Picked a green colour. Bought a sample, painted a leftover piece of wood with it. And when I put it in the kitchen, suddenly the green looked barely green at all. More like a pale greenish gray. We all agree that the kitchen is going to need a stronger colour than that.

We have a lot of different green objects in the kitchen, each one a different green. When they’re all small, the actual hue and tone don’t matter much, they all look nice. But when I try to imagine these colours on half the kitchen, some of them immediately appeal much more to me than others.

Perhaps the kitchen could match one of the green tones on the living room wallpaper?

Trying to decide on the right green colour for the new kitchen.

This is hard.

On Mondays, Adrian makes dinner together with me and gets to set the menu. Today he wanted to serve a three-course dinner. We made crostini with cream cheese, jacket potatoes with a sweetcorn and kidney bean filling, and oven baked apples.

Adrian cooks on Mondays. Ingrid cooks on Thursdays, but has the option to do it more often when she wants to top up her allowance, and has recently used that option once or twice a week. Wednesdays I’m often away in the evening for board games or work functions. I may have to reconsider the meal kits from Linas matkasse soon, or else there won’t be any room for me to choose what to cook!

I’ve had all kinds of herbs growing on the window sill. Often I buy herbs for a specific meal but don’t use the entire stand, so I just put the pot with the rest on the sill. It either survives or it doesn’t. Quite often it doesn’t. The plants seem to have been forced to a suitable size but don’t have proper roots for long term survival.
The above-ground parts are also often quite weak and floppy and don’t stay upright without the support of the plastic cone around it.

Basil often does well, and tastes good, too. Mint is my new favourite: these two have survived and thrived and even look decorative. (This photo is from before we went on our week-long trip; both plants survived but definitely look quite a bit sadder now.)

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 snow park is Adrian’s favourite part of the slopes here.

Ingrid and Adrian both attend ski school again, and they are advancing by leaps and bounds. Ingrid is doing parallel turns now, and her group goes down red runs and even some black ones. Adrian has gone from snow ploughing straight down to making proper turns, and just generally skis a lot better. More control, better balance, more confidence.

Eric snowboards, and is struggling with the equipment this year, so he has been staying on the green runs and even took some days off to rest in between.

I started out on greens as well but Kläppen doesn’t have many so I got bored and had to branch out and explore the blue runs. By now, after some practice, I actually like them better than the greens. It’s taken several days for me to rediscover my skiing skills and to remember the helpful tricks. For example: I am a better skier with my goggles on, because I ski faster when I am wearing them. (Either I subconsciously judge speed based on how the air hits my face, or I subconsciously feel safer at higher speeds with the goggles to protect me.) Also: I ski better when I consciously get into an even rhythm for the turns, by counting or simply going “turn, turn, turn, turn” in my head.

Too bad it will be a year before we go skiing again, and by that time my muscle memory will be all gone again.

Our cottage here is small but quite lovely. There is a sofa large enough to comfortably fit all of us, and a wide window with afternoon sun.

Ingrid and Adrian love the TV. (We don’t have one at home.) They found Nickelodeon and haven’t switched away from it yet. Nickelodeon is showing the exact same shows as last year, and even the year before – The Thundermans and Henry Danger. I even recognize individual episodes from last year’s stay at Idre.

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.