On the morning of Friday, 22nd December there were the usual Christmas celebrations at the children’s school. Since it is a school where parental participation is encouraged, parents were able to attend for part of the time and, those who so wished, could help to prepare the Christmas breakfast. It was good fun but also a little emotional to see the boys enjoying themselves in the school’s big circular open space where the Dutch Christmas carols were being sung knowing that it would most probably be their last ever Christmas week at this school.
The very same morning a real-estate stylist (all included in the package) popped round to give us some tips on how best to prepare for the property sale photos. In our previous blog we reported on the various jobs subsequently done to smarten up the house for prospective buyers. It was all pretty time-consuming but we are pleased with the results and felt all set to sell.
We celebrated Christmas in the traditional and pleasant way. On Christmas Day we entertained one side of the family and visited the other side of the family on Boxing Day. Those are already happy memories and we had the chance to talk a lot about our big adventure.
Just to give it all a bit of a Swedish atmosphere, we created a traditional “Julbordet” medley of dishes and flavours when the family came to our house.
Another tradition we abided by was that of helping other friends, on another occasion, to devour their fabulous home-made Christmas pudding: it was as good as ever and a happy reunion. In fact, it has become something of a ritual.
We celebrated New Year in the spacious and splendid house of other good friends with their children and, as ever, it was a lovely relaxed day. During the first weekend of January we spent the whole weekend with other good friends and their family in a house at the seaside.
All these celebrations and visits were incredibly familiar and happy occasions. At the same time, whilst we that these good ties of ours will change we know that where there’s a will there’s a way. All in all, we are confident that when we meet up again it will soon feel like old times and we shall quickly see that nothing has really changed.
Between Christmas and New Year, we circulated our flyer with an appeal for rented property via Facebook and our various email connections. In the space of a single day, we got 9 reactions, 4 of which were actually concrete offers. Two Dutch families also responded, both with daughters at the Backa Friskola: one with a daughter in the class that Vidar will join and the other in the group that Rune will slot into. Obviously that we be a good start for both boys.
In subsequent days the reactions continued to come in but then the complications arose. Either the properties on offer were only available for a short period and/or there was nothing free in July when we want to move. It was encouraging to have such a big response but frustrating that none of the offers really fitted the bill…
