Fully Packed Friday
[Written 18 October 2012]
Out of respect for harried parents who prefer to use their 5 weeks of vacation in large solid clumps, as opposed to a day here and there, the daycare and school in our neighborhood try to coordinate staff-days. The first such day this school year was this past Friday 28 September, so both Anna and Bjarki hung out with me the whole day.
I was feeling energetic, so I wrote down the following list: ‘buy a new bigger bike for Anna’, ‘pick Anna’s old bike up from repairs’, ‘go to bank’, ‘buy cakes for daycare staff day from the parents’, ‘get kids’ hair cut’, ‘go to outerwear-shop outlets’, ‘take kids to swimming pool’, ‘buy groceries’, and finished every single one of them except ‘buy groceries’!! Oh, yes, I was gloating at the end of the day (and still am, sorry!), because really, such days have been few and far between these past few months.
Here are a few pictures I took:
Shaggy-haired children eating lunch at Haninn, a chicken-only fast food joint that serves real chicken burgers. Yes, I could have gotten the rice instead of the fries for the kids, but I was in a mood for some grease… and I got chicken salad. 🙂
At the local barber-shop. They operate on a first-come first-served basis, no appointments available, and the owner (the lone standing male) lives up the street. Apparently Friday is their busy day, and since the schools were closed we were told they’d had kids in there all day long!
The really brilliant thing about this barbershop (besides the no-appointments rule) is that they have a play-section with mini-golf, functioning air-hockey, and a foosball-table, as well as more general toys and books for the kids. They also hand out rewards for kids, just like the dentist does. Here’s Bjarki hanging out by the air-hockey table, because Anna’s haircut took a loooong time.
The haircut took a long time because Anna had decided she wanted significantly shorter hair, after morning after morning spent fruitlessly and often tearfully trying to work the tangles out of her long hair. The mornings have been so much smoother since then. 🙂
After a visit to an outerware outlet store, I finally caved in, and got myself a nicely discounted puffy down jacket for the winter. Yes, it would appear that I’ve moved to this place called ‘Iceland’ after all. 🙂
To end the day on a fun note, I took the kids to a swimming pool I myself had never visited, but had heard good things about. Indeed, it turned out to have three big slides, all coming out from a single enclosed tower and emptying into a single warm pool. The kids spent over an hour sliding down non-stop, while I lounged in the hot tub, and made sure I spotted them every once in a while. Thank goodness for sending Bjarki to swim-lessons! 🙂
Nice picture from this blog showing the triple slide system at Lágafellslaug. I hung out in the hot tub behind the watery mushroom in the background, hiding from the setting sun. 🙂 The actual ‘pool’ and adult hot tubs are on the left of this picture.