrong to dream! Didn´t Martin Luther King Day, followed by Inauguration Day teach us anything about the importance of dreams?

When I grow up I want to be a ...???????????

When I was a kid I always knew what I wanted. First of all I was a far from being Peter Pan as possible. I definately wanted to grow up. In fact I think I hated being a kid. I was extremely headstrong and independent and couldn´t wait to be able to rule over my own life. Well, I didn´t "have to" wait that long. When I was 15 I got pregnant and moved in with my then boyfriend (now husband of 12 years) and became a "grown up". We finished school, had another child and moved overseas to Denmark to go to university. At that time I had no doubt in my mind what I wanted to do. I wanted to study business and management. It was a pretty "safe" choice, probably marked by the fact that money had been tight in the past years. I´d be pretty sure to get a job in the field when we eventually would move back to Iceland and I´d probably be able to earn a salary big enough to feed all the children I was hoping to have in the future. When I think back I realize I might have been focusing more on what I thought other people were expecting of me than what I truely wanted most. I was choosing the easy way out. Something which is very un-like me. I was lucky. I really liked my studies and thought that almost all my courses were very interesting. I finished in 2005 and could very well see myself working within this field for the rest of my life. Only problem was that this was "hypothetically speaking", since I didn´t have any relevant work experience to back my theory. Fast forward. After my studies I stayed home with our (then) 4 children until in January 2008 when I thought it was time to go out and try out what I had spent 5 years and $$$$$$$$$$$$$ on studying. But at this point I just couldn´t see myself being "owned" by some company who would demand my services almost 24/7 and having to have a bad conscious if the kids were sick and I couldn´t be in the office. I decided to start teaching marketing(something I had always pictured myself liking to do) at a great business oriented highschool, letting me combine my interest in business and marketing with a family friendly workplace (with the advantage of sharing my kids school holidays). This is what I´m doing now. I like my job and I love my work hours. But I don´t LOVE my job. I really wish I did. I´m the kind of person who always thought I would do a job I loved, something I had a passion for. I kind of envy people who have a passion for their day to day job and I honestly don´t like envying people. Bad feeling and there´s no pay-off. Sounds like I´m going through my mid-life crisis at 30! After all that would only make sense, considering that I always wanted to be 20 years older than I really was. I need to do some soul searching and be honest to myself, first and foremost. I wonder what I´ll come up with (actually I think I know, I´m just not ready to shout it from the rooftops yet).

Practically perfect in every way!

"We eat, we drink, we screw"-Rescue me

I´m on the couch watching Rescue me! I can´t believe how exhausted I am after just 1 1/2 weeks back on the job. I guess I got used to crawling back into bed after the big kids left for school during my 8 month maternity leave. I also can hardly believe that I chose a profession which includes dealing with even more kids than I have at home. And yet there are still people who consider me sensible. One more thing I can´t believe. All good things come in 3´s, right? I´m a highschool teacher. I teach 18 year olds marketing. I really enjoy my job in general. These are smart, funny, vibrant young people. They´re full of life, great ideas and creativity. Sounds too good to be true? - Not at all. They honestly are. But...ah, you knew there was a but in there somewhere...they´re lazy!!!! Completely lazy. And this is the part I hate about my job. I told them to read chapter 9, the shortest chapter in the book. In class the next day three of them had read the chapter. I told the rest of them they BETTER read the text for class today and to answer the 3 questions on the bottom of the first page. Today- I got asked: "WHY do we NEED to BUY the book. What questions, where are they, which chapter?" Mind you, these are (as I stated earlier) good kids from good homes. And that may actually be part of the problem. They´ve led easy, sheltered lives, had no mountains to climb. They drive mom´s Range Rover to school, dad does their laundry (got to be PC on the gender issues here) ;) They felt sorry for themselves having to read 50 pages in one week. That is... until they found out that I had 2 kids by the time I was 18 and still in highschool and I still managed to read chapter 9!!! However that´s material for a whole other blog post. See you later and please leave a comment so I know who´s checking in on my new blog adventure :)

Next time will be different

March 15, 2008- a loooooooong time ago, at least in the life of a 14 year old, my oldest son had his confirmation in church. In our neck of the woods (o.k. I admit there are no woods here, but hey, you get the picture) this is a big event and the kids' gifts usually reflect that. Once again, hubby and I decided to not go with the flow. When most kids were getting laptops from their parents, we decided we wanted to give him something more "special". Yep, that´s us. The folks who think their kids are more special than others and only deserve the best. Makes us "special" parents, huh!?! Flame away! O.k. Kid loves turtles and marine life in general. So what could be more perfect than a week at Sea World camp in Orlando? - Zip, nada! Best friends parents agreed. Said they would send their son too. Great, wonderful, fantastic....until..................................................confirmation day. Guess what their kid got? - You guessed it. A trip to Sea World camp, right? Uh...no- What do you mean, no? Kid got new phone and $1000. Why, you may ask. Well, please don´t ask me cause I have no idea whatsoever. They never discussed these new plans with me. Do I send a 14 year old alone on a plane, approx. 3000 miles around the world and tell him to stay for a week and then come back, alone again! Hell no! So what do we do instead? The best idea we could come up with was to plan for a trip a year later, when mom and dad would have saved up enough money and frequent flier points to go with him (makes for a nice couple of kid free days while he´s at camp). And this was truely our plan. I even sometimes think I was looking more forward to the week in Orlando than kid was. Guess what? Icelandair decides to stop flying to Orlando in the summer months. And no, I´m not going to fly into some other place first making this planned trip twice as expensive and with no chance to use our points. Which leaves us back at our starting point. We promised him a fun and special gift and this is what we intend to give him, without breaking the bank! Daughters confirmation is next year. I am soooo not going to get myself into the same kind of trouble in 2010. Hoping I can combine their gifts this year. A long weekend in London (without the little kids) is in discussion mode. Any and all ideas will be greatly appreciated. At the moment I feel most like giving them $$$ (so much for special) and going on a romantic getaway with my hubby to get away from this whole mess. Hmmmmmm...food for thought.

It´s such a perfect day

Welcome everyone! Today is the first day of the rest of my personal blog life. Funny. I´m kind of nervous. Like I´m afraid of failing. How can I fail at blogging? Am I a blog failure if I don´t update daily? If I´m not funny enough? Not wise enough? Not PC? Or maybe even if I´m too PC? But hey, I´m just me. Nothing more. Nothing less. I haven´t failed at being me so far. Actually I´m starting off on the wrong foot with all of you. I´m kind of lying (great start, huh?). I have blogged before. Just not in English. And not very many read my blog. I couldn´t really decide how personal to be. So, now it´s out. I WAS a blog failure. But that was last year, right? New year, new opportunities and hopefully also new blogfriends. I´ll be back -soon! Hasta luego :)