I Need To Get Back Into Reading.

It came to me today while i was sitting around online that i really need to get back into reading, it used to be something that i loved doing but for some strange reason these last few months i have just not picked up a book, sure i take my book when i head into town for my job coach meeting but that is normally the only time i ever even look or think of looking at a back and i need to get back into it.

The thing is, is that i need to make time for it and there lies the problem i know i have ample time to read without any problems but i'm always finding other things to do instead that are not exactly important, normally it's sitting down and looking around the internet for different things, or checking out blogs and playing games online and instead of doing all these things i could be sitting down with a book and doing what i used to love, reading but why don't i?

I think my fiancée Marie put it best the other day when we were discussing something, don't ask me what because my brain is like a sieve half the time, i swear i would forget my own name if i didn't use it alot lol but during the conversation she said your a addict and she's right, i'm not a addict to anything bad or at least what i would call bad like drugs or alcohol but i'm a addict to things i get into.
Take for example blogging, i always thought it was something i would never be interested in, because well as many of you guys can tell by reading my posts on a daily basis, my spelling, grammar and story telling abilities leave much to the imagination, sure i write some ok blog posts and people comment and like them, but i'm not the best and probably never will be (Lucky i just do it for fun). But when i got into blogging i started reading about, and looking for ways to increase my traffic, get more comments and such likes.

This is pretty much how i operate, whenever i get into something i have to study it, read about and i end up forgetting things around me that i could be doing like reading, sure i'm reading things online and trying to learn more about whatever my addiction is at that point but it's not the same as sitting down with a great book and taking yourself off on an adventure, Marie even went out and bought me the "Game Of Thrones" collection (Still needing the last book, but got the first four) and i have only managed to read the first book and am still plodding away through the second, normally i would be finished them all by now but i just find myself doing other things instead.

So i have decided that i need to get back into it, i want to get through all the Game Of Thrones books i have and get the newest one and get through that too, and then find some other series that i can sink my teeth into, i think reading is important, not only for children but for adults to because it takes you off into another land and it brings alot of enjoyment, or at least i believe so. I know there is many people out there that don't enjoy reading and think it's pointless but i for one am going to try and make more of a effort in doing it!

But for anyone who doesn't know about "A Game Of Thrones" series i would highly recommend you check it out, George R.R. Martin is a very talented author and i think if your into medieval/fantasy type genre's you will really get into this collection, and you should also check out the TV show that they brought out for the novel, it's only got one season so far, as season 2 will be released next year but the book and the show are both amazing.

But for now i think i shall bid you all farewell, i'm going to head off and maybe just maybe pick up that book and start to read again! 

A Little Piece Of Independence

Old picture, But it's fits

For a few months now i have been climbing the stairway to hell as i like to call it, actually it's a bit silly to be calling it that since i now no longer feel like i'm about to die when i reach the top but i found myself thinking for a few weeks now that perhaps it is time the boys went to school on their own, now of course i'm not talking the full way there because there is a busy road especially at that time of the morning when people are leaving for work etc but at least a small part of the way.

So i decided on Monday that i would try it out and see how it went, i mean there is really no reason for me to walk all the way up to the school and enter it just to watch the boys take off their jackets and footwear and say goodbye, because i can say goodbye to them when i drop them off and watch them head off, plus i think this gives the boys a little bit of independence, i don't know if i'm right but i think it's good for them to feel that it is their responsibility to get themselves into the school premises.

My big plan was to walk them all the way up to the staircase and then let them head off themselves up the stairs and into the school yard, basically for anyone who never read my "I Have Met My Nemesis" post a while back it basically goes the path then the staircase followed by the actual school yard but as we were walking up towards the stairs i started to get a horrible feeling in my stomach, i don't know if it's just the fact i have been walking them all the way for so long that i found it hard to let go but i just couldn't do it, i know it sounds stupid but i looked up that staircase and seen how dark it was and i came to realise that i would not be happy until i seen that they had made it up there themselves, so i decided to make a edit to my little plan and took them all the way up the stairs and left them there, at least that way i know they had made it to the school yard.

Again i know it's stupid since the staircase leads directly onto the school yard, but it was dark and it's covered in tree's and bushes and i just didn't like it but i think that is just me having issues letting go, but i took them up and said my goodbyes at the top the staircase. The boys were actually pretty surprised that i wasn't going all the way with them and began to ask me why, was i having to go and get myself ready for something or was it something else that was stopping me from taking them all the way. But after my reply off "You don't need me to take you into school your both big boys now" i could see that little smile on their face, they both seemed to have this small realisation that they were big boys now and couldn't have been more happy about it.

This little plan of mines has actually worked out rather well for everyone now including our little Siberian Husky Kaiser, because normally i would leave him home and have to take the boys to school before i came back to pick him up for his morning walk, but now i can actually take him with me and add a little extra time to his morning walk and it allows him to walk with the kids as well which he doesn't get to do that often so all in all it really worked out great.

But what do you guys think? i mean they are only 6 years old and i still get this feeling i'm doing the wrong thing, but seeing the look on their face when they get to walk up the tiny wee hill to the school doors on their own is just brilliant, they are so happy about it.

But i think for now i shall bid you all farewell, so until next time have a great day!

I Made Dinner!! - Mac 'n' Cheese

At the end of last week i made a blog post asking my fellow bloggers and followers to give me some hints, tips and some recipes to help me get started cooking, the reason behind this was that Marie my fiancée became very ill on the Thursday and it occurred to me that i had no idea how to make dinner for myself or for the kids, because i have been so reliant on Marie to take care of that type of thing.

So feeling a bit down i decided to call upon everyone and then yesterday after a horrible day in town doing the weekly food shop i came home and decided that i would give cooking a whirl, and what better dish to start off with than the American classic Mac 'n' Cheese! I have no idea why i wanted to make this but i have seen it on several cooking shows like Master Chef etc and it has always appealed to me and i have always said every time that i see it, i really want to make it, so yesterday my adventure into the land of cooking began.

Let me first start off by saying, anyone that thinks cooking is easy is absolutely insane! It is now on my top 10 list of the hardest things i have ever done in my life, i honestly can't believe people that do it as a profession or on a daily basis. You would think that following a recipe would be one of the easiest things there is but when there is more than one step for example: Stick X in oven and wait 20 minutes it becomes a bit overwhelming, well at least for my first time it did lol.
Not to mention the strength it takes, i honestly can't understand now looking back to the chef's that i have seen who are not exactly in the best shape of their lives how in gods name they manage to stir a pot of "x" for "x" minutes.

But my lovely friend from America "Holly" gave me the recipe and off i went:

1 (8 ounce) package macaroni 
4 tablespoons butter 
4 tablespoons flour 
1 cup milk 
1 cup cream 
1/2 teaspoon salt 
fresh ground black pepper, to taste 
2 cups cheddar cheese, shredded good quality 
1/2 cup breadcrumbs, buttered 


Directions:
Preheat oven to 400°F Cook and drain macaroni according to package directions; set aside In a large saucepan melt butter. Add flour mixed with salt and pepper, using a whisk to stir until well blended. Pour milk and cream in gradually; stirring constantly. Bring to boiling point and boil 2 minutes (stirring constantly). Reduce heat and cook (stirring constantly) 10 minutes. Add shredded cheddar little by little and simmer an additional 5 minutes, or until cheese melts. Turn off flame. Add macaroni to the saucepan and toss to coat with the cheese sauce. Transfer macaroni to a buttered baking dish. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs. Bake 20 minutes until the top is golden brown. (You can also freeze this recipe in zip-lock bags for later use - once you have mixed the macaroni along with the cheese sauce allow to cool to room temperature before adding to your freezer - I generally pull it out the night before and allow macaroni and cheese to reach room temperature; I then add the macaroni and cheese to a buttered baking dish, sprinkle with bread crumbs and then bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until golden brown on top and bubbling.

The ingredients!

Now it seemed simple enough nothing to challenging, or at least so it would seem, the whole put this in a saucepan and stir for 2 minutes constantly followed by adding this to the saucepan and stirring for a further 10 minutes constantly wrecked my arm, admittedly i got Marie to help me out and take over some of the stirring and adding stuff while i stirred because I DON'T HAVE 3 ARMS!

I cannot for the life of me figure out how you are meant to stir, while holding the handle so that the saucepan doesn't go spinning around and around as you are stirring away and then on top of that adding more ingredients it just baffles me like you wouldn't believe (Insert Laughing Here!)

It turns out that i made some fundamental mistakes as i used the same pan that i had just cooked the macaroni in to then cook the sauce let me just say DON'T DO THIS! i didn't put 2 and 2 together to come up with 4 and realise that adding butter to a already heated pan would make it stick no matter how quickly i was at stirring it, but i managed to salvage it and get the sauce to come up pretty nice if i don't say so myself, but next time i do this i will make sure to cook the sauce and the macaroni in 2 separate pots, i also think i made a slight error with the top crust, either that or we don't get the same breadcrumbs over here that you do in the states, but although some of it got hard and nice and golden brown after 20 minutes there was still alot of loose breadcrumbs lying around, so i think i maybe never added enough butter on top with the breadcrumbs or maybe i wasn't meant to do that at all, but that is what Marie had written so i followed what she wrote.

The finished product.

All in all it actually turned out really well, myself and Marie enjoyed it and the kids well you know what some children are like with trying new things, it looks weird and i don't like it! But i think i shall try it again and perhaps make a small batch without the breadcrumbs since that is what my oldest daughter and Alexander (one of the twins) didn't seem to like about it, and see how it turns out, and perhaps add a little extra cheese just to give it a little more cheesy flavour as i felt there wasn't enough cheesy flavour in it, although that was perhaps because of my small mistake with using the same saucepan twice without letting it cool down.

But for my first ever time attempting to cook a dish from scratch, i think i did a pretty damn good job! Granted i got lots of help from Marie, but i think i will be confident enough next time to perhaps do it all myself, especially knowing now what to do and what not to do.

But for now i think i shall bid you all farewell and leave it there, so until next time!

Why I Shouldn't Go Shopping!

I had got a phone call the other day from my job coach to schedule a new meeting since she had been sick for our last one and it has now been 3 weeks before our last appointment. With Marie being sick she decided to take it upon herself for some revenge. How did she get her revenge? She gave me the weekly shopping list and told me to go and get the shopping done.

One of most hated things i know off in this world is food shopping, it's not that it's difficult but let me just tell you why i hate it so much:

• Marie writes things like "Sausages" now everyone is probably thinking ok, what's the problem with writing sausages, well in Sweden going to buy sausages is like going into a liquor store to buy beer, there is about 300,000 types of sausages, so when someone in Sweden says or writes go buy sausages i'm like WHAT BLOODY TYPE??!??!

• It is the same thing for bread, if she asks me to go and buy bread i am literally totally bloody lost, i have no idea what type of bread because in Sweden you have about a million different types of bread, from normal loafs to bread that is like rock solid hard, you probably get it in another places around the world as well, but certainly in the UK buying bread is a easy task, but in Sweden it is like doing a mathematical equation.

• People shopping in Sweden annoy the hell out of me, literally you are walking down a isle and next minute your stopped dead in your tracks by a shopping trolly, just sitting there with food and all sorts in it, the trolly apparently doesn't have a owner because there is nobody around until you see someone 4 isles over walking back to it, like WHY OH WHY would you leave your damn cart in the middle of another isle and go off on to another one?? I'm totally confused! I've actually had tendencies to take there trolly and walk away with it and place it somewhere stupid in the supermarket just to teach them a lesson.

I honestly could go on and on with this list, and probably fill a book with reasons why i should never go food shopping but i think i will stop there because i think everyone gets the idea, i'm guessing that i am probably the only person in the world that has all these problems but if i'm not share your food shopping hates! So i feel like i am not alone lol.

But until next time... i shall bid you all farewell.

Needing Help! Cooking.

Yesterday came and it turned into a not so great day, why did it turn into a bad day? well my partner Marie came home early from work totally and utterly destroyed, whatever i had caught over the weekend she had got but it had came to her with a vengeance ready to destroy her, honestly i have never seen her so ill, she spent pretty much the whole day yesterday lying in bed in between rushing to the toilet to be sick.

Not really the best thing to happen when i am completely useless without her or so i found out, it's not that i can't handle the children alone that's the easy part and takes almost no effort but after collecting them from school it came to the point of the day i have no idea about DINNER!

For anyone who knows me and for those who don't, i am completely useless in a kitchen. It's not that i don't want to cook or anything like that it's just that i have no idea how to, or well i know the basics but when it comes to looking in the fridge and freezer and saying oh we have this and that, ok i'll make this it's just a complete and absolute no go, i just draw a blank every time, and with Marie not being any help (couldn't really expect her to be) i was left a lone soldier to fight this war.

Turns out i gave the kids the choice and they wanted noodles so i managed to whip them up for the kids and that was their dinner, ok i know not exactly the best meal, but they had already eaten a few hours before at school so it was no big deal, but for me? well i ended up having a nice dinner of a cup of tea and 4 slices of toast. Normally it wouldn't bother me but i had not eaten the rest of the day so sitting down to 4 slices of toast was just crap.

So i have come to realise i really need to learn to make some dishes that are simple and easily made and then maybe from there i can expand and learn to cook nice meals, because right now i am useless, so i am appealing to my fellow followers and blogging friends, help me out here. I need some simple dishes that i can whip up that don't require to much skill, and by skill i mean that it takes me about 20 minutes just to chop a onion and even then it's more like i have hacked it to bits with a cleaver.

For my American friends, i would love to be able to make Mac & Cheese, and from what i gather you guys are the master of it, so any tips on this dish would be awsome, i'm not to sure if it's easy to make but i'm guessing you guys can help me out, but as i said any help with any dish that is easy to make would be great so i can at least begin to learn how to cook.

So have you guys got any tips, tricks or recipes that you think a novice like me can whip up quickly in times of need?

But for now i think i shall bid you all farewell... Until next time, have a great weekend!  

A Blast From The Past!

The other day i was checking my Facebook feeds like i do normally and i came across something that just blew my mind away, a very very old friend of mines who used to train me when i was doing Taekwon-Do had found and posted up some pictures from decades ago and i just thought i would post them up here.

It's really amazing that when you see pictures from your past you wish you could relive those moments, what i wouldn't give to be 13 again.

That's me on the right, wasn't i cute? Errrr no!

This picture was taken just after the Black Belt grading that myself and Ian, the boy on the left hand side had just attended, i have to say that was the most scariest experience i have ever been through, mainly for the fact that the gradings to obtain your Black Belt was done by a 5th Degree Black Belt Master and trust me that guy could put the fear of life into anyone.

What was even more scary than attending my Black Belt grading, was that only 2 weeks after passing it and getting my black belt (Aged 13!) i then had to attend the European Championships where i went up against a American boy who i believe was probably around 15 in the sparring event, let's just say i wasn't really prepared for such a event especially since i had just got my Black Belt. The American boy absolutely destroyed me all i can remember is being kicked over a chair into one of the judges and pretty much the rest is a blur of being kicked this way and that way, it was a great experience though. 

Although i didn't to do well in the sparring section i did really good in the patterns and managed to take away a Silver medal, which for being my first ever Black Belt competition is pretty impressive if i do say so myself. 

See if you can spot me! tip look at the other picture up top.

I'm not actually to sure when this picture was taken, i know it wasn't after the European Championships so it must have been after a lock competition that my club had attended, but it's just funny to see some old faces you know. The tall guy on the right hand side is Mr Stephen Gell and was my training instructor since the day i joined, there is not another man in this world that i looked up to more than him (Well except for my old man of course), he was such an amazing man and instructor and was always there for me, i don't know why i guess he seen a little bit of himself in me, but for that i will never forget him.

The other man on the left hand side was our other instructor Mr Terry Ryan, i actually became very close friends with his son Craig who is the black belt sitting in the front row on the right hand side. I used to practically live at their house during the summer months just messing around and talking Taekwon-Do and getting up to stupid stuff with him, but it was a great time.

I am so happy that these pictures got posted, as it really takes me back to such happy times in my life, i just wished i was still doing it but perhaps one day i will get back into it!

But until next time... i shall bid you all farewell, have a great day folks! 

The Haircut Continued.

A few days ago i made a blog post asking everyone's opinion on allowing children to make their own decision about what sort of haircut they should get, the reason behind this was the fact my son Max wanted to get a Mohawk, something he had been going on about for at least 4 years now i think it was.

Personally i was of the belief  that children should not make any decisions when it came to this, simply because they would end up with the most ridiculous and insane haircuts that you could possibly imagine, but alot of people who decided to reply to the thread had some of the same thoughts but went about it in a different way and some they thought it was fine, aslong as it was not in the school year.

So i gave all this information i had been given much thought and decided that possibly we should maybe compromise just slightly and see what would happen.

Thursday came around and it was time for the boys hair appointment, we normally just get it done here in Järpås since travelling all the way to Lidköping (Biggest town closest to us) would just cause us more issues due to the public transport not exactly being the best and seeing as i don't have a drivers licence well that just means we are reliant on it. But off they went to the hairdresser who i believe has been cutting the hair of the cavemen in town since the beginning of time (Yes, she's a pretty old woman, and her haircutting is well mediocre to say the least), and well this is what they returned with.

First off, please do not ask what in gods name is up with  the comb over as i have no idea and trust me it was rectified very quickly but instead of allowing them to get crazy Mohawk's and such other disastrous haircuts we allowed them to colour their hair, i really don't have to much of a problem with this mainly for the fact the hair dye that was put in their hair washed out after 2 washes so it wasn't something they would have for weeks, and well it made them think they had their own way.

So Max didn't exactly get what he was looking for but at least he got something that he wouldn't normally get i guess, and Alex well he's not all that bothered as to what type of haircut he gets aslong as it's cut he's a happy camper.

But i think that is it for today, what do you think of their stylish new hair? obviously now it's back to being the normal dirty blonde that they have but at least for a few days they were happy.

But for now... i think i shall bid you all farewell, and hope you have a great day, i'm still getting over this flu cold thing i have and Marie well she's been hit hard with it and is a complete train wreck at the moment, although surprisingly still going to work, even though she looks and sounds like death.