Moving day

Have we become crazy European hoarders since arriving in Sweden? No! We've only moved, taking down an entire forest in the process! I'm SO GLAD the movers wrapped a bundle of my pencils in 55 sheets of paper before putting it in a cardboard box with other similarly packaged items and topping the box off with another 43 sheets of paper. I mean, the sense of relief that my pencils had no chance of getting damaged en route is tremendous. Sigh. It should be noted that all of our furniture, and my Subaru Forester, made it to Sweden with no additional knicks, dings or cracks, but I do wonder if all this garbage is the only way. Anyway.

Aside from the environmental fiasco, our move into our new apartment in Goteborg went pretty well. The guys from Crown Relocations were very nice (no surprise, they're Swedish) and unpacked everything (thus the mayhem of the paper pile in the picture above), leaving us with huge piles of stuff to find homes for. If an international move has taught us one thing it's that we don't need so much stuff. I kept opening boxes going "More? We have MORE toys/jeans/Q-tips/cloth napkins????" Seriously, how many sets of placemats and napkins does one family need? I promptly created 4 big bags of stuff to give away (though I have no idea where to donate this stuff, but it's going, I swear).

This picture of the kids' room, and particularly Adrian's expression (he he) sort of sums up moving day. Boxes everywhere, exhaustion, hunger, children excited and frantic. But at the end of the day we were so relieved to be in our "permanent" Swedish home, and pretty much in love with our rambling, fifth-floor apartment on Sodra Vagen.