Toys’R’Us had 40% off on all Lego construction sets. We bought a bunch.

The weather reports promised warm and sunny weather for this afternoon and I had built up a serious nature deficit, so I took the whole family for a long walk in the nature reserve at Järvafältet.

To make the whole outing fun for the kids, who like the idea of going for forest walks with me in principle but then usually tire very quickly and start whining about tired legs, we tried out geocaching for the first time.

It worked out great – even better than I had hoped. The tired legs didn’t make an appearance until after several hours, by which time I’m sure it was real tiredness rather than just boredom.

I wished for (and got) a hand held GPS unit for Christmas for this very reason, for exactly this kind of outing. This morning I loaded it up with a bunch of easy caches within a few kilometres of the parking lot near Ingrid’s riding school at the south-western edge of the nature reserve.

We had lunch next to Säby lake with hundreds of water birds making noise on the lake. Then we looked for and found two caches which took us to some really scenic spots in the forest. Finally we aimed for a third cache at a picnic area where we grilled sausages.

Ingrid loved the whole geocaching thing. She likes having a goal and a purpose, challenges, scoring points, finding things. She was very excited that it was she who spotted two of the caches, and already wants to go out for more tomorrow.

More culture! Ingrid and I went to the theatre and saw Ronja Rövardotter at Stadsteatern. Here we are waiting for the performance to begin.

This was Ronja with a steampunk flavour. A dazzling show with spectacular costumes, smoke and thunder, dance and acrobatics and two DJs delivering wild music – and yet well balanced so the effects never stole the attention from Ronja and her story. Spellbinding for both Ingrid and myself.

This is Ramy Essam at Best of Sweden, a concert with five singers who are famous in their countries of origin but effectively unknown in Sweden. They were all unknown to me.

I am trying to get back into the habit of experiencing culture other than literature: going to the theatre and cinema, concerts and exhibitions. Sometimes on my own, sometimes with Eric, sometimes with the kids, sometimes all of us together.

This was a pleasant evening. The music was maybe not the most exciting but good enough, and really varied: from Eritrean swinging 1960s rock to Egyptian hard rock. It all had a nice undercurrent of freedom, peace, acceptance and love (as in loving thy neighbour). All of these singers live in Sweden not because they are globetrotters or adventurers, but because they could not live in their country of birth. This naturally coloured their performances and lent them common themes.

A similar theme was inherent in the whole idea of this concert, which was a celebration of people with different roots and what they have to offer Sweden. Not made explicit too obviously, but still very obvious to all who were there.

A couple of weeks ago there was a “rock the socks” event in Sweden: people were encouraged to wear mismatching socks to show their support for some heart-warming cause about how it’s good that we are all different, or something like that. I am generally not fond of meaningless feel-good actions so I didn’t rock my socks, just like I ignored Earth Hour, various Facebook campaigns to change my profile picture to support some cause, etc.

Because I ignored the event, the kids didn’t get a chance to rock their socks, either. But they saw others do it. Adrian loved the idea wearing mismatched socks, and it stuck with him. So now it’s not uncommon for him to “rock his socks”.

Adrian slept badly during the night. We had a late dinner yesterday so he was late to bed. Then he coughed himself awake several times during the night, and was extra confused because he was in Uppsala and not in his bed at home. By the evening he was pretty tired and fell asleep in the car.

He never naps otherwise. But tiredness + car + music is the combination that can still make him fall asleep during the day. Any music will do, even if it is rather energetic and loud.

We painted Easter eggs, like we usually do.

We bought a Nintendo Wii, and Just Dance. Ingrid has spent several hours dancing today.