Preparing for Sweden but still enjoying some fun

Soon we're off for our annual Sweden trip and this year it's going to be extra special because everyone gets to meet who was in my belly last year, Noah!!! So now we're working hard on getting our house ready for the exchange, hotel room book in Sweden for the first two nights, presents bought, a home for our pets etc etc.

But in between we also been having some fun. Saturday was our neighborhoods annual garage sale. We usually walk around as well as take the opportunity to sell some items ourself. Fredrica and Bella walked over 1,5 mil in the heat to explore what everyone was selling while Noah and daddy was resting. We spent $4:50 and got one tiara, two kids books, a fondue pot and 8 plates. Not bad:)

Sunday we had to clean our garage to make room for the new dryer we bought after our old one broke finally. Thank god it's been warm weather so we been able to hang laundry outside but it was mighty complicated with the sheets. Anyway now we have a brand new dryer.

We also have been changing Bella's room making it more girly with a new dresser, drapes, pictures and a mirror. Pictures will come soon.

The big thing this weekend was Bella finally learning to do the monkey bars all by herself and Noah sitting all on his own.

Bella sure loves her brother...and he adores her;)

Bella loving her new room

Noah busy playing in Bella's room

Beautiful girl just growing like a weed

A once in a life time offer....

We're doing a home exchange with a Swedish family once again this year because we have found that it's so much easier to stay in a home when you have kids and especially one that also has kids so there are kids stuff and toys available. We do these exchanges through a service called homeexchange.com.

In our profile we have stated very clearly that we're only interested in Stockholm, Sweden. I guess no one reads this as both time we had offers from all over the world; France, Spain, Denmark etc and even other parts of Sweden. However, we're very surprised to get a offer from Los Angeles and did start laughing when we read their email.

They give us a very long background on them and then offer that they would fed our pets and even clean after themselves (hmmm so I can't clean after you, what a pity!!!). And then comes the best part were they gives us the offer of a lifetime (their word, not ours) that we can get our names on the documentary they are making which by the way is not making money yet but according to them people would pay their life savings to get their name on it. Read the email your self below. Our responds in below as well.

Sorry we said in our posting we wanted to do an exchange in Stockholm,

Sweden and we have found a family to exchange with.

So we will have to pass on your offer. But we would be happy to wire our

life savings to you to get our name on your documentary ;-)

Good luck and all the best.

james

On 6/17/11 9:54 AM, "Fred O" wrote:

Dear James Harker,

Inquiry from: http://homeexchange.com/show.php?id=110408 (Los Angeles,

California, United States)

To: http://homeexchange.com/show.php?id=121919 (Normal Heights,

California, United States)

SENDER'S MESSAGE:

Fellow home exchanger…

We have a home in Los Feliz Village of Los Angeles that we’ve exchanged 3

times so far. It’s allowed us to stay in Paris and Rome, great

experiences. And now we’re looking for a more local exchange, one in the

San Diego area.

My wife & I have backgrounds in media production, and currently we’re

working on a documentary. It's a fun subject, very compelling,

heartwarming, and topical, when finished it should get good distribution

(she has a track record with documentaries on PBS, History Channel etc).

This doc isn't presold, so we're financing it as we go, which means we

need to keep an eye on expenses and save money wherever possible.

From July 21 - 24 Nancy needs to be down in San Diego to conduct

interviews at the annual ComiCon convention. We didn’t receive our

credentials until a few days ago, so when we started looking for

reasonable accommodations we’ve found that almost every place is booked

full and the places left are the high end fancy hotels that would bust

our budget, so we're looking elsewhere at unconventional lodgings- like

Homeexchange.

If you or someone you know might be out of town during that time and

wouldn't mind exchanging their place, please put us in touch! We can do a

non-simultaneous exchange, so if you have a place but don’t want to visit

Los Angeles in July, we can arrange for you to stay at our comfortable

home at a later date. We’ll have a crew of 3 responsible adults. We can

feed the pets and we’ll clean up after ourselves.

Now here is your chance to make history... Besides a place to stay in Los

Angeles, to show our gratitude you'll receive a healthy shout out during

the credits of the finished documentary! People give up their life's

savings just to get their name on the big screen, and now you can have

that honor without even needing to sit, much less lie down on, the

casting couch! What more can one ask for?

If those dates work for you �" let’s get in touch!

Thank you for your consideration.

Fred

House of pain:(

Yup that is what we're having here at the Syren family home after I first hurt my hip ( don't know how but I was walking with Noah and Jess on the street no less) and ended up in so much pain I have to lay down most of the time. Well we thought it was perfect then that Bella had two play dates planned for the weekend so James would only have one child on his hand.

Well that changed rather fast when Bella came down with a really high temperature and tummy ache which off course we immediately suspected strep since it's going around in her school and she already had it 5 times last year. It turned out to be a viral infection.

The good news for James was we all took lots of naps and I felt better and could help out. The bad news was first Noah woke up at 9:30 pm, then Bella at 1 pm and we then had to call our pediatrician and then Noah woke up again at 4:30 am so I was up pretty much all night and at 6 am I woke up James begging him to give me a break. I got to sleep on and off for 2 hours. Yikes!!!!!!!

Today is all about getting better because it's Bella's last week as a preschooler and with some of her friends and they are having a celebration we don't want to miss.

Noah all content and playing in his bouncer until he can't get one of those toys into his mouth

He's a big boy now who joins us at the dinner tables. Still only eating purees and oat meal but is very curious of what we eat and how.

Little princess out for the count:(

Growing, loving and all together yummy!

This is our kids in a nut shell. Noah is rolling over and over and over and sitting but only until he does he head bang he's so famous for and then falls over. He's also desperate trying to crawl and we know when he figures that out we better get our running shoes on.

It's been a wonderful weekend in San Diego and the weather is just perfect in my opinion. We doing a home exchange with a family from Sweden again this summer and they were concerned it says on a web site they found that the temperatures here are only in the 70 + during the summer here, which off course is not the case. They thought we might have temperatures of F80-90 which is way too hot when you have kids. Well do get temperatures up F80 and 90 specially since we live more inland, The temperatures this past week has been perfect, it's been very warm that we have to run the AC but not so hot we can't go outside.

Bella now has her "own" table in the kitchen I guess it's the Chef's table:) anyway, she loves it and has even decorated it with flowers.

Noah is in love with Bella's Cha-Cha which Ansi gave her on her first trip to Sweden. Cha-Cha has been everywhere and is looking like she lived a hard life with a lot of cuddle love from Bella. She now shares it with Noah...but only during the day when she is not home. Poor Cha-Cha will be worn out soon and I don't want to think what will happen then:(

Big boy sitting and watching big sister swing HIGH.