Easter in Uppsala. Ingrid and my mum bonded over cooking, of which we did a lot. And we painted plenty of eggs.

A beautiful day, and we went out walking in Grimsta.

When I go walking, I walk. The kids can’t just walk. They need games, challenges, role playing, entertainment.

Taking turns picking the direction we walk, for example:

Or turning the path into an adventure trail with obstacles to jump over or crawl under:

Or balancing on fallen trees. This one was quite challenging. Ingrid had to make several attempts, first from one end and then from the other and then from the first one again:

When we got to Kanaanbadet, we grilled sausages and marshmallows. These were apparently the best thing ever.

Ingrid cooking dinner while dancing to Hamilton.

Hamilton is going round and round on the Sonos when Ingrid is at home, sometimes straight and sometimes shuffled. She knows all the songs by heart by now and mixes them up to get some variety – it’s more about the music than the story.

Ingrid’s theatre club had their final performance today. Unfortunately, while photography was allowed, sharing photos from the performance on social media wasn’t, so here’s one of Ingrid and her grandfather after the show.

(The show was a modern version of Cinderella; Ingrid was one of the stepsisters. Two random thoughts: (a) nearly all kids need to practice their elocution and speak slower and more clearly, and (b) Ingrid looked lovely in the yellow, draped dress, which she would never choose to wear outside the theatre.

Celebration! Ingrid was accepted to the school she most wanted.

Solhemsskolan only has grades F to 6, so Ingrid will be attending a different school next year. There is a fair amount of choice, both run-of-the-mill schools run by the city, and “free” schools with various profiles.

Several of the more promising-looking “free” schools accept children based on a queue and we would have needed to sign Ingrid up shortly after she was born to have any chance to get into those. We weren’t planning quite that far ahead…

Luckily the school closest to us – even closer than the kids’ current school, which is just a five-minute walk away – is also one of the best city schools this side of town. And even better, that school has a special class with a math/science focus. Ingrid is very much into those subjects, so she applied to this class, and was really hoping to get a place there.

Normally kids get allocated a place at a city school based on distance only – not necessarily at the nearest school, but optimizing so that no child has to walk more than 2 (?) kilometers to school. But because this class has a specific profile/focus, students wanting a place need to have good grades in the relevant subjects and also to attend a group interview where they discuss math and science-related topics. (At an info meeting at the school we heard that most years, students with As in both math and science would be guaranteed a place, but there were more applicants with double As this year, so even with her great grades Ingrid was not 100% sure to get in.)

The interview was a good while ago and Ingrid has been anxious to find out the results.

Yesterday Ingrid got the great news that she was accepted.

Today we celebrated with Ingrid’s most favourite food ever – sushi, of course.

We’re getting ready to play Just Dance – going through the fiddly process of connecting all the controllers to the base station.

Our last day here, and the last few hours of skiing our favourite runs one more time, before we head back home.

Weekends are the best because the slopes are so empty. And the first few hours of the day are the best because the snow is in better shape.

Kläppen in general has been quite uncrowded, actually – there’s noticeably fewer people on the slopes than in Idre for example. But there are also fewer runs to choose between, so I’m not sure which to prefer.

See that little pink-clad figure going down that large hump in the middle? That’s Ingrid. And this is the main snow park in Kläppen, apparently the best in Sweden. I feel no desire whatsoever to go skiing there myself, but it is quite nice to float past it in a ski lift and watch the pros do their flips and twists and tricks. Plus there’s music.

The first day we were all fresh and rested. Day two – still going strong. Day three – a bit tired by now. An afternoon stop at the waffle house helped some.