Wonderful Day Out.

Last time I wrote on the blog i had mentioned that a couple of weeks ago I had finally passed my driving test and while it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life it was by far the most stressful.

But although it was so stressful yesterday proved to me that every single kronor and stress was well worth it as myself and my hunny Marie decides to pack up the car and the twins and take a little road trip down to the Swedish coast. 

Everyone has always said that the Swedish coast is a must see for anyone who has come to Sweden or lives there as it is one of the most beautiful places in the whole of Sweden and I must admit they were not half wrong!

We set of pretty damn early as its a good 2 hour drive roughly down to the coast followed by a ferry ride over (that was a experience let me tell you! I have never been driven a car onto a ferry before but it was quite easy I must admit) and then headed on down to a town called Lysekil.

Whilst down there we decided to take the kids to the aquarium down there but I just admit it was quite disappointing, I had expected them to have a lot more fish and sharks and such likes but nope. They did have a fairly decent variety of fish but they had no sharks or at least sharks that we have come to know and love. 

But it was still great to go and see it and the kids had a really great time which was the whole reason we did it in the first place. 

However after about 45 minutes we were done and we had decided that we would spend the rest of the day walking around the town and just taking in the sights. I must say that if I had the money (aka was rich) I would buy a house down there haha. 

So although the aquarium was not as awesome as I would have liked it to be myself and the family had a truly awesome day out checking out the coast. 

It was just a weird feeling being able to just jump in the car and take the family out for the day without having to think about busses and trains for once and although I made some small mistakes on the drive down it was nothing life threatening that would cause a accident and I have learned from them so thumbs up I guess. 

Anyways here is some pictures for you guys to check out of the trip, hope you like them :)

So until next time, I hope everyone else had a awesome weekend and we shall see you next time :)

                                          

We Did It!

Note: Long Post Incoming! :)

Don't i look handsome? haha

I haven't been around the blogging world in quite some time now, not quite sure how long but I'm guessing a good 6 months or so. I have of course been keeping up to date with all my blogging friends and what they are doing with their lives and trying my hardest to keep posting their posts via Triberr but i just haven't had the time nor the energy to be able to publish anything myself.

So your all probably wondering (or at least those who don't have me on Facebook) what's been happening in my life and what's been happening with the kids? Well lets just say a whole lot of things have changed for me and my family in the last 6 months and overall our quality of life has improved ten fold.

As everyone probably remembers i got myself time employed at the local hospital as a Vaktmästare (Caretaker you could say) and yes i'm still there fighting away, i have actually been given summer employment there now which means 8 weeks of non stop work, which in my opinion is completely awesome, not only that i have just been informed that they will be keeping me on until October on this contract since one of my work mates had 58 holiday days to take out and he decided he wanted to take them all at once, so i get to do his job until he comes back! SWEET!

The kids have also been doing awesome as well and really making me proud, a couple of weeks ago my 2 boys Alexander & Maximus graduated there first class of school which i was able to go up and watch and am really proud of how awesome they are doing in school, it's really strange that the 2 little hell razors that i used to call them have turned out to be so smart haha.

But now they are on there summer holidays and have started going to swim school that we have here in Sweden and have already taken their first badge.

This is the little pins they get when they accomplish tasks at the swim school

So the boys are having a blast and doing really well, so i really can't be more proud of them.. Sure they still get into stupid stuff and do a lot of things they are not meant to, but hey they are twin boys what can you expect....

As for my now 16 year old daughter Mikaela, well boy has she changed. I think it's natural that every parent especially when it comes to girls looks at there daughter even when they have grown up as the little girl that used to run around all the time being happy and laughing and all such things, unfortunately i missed that period as i never met Mikaela until she was 8 years old but i still look at her as she is 8 at times and remember that sweet innocent face. 

But now she is all grown up and is moving on with life at a rapid pace, her life no longer consists of playing with dolls and going out on her bike with friends and is more now all about cloths, shoes, makeup and boys. The phase i guess you could say every parent dreads when they hear "it's a girl" haha.

However i cannot complain she has really done some amazing things this year, including getting her grades to an outstanding level in school, of course she is not happy with them and wishes they were a lot higher, but honestly i could never have got the grades she did, and in fact i didn't lol! But not only has she accomplished finishing this schooling phase with high grades, but has also been accepted into Hair Dressing school here which she will start after the summer.

She is my world <3

As for Marie? Well she is still the same old Marie, totally nuts and i love her for it, she is working away like always and trying to keep us all in line and for the most part succeeding, it's really funny when i sit here and think about it as for the most part i think we all take what she does for us for granted myself included, but i have to say that without her our family would not stand a hope in hell of functioning the way it does, she is really a exceptional woman that i am glad to call my future wife.

But right now she is on her summer vacation from work, but as i said to her yesterday when she was talking to me about having to keep the house in order and that her holiday never feels like a holiday "You take vacation from your job to then take up another job looking after the kids and house"

Although the good news doesn't stop there, i have always said that once i get a job i was going to save up and finally get around to taking my drivers license and this year that is exactly what i did!

I have to say taking my driver license was one of the most amazing experiences of my life but at the same time was also the most stressful. Not even moving country and starting a new life in Sweden was as stressful as taking my drivers license.

But i did it and manage to pass it, i have no idea how as i decided that taking my license in my mother language was going to be to easy so i decided to make it a little bit more challenging and take the full test including the theory in Swedish!

Now however its all done and i got my license on Wednesday and went to pick up my car so now my list of things to do is almost complete, all that is left is to get married to my absolutely amazing and beautiful fiancee but god knows when that will happen.

So there you have it! Everything that has been happening with myself and family, this year has so far turned out to be a stressful but exciting year and i'm just hoping it continues! But for now i shall bid you all farewell and hopefully it won't be to long before you hear from me again.

Employed... Well Kind Off!

So the other week I wrote about a surprise that was going to happen, but seeing as nothing was set in stone I didn't actually want to post anything.

Well the surprise finally happened and as you can tell by the title of this post I have now been officially employed by the company that I'm doing my praktikplats (practice place) with.
Or well sort off...

What I have been given is what they call here timanställd (time employed) so basically what this means is that if anyone phones into us sick for that day or whatever then I will be called in to do their job for how ever long they are unable to work.
But seeing as I am still on my praktik this will work slightly different, so basically how it will work up until the 4th December (this is when my praktik with them ends) is that normally I will be a praktikant, and if anyone phones in sick leaving us with to little people, my boss will say to me today you are time employed and for those days i work as an employee I will get paid from them instead of being paid by the government.
This means I will get a lot more money than I am making now and you cannot image how great a feeling that is.

Sure this is not full employment but it is certainly a HUGE step forward to where I was a week ago. Also there is still a good chance that I could get full employment with them but we shall just have to wait and find out.
I mean anything can happen between now and December when my praktik ends.

What was even more great was that my boss came to me and said you are officially from the 1st October time employed with us and then I got to work Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as time employed which means ill get 3 days wage from them at the end of November. But what a feeling it was to actually work those 3 days knowing that I was actually doing it for a real wage, this was something I had not experienced in a long time and what can I say it felt great!!

So there you have it! That's my surprise and once more I have to say it feels great. Now I just got to hope that between now an December something happens and I'm able to get full time employment with them.

But that's all I have for this post, I hope everyone else had a great week but until next time.....

What A Week

So this week has turned into quite the experience I must admit and on top of that busy as hell.
I mean not only have I been working like a absolute dog at work, ok nothing is unusual with that, it takes hard work and dedication to be a kick ass Vaktmästare haha!

But on top of that the last couple of days I've been basically coming home eating dinner, taking a shower and then heading out of the door within the space of a hour.

Firstly on Tuesday I had a meeting at Mikaela's school, this in itself was a experience of a lifetime, since it was the first meeting (school meeting that is) in Swedish that I have attended myself without Marie accompanying me and sitting half the time translating stuff that I don't understand, and although I didn't quite understand 100% of everything that was said I got enough of it to make me feel great about it.
Not to mention I think the main reason I didn't really understand everything fully is because I still even after living here 6 years fully understand the Swedish schooling system.

However I had to have a good laugh since when we first arrived at the school the first thing to come out of my beloved daughter's mouth as she walked up to a group of friends was.
"You can stand over there"
As she pointed half way across the school playground, safe to say I was more than a bit shocked I mean I'm still cool right?
Well apparently not....

But it went well apart from that, and I learned quite a bit about the education system in Sweden and about her next step in her education which will be happening next year, but we still have a lot to look into and sort out before then so we shall see.

Not only did I have that, I also ended up in another meeting on Wednesday although this time it was for the boys and actually in Järpås so at least I didn't have to travel into town like I did for Mikaela's meeting.

That meeting however was nothing really important and more along the lines of meet the teachers and see what they have been doing etc, and it seems like the boys have been doing well.
We obviously still have a proper teachers meeting to go to in the not so distant future but it was still nice to get a mini update I guess you could call it.

But that's been my week, working and meetings although now it's the weekend and the boys are away to their dads for the weekend and my oldest Mikaela is away saying at friends all weekend so it's nice to be able to just sit back and relax with Marie for a change without having to worry about kids hehe.

But for now I shall bid you all farewell and I hope you all have a great weekend as well.

"Choose a job.....

...you love and you will never have to work a day in your life"
~ Confusius

Well today The Angry Scot is not around, and i just thought i (his partner in crime) would make a wee post here in his absence.
As all of you might have understood he is away most of the day now, working and really enjoying it. And coming home at evening doesn't leave alot of time on his hands to actually write a blog-post. I'm sure that there will be a post or two in the next coming few days as we had some good friends here last weekend.

It is amazing seeing what a job can do with a person though. The Angry Scot was unemployed for quite some time and life with him wasn't always the easiest. I totally understand why, i mean, me and the kids was always out all day. We were always talking to other people during the day and doing things, and when we came home we were tired, whilst The Angry Scot sat around the house not really doing anything and the more he sat around, the less energy he had to spare.
He has had some really downs during the last couple of years, struggling with his own identity i would say.
And who wouldn't??
I don't even know if i would have been able to cope with it, and i realize that now. That maybe i never actually can put myself in that state of mind he was in...
I remember being really annoyed at him at times because sometimes it was so damn hard even getting a smile out of him.
He really was The Angry Scot!!
But then again, if you're feeling that there is nothing left to smile for here in the world, why fake it??


But that was then **smiling big**
Then one day a year ago, i designed this blog for him and told him to start blogging about what's on his mind. And to be completely honest i think this blog is what saved his mind from going completely mental..
Then a couple of months back he was granted this "praktik" place.
And like they say; the rest is history.

Now The Angry Scot smiles, so it doesn't really make him so Angry anymore.
Maybe time to change this blog title??
Although naming a blog "The Happy Scot who Smiled" is probably not a good name lol....


So yeah. 
The Angry Scot, not so much angry anymore.
He comes home from work with a smile on his face, tired but still wants to chat away. And he wakes up in the morning acting like a bloody Energizer Bunny, ready to rock....
Now that is awful i tell you, ha ha!!

He has always been the best partner i could have asked for, and the best father figure the kiddies could asked for and they love him to death.
I love him regardless with all of my heart and i always will,
but it is just really nice to see him being somewhat peaceful with where he is at in life too.

So here's to you hubbie...
Love you forever and ever and i really hope that you get to stay with the job you found as you are so happy these days.
But even if you don't, always remember that we love you loads!! <3 <3 <3


/Mie
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

First Week On The Job!

Well as most of you know already, on Monday there i started my 3 month "praktikplats" at the local hospital in Lidköping as a Janitor/Caretaker type person, and i have to say although it was something that was not exactly my ideal job i absolutely love it.

I don't know if it's because i have been unemployed for so long (close to 7 years) but either way just the though of going up in the morning and getting ready and heading off to work just makes me get all happy, i'm unsure if Marie is enjoying me going to work since all she wants to do is sit and not speak and relax before work where i'm like all hyped up and ready to get cracking but either way it's brilliant.

So i basically thought i would let you all know how it's been going, Monday was fairly easy day being that it was my first day and all i really did was follow people around and get shown the ropes as to the different jobs that the guys down in the basement do but as the week progressed i got to do alot more interesting stuff and start doing things on my own which was pretty awsome.

The people that i am working with are just awsome, not all of them i must say there is one or two guys that i have followed around who i have to say make the day drag on more than anything but the rest of them are just awsome, when i'm with them the day honestly just goes so fast that it feels like i have walked into the place and then walked straight back out of it, and hell who doesn't want a day like that eh?

Not to mention on top of doing all different types of jobs that i would normally have probably thought would be boring which have turned out to be pretty fun, i'm surrounded by Swedish people who THANK THE HIGH HEAVENS! speak absolutely NO ENGLISH! or if they can, they never speak a word of it, this i am the most thankful for i think. Having to be forced to speak the Swedish language and knowing that the only reply i will ever get is in Swedish is just amazing and makes going out to work even better, even if i don't understand some of the things they come out with i can normally pick up enough of what they have said to be able to translate the words i don't understand on my own, so on top of going out and learning a new job and different aspects of what they do, i'm also increasing my vocabulary in the Swedish language and finding myself getting alot more confident in my own.

But the week has not gone by without a few bumps and scrapes i have to say, in only one week working their i have managed to completely bruise my whole right arm which right now is hurting like hell and a few cuts here and there but hey it's the life of a hard working person i guess.

I'm just hoping that next week will be just as fun, i'm guessing next week i'm going to have to start taking my own initiative but we shall see, either way it's an amazing feeling to get up in the morning and to know that today i won't be sitting on my ass at home playing computer games and watching TV and that instead of that i will be going out of the door and heading to work for a full days graft.

Nothing beats it i must say!

But i think that is all for today, even though i'm off today and i was planning on just sitting around and playing games i have noticed that the grass is looking a wee bit long again, so i'm going to have a nice cup of tea, perhaps some breakfast and then head outside to get the grass cut :)

So hope everyone else had a awsome week and that you have an amazing weekend! I know i have and will!

So until next time....

What's Been Happening

So what has been happening over the last few days with me that has caused me to write pretty much nothing, infact i pretty much wrote nothing the whole month of April.
The only reason for this is that nothing much has been happening over here in the world of The Angry Scot, it's probably due to the fact that i recently realised i live a pretty boring lifestyle, but heh! it's my lifestyle and i have grown quite attached to it.

But i had a pretty decent weekend if i have to admit, Friday night included me being left home alone, well i wasn't totally alone my daughter was upstairs in her bedroom but seeing as she is a teenager and i think i seen her a grand total of about 2 times the whole night i might as well have been.
The reason i was left to fend for myself was because my fiancée Marie had went out with all her work mates to celebrate a friend of hers who works their passing some medical thing that she had been working on, don't ask me what it was because i have no idea i just know it was medical since well she works in the hospital. So they had all decided that they would go out on Friday for a nice meal followed up by a good drinking session.

So when the phone started ringing at 01:20 on Saturday morning i was pretty shocked to hear that it was Marie on the other end of the phone, i was staying up that night to wait for her to come in anyway so it wasn't like she woke me up or anything but i hadn't been expecting to see or hear from her until at least 02:30 that morning. But then she informed me that the friend that they had all gone out with had gotten a little bit to drunk and her husband had to come and pick her up and take her home. Hey i guess she was out partying so she was entitled to do so.

However then i find out that all her work mates had decided to go to a house party of one of the girls that was their, they had offered Marie to come along but well Marie is not the one for partying all night long and she had wanted to come home to me and her own bed (Between you and me! she probably wanted to come home to her bed more than to me lol) But she then informed me that because she had rejected their offer and their offer to stay over at one of their houses that night that she was now left at 01:30 in town on her own, i mean seriously? Who in their right mind leaves a woman at 01:30 in the morning to sit at a bus stop and wait for a bus in the pitch black of night, where drunken fools are walking around.
Safe to say i was not at all pleased and decided that i would phone Marie back and sit on the phone with her until her bus had arrived, i know i wouldn't have been able to do anything even if something did happen (Thank god it didn't and she was fine) but still, at least i knew that she was ok while i was on the call.

45 minutes in total i sat speaking to her on the phone before her bus arrived and it probably cost a fortune to do so as well but i don't really care, i just honestly cannot believe that work colleagues would just leave her sitting out in the middle of town on her own at that time of the morning when anything could happen, it just really confuses me, but she got home safe and sound and that is all that matters at the end of the day, but from what i can gather it seems this will be her last trip out with her work mates if this is the way they are going to treat her.
Sure they offered her to spend the night on one of their sofa's and i had said to her that she should have accepted it but she didn't want to and i can understand that as well, but they could have at least had the decency to wait with her until her bus had arrived, but i guess some people are just ignorant and don't think especially with a belly full of alcohol.

But in the end everything turned out fine i guess so i should be happy, and the rest of the weekend? Well we had no kids in the house so it turned into a nice cosy weekend spent with my true love, so can't be all that bad.

So until next time! I hope you all have a great week!

Busy Few Months Ahead!

Well it seems that these next few months are shaping up to be quite the busy period for myself and all in the best possible way.
You can possibly recall i wrote a blog post about how living in the sticks or as i like to call it Hillbilly Town really can suck sometimes because a very close friend of mine who i met while playing the game everyone loves to hate World Of Warcraft was unable to come and visit me after looking into it. I got pretty down about this because i have been wanting to meet this person in real life since well the first day i met him really which was around about 4 years ago coming on 5 i believe.
So anyways... The company he worked for made redundant alot of people and he was one of them that decided to take it and is now moving back from Ireland to London so because of this he will not be able to get a direct flight from London all the way over to Sweden without having any lay overs or anything like this so on the 10th May he will be arriving in Göteborg Airport and i will finally get to meet him! So happy happy times! Best thing is the next day is my 29th Birthday as well so it will be special to have such a close friend that i have never met in real life to be there for it.

Then to add on to that, a couple of weeks after he leaves all the kids will be breaking off school for the summer holidays, which hopefully will mean lots of nice sunny days spent outside in the pool while i sit back and chill out with them and possibly even get back to reading my books that i still have sitting here unfinished.

I know how dare i have books that i haven't finished reading, but when you have a fiancée like mines who refuses to let me read at night in bed, because it means i have to have the bedside lamp on then it doesn't really give me all that much time :) I could possibly do it during the day but then i always end up with other things to do.

And then we move onto the final thing, which is probably the thing i am the most excited about and that is that at the end of August the whole family will be flying over to Scotland to visit my parents, i think this is probably the thing i'm most excited about because i haven't seen my Mum or Dad and dare i say it, yes i do! Sister! in nearly 2 years, which if you are as close to your Mum as i am really really really sucks big time.

So you could say that i'm really excited about the upcoming few months, if everything goes to plan then it's looking to be one great couple of months, now if only i could find a job within those few months to i think that would make it even more special, but we shall have to see on that front as of right now there doesn't seem to be all that many going around.

But until next time i hope you all have a great day!

Seriously?

So i haven't actually had a really good rant in a while, so i decided that i would have to change that and low and behold when i login to Facebook in the morning to check on what's been happening with all my friends and family i'm faced with the same stupid and self obsessed messages like always.

I get that some people like to broadcast their whole life on this thing, hell i do it most of the time to. But normally when i post it's about happy things and stuff the kids have done that's made me giggle, and then on occasions i write a few things here and there about why this and that sucks so bad! But when i login and all i see is the same messages from the same people i get the massive urge to want to click the delete friend button.
You might be wondering what sort of messages make me want to delete people from my facebook? Well simply the ones that you see on a daily basis complaining over and over and over again about how much their lives suck and why is life so hard, i mean seriously!!!

Is really that bad? Is the whole world really against you and wishes that you didn't exist? 


Or is the bottom line your sitting at home bored out your face with nothing to do so instead you think it's a better idea to spam the hell out of your Facebook wall about how terrible your life really is without even saying why it actually sucks? 
What is it for? Attention, congratulations you got my attention and it's telling me delete this person from your friends list.


Don't get me wrong life can be tough, hell my life is no bag of roses and days i feel like crawling up into a little ball somewhere and just lying there, but do i run to my Facebook page and spam it like crazy about how crap life can be? No.. I look for ways to change it, look for ways to improve it and then before i even do that i take a second and look at the wall in my livingroom and see the pictures of my 3 amazing kids who although drive me completely and utterly loopy and make me want to visit a asylum and realise "Hey, you know what life ain't that bad after all"


I think what makes it worse is that alot of time these comments are coming from young people, and i know i'm still young but i'm talking teenage to mid 20's, i mean life is just beginning so get a fricken grip and lay of with your stupid comments life ain't that bad, you have your health, you have your family and you have many many years to see why life can really suck.

Possibly alot of people will disagree with me, but trust me if you had some of the people i have on my Facebook page and read the comments on a daily basis, and i don't just mean once a day but quite a few times a day you would probably understand more, i could delete them from my profile, but some of them are pretty close to me so deleting them wouldn't be nice. Since even though they are driving me more insane than my children do they're still people i like.

But that's my rant for today, i am unsure if there will be a post tomorrow as i've got a few things planned but i will try my best. So until next time HAVE A GREAT DAY!

Time To Get In Shape!

I never ever in my whole entire life thought i would ever say this or even think it, but seriously i need to loose some weight and pretty fast too!

For the people who don't know me personally or knew me growing up i was the typical tall skinny guy who could eat what he wanted, when he wanted and how much he wanted without ever having to think about "Is this going to make me gain weight?"

I mean my diet when i lived in the UK consisted off eating fried food, chinese from the takeaway and pretty much every sort of junk food available to mankind, however when i moved to Sweden things all changed. I went from eating what people would describe as Junk Food to food that was made from scratch and what i would consider alot more healthy. Sure i still eat alot of crap, bags of crisps and chocolate and drink a bucket load of tea and fizzy juice.

But as you will see below, the switch of my diet has actually done more wrong for me than it did good! Sure i needed to gain some weight that was a given but i haven't stopped!

Living In The United Kingdom: 11 Stone (154Lbs/70kg)

6 Years After Living In Sweden: 95.7 kg (15 Stone/211Lbs)

Total Weight Gain: 25.7kg (4 Stone/57Lbs)

As you can see i have gained a massive amount of weight in only 6 years living here, and i fear that if i don't do something NOW! then i fear that i will just continue on the road i'm on gaining weight until the point where there is no turning back!

So i have decided that this is my last week of living the way i do, people might be thinking "Why not just start now?" and the reason is i want to start a fresh, so the best thing i can do is enjoy my last couple of days of eating what i like and when i like. But when Monday comes around i'm going to start getting back into shape, i have not yet decided how i'm going to get into shape but i have a couple of days to figure it out and of course with getting into shape will also mean that i will be eating correctly as well, and that is probably going to entail cutting out all the crap i eat: Crisps, Fizzy Juice etc.

But i think that is all for now! So until next time have a great day......

I'm Back!

It's been quite a while since my last blog post and for that i would like to apologise, it's not because i haven't wanted to blog about anything or anything like that but i just feel like nothing that happened during the course of February was actually interesting or even worth blogging about since nothing major happened apart from the normal day to day stuff like taking the kids to school and searching for work. 

But i am hoping that this month things will pick up a bit.

So what's actually been happening with The Angry Scot over the course of February?

Well as i said nothing much, i started off really great on the whole Swedish thing and during February i was getting pretty damn awsome at speaking the language, so much so that people on my Facebook that are Swedish were complimenting me on how great it was coming along and how impressed they were at how much i was talking and writing it. On top of that i even had a person at Marie's work tell Marie how impressed she was since normally when i phone and Marie doesn't answer it's the normal "She's not here right now, hold on a second and i'll get her" without even asking who it is or anything but recently the woman was having to ask "Who's calling?" to hear this from a Swedish person i don't even know is absolutely fantastic in my book, it shows me that whatever i am doing is certainly in the right direction. 

However things started to go a bit downhill over the last few weeks, it wasn't anyone's fault but Marie ended up with severe toothache which ended up in her having 2 teeth removed including her wisdom tooth and during this 2 week period i felt when speaking to her she wasn't really listening to what i was saying, not that i can blame her. But without her actually listening and then correcting me i kept feeling like i was making a tonne of mistakes that was going un-noticed instead of how it was before her tooth flared up where she would pick up on every single thing correct me and then try and explain why.

So i kind of gave up again there for a bit, and due to that i have kind of fallen back to my old ways of it's easier with English, it's not like i have completely stopped with Swedish i'm still sending text messages to Marie in Swedish, my whole Facebook page has turned completely Swedish (Thanks Bling for allowing all my non Swedish friends to hit a translate button ;) ) but i have really let me speaking fall to the waist side as the saying goes. So it's time to change that again and go back to full Swedish as i was really enjoying it and i felt i was making amazing progress.

But other than the whole Swedish thing not alot has happened, i have been going crazy on the job front and been sending out a tonne of applications, in which most have come back with the patronizing crap that they like to send out "Thanks, but no thanks and good luck in the future" but i found a great job working for a transport company in a town about 30mins from here called Vara which would be absolutely awsome if i got since i have done everything they want for about 7 years when i was back in the UK so fingers crossed for that one. It's not very often you find a job that ticks all the boxes so i think i will be rather disappointed if i don't at least get a interview for this one.

I think that is all though, i have a meeting with my Job Coach today finally! apparently she is now pregnant and been having some issues with it so her doctor has put her on Part Time work and she was finding it hard arranging meetings with people she was coaching but we have a meeting today so fingers crossed she has some news on a Practice Place as they like to call them here for me or something.

But until next time i shall bid you all farewell, hope everyone is having a great day!

She Finally Replied!

You will remember that a few weeks ago i wrote about how i had contacted my Job Coach who i was meant to be meeting after the Christmas Holidays and that i had never received a reply from her, well finally after about 3 weeks or there abouts she finally got back in contact. Apparently she had been signed off work for a few weeks due to being ill and that was the whole reason behind her not being back in contact so i guess i can forgive her for that.
But it seems that we shall be meeting up again starting next Wednesday, not to sure why and if i'm totally honest i wasn't really all that bothered if we met again or not but at the same time i deserved to have the full time i was meant to get with my Job Coach and seeing as we missed a few appointments it is nice that she is willing to still meet me and make sure that i get that time back that i missed even though they don't get paid for it.

In other Job Type News...

You may also recall that i recently wrote about my Job Centre visit that was scheduled for last week or the week before that i can't honestly remember now, but that when i was there my handler as they like to call themselves had spoken to me about maybe going on a Administration Course, well i have been in contact with her and told her that i would like to take her up on the offer and go and do the course that we spoke about, as of yet i have not heard anything back about it other than that she was going to recommend me for it so hopefully something will come up soon enough with that.

I think it would be really nice to get out the house everyday, not that being home sucks or anything like that but you know there is only a certain amount of time you can stare at the same four walls everyday before you end up going completely insane, so for a chance to get out the house and be surrounded by Swedish people who only talk the language i think would be really great for me. Sure it's going to be hard, not the course but the fact of being around Swedish people all day long and trying to keep up with conversations and such likes but it will be good training for me as well, and who know's i actually might meet someone there that i can become friends with which would not be a bad thing trust me.

But i think that's all for the moment folks, i want to again apologise for the lack of blog posts over the last month or so but i think it's just one of those times where nothing really amazing happens so there is nothing to blog about but i am trying, i'm pretty sure it will pick up in the new few weeks or something but we shall see.
So until next time, i hope you all have a great weekend!

Makes You Think Really.

Last night before heading off to bed i was checking through my Facebook like i always do when i stumbled across something that came as quite a shock if i don't say so, two of my close friends had decided that after a long relationship that it was time to call it a day and move on with there lives and it got me thinking about my very own relationship.

Sure my relationship with my fiancée Marie is great and we do love each other so much nobody can ever doubt that least of all me, but over the last few years maybe longer i don't know but i have noticed that we live more like friends than we do anything else, Marie also agrees with this because she has often commented on it and i honestly can't reply when she speaks about it because it's just not something i really think about or well i do think about it but when it comes to expressing myself it's not exactly something i am great at doing.

And it just got me thinking, i need to start making more of a effort when it comes to our relationship, don't get me wrong it's not only me that needs to put the work into it she also has to, but i certainly could be doing alot more, like if you take at the beginning or at least the first year of our relationship and i am aware that every relationship has a hunny moon period but we constantly texted each other (Granted i lived in another country), but still we would text how much we loved each other and all sorts of soppy crap that you probably don't want to hear about but over the last 3 maybe 4 years we barely do that at all, and it's not because we don't love each other because we always say it to each other at least a few times a day but i came to realise that i need to say it alot more and make her feel and know that i do.

The way i see it no matter how secure you think your relationship is and how great you think things are they could easily slip away from you or you could end up in a relationship you actually don't want to be in for whatever reason, and this is not something i want to happen so i'm going to try and make a more conscious effort to make sure that at least the woman in my life knows that she means the world to me and that i appreciate her and everything else in between, i want our old relationship back that we had and it's up to me to make it happen.

So just think about it and make sure that your partner knows that he/she is the most special person in your life and never let them forget it. There is always room in the world for a bit of extra love hehe,

But that's enough of the soppy relationship talk, so until next time have a great day!

First Meeting Of The Year.

I know that today is Wednesday and that normally means a "Wordless Wednesday" post, but seeing as i haven't exactly been on the ball with my posts over the last few weeks/months i have decided to scrap that for the time being unless i come across a picture that is really a show stopper, but instead i thought that today i could write about how my first meeting with the Job Centre went after the whole Job Coach thing was over and done with.

Let me just start of by saying that i didn't expect the meeting to go that well, infact you could say i was rather nervous about the whole idea of going to see my point of contact at the local job centre or Arbetsförmedlingen as it's called here in Sweden, i'm not sure why but i think it possibly has something to do with that if you recall i wrote about when the Job Coaching ended that we would be meeting after the New Year period. Well as most of you know for Christmas i got a new mobile phone and i decided that since the company i was with was doing a special deal at the Christmas period (getting 1 year free internet if you were a new customer) i decided that after 5 years i would change my mobile number, so i contacted my Job Coach to inform her that i had used her as a reference for 4 jobs that i had recently applied to and that i had changed both my e-mail and my mobile number and still after nearly 2 weeks i have not heard anything from her.

So i half expected that she wrote me a bad review, although for the life of me i wouldn't know why because i thought the whole experience went really well at least from my end it did, but you never know with some people and i thought that was possibly the reason for her ignoring me. It turns out though that it was not the reason for her ignoring my e-mail and text messages as the review i was given was quite positive with the only downside being that i didn't have a drivers licence and that i should try and obtain one when i gained employment, something i had already planned on doing so god knows why she would write that. But anyways i have no idea in the world why she is ignoring me, but i have given up trying to get in contact with her as it seems futile.

But back to the Job Centre appointment, that in itself went really well in my opinion. We have now discussed the possibility if i want to, to go and take a Administration course so that i am able to get a qualification. In all honesty i don't think i need it since i was in Administration/Customer Service for almost 7 years and i know the type of work like the back of my hand, but i guess it is something that would A) get me out of the house and around other Swedish people which is never a bad thing, and B) give me something new on my CV and something that has come from Sweden and not the UK.

So after a small discussion with Marie and getting her point of view on it, we have decided that it would not be the end of the world if i did it, and while i am on the course there is nothing stopping me looking for any work or a Praktikplats (Practice Work) as they call it in Sweden.

Other than that everything was kind of the same, she showed me some other aspects of Arbetsförmedlingen that could help me find work, so i now have them to look at and i have been instructed that i must contact them at least once in March just to let them know how everything is going and to see if there is anything else they can help me with, but it seems quite positive. I think the thing i like about the Job Centre here is the fact that i don't have to go in every 2 weeks to say "Hello, i'm still alive" although at the same time it's a bit better that way, mainly for the fact you are able to speak to someone there and they do a quick search for jobs for you etc. But i like the laid back way of Sweden, i mean it's not like i ain't looking for work or anything like that because i am but it's still nice to have the job centre giving you a kick up the ass every once in a while if you know what i mean.

But everything is looking good, i have found 2 new jobs that are up that i can apply to, so in total that will be 6 jobs in the space of 2 weeks which is pretty good going since right now with it being January and the start of the new year there is not many companies looking for anyone, but hopefully that will pick up, and soon enough companies will be looking for summer workers, which isn't the best and is quite hard to get into since they normally just take the people they have had before but at least it's something and gives me a little extra bit of money seeing as i don't get any right now.

So i think that is everything, it was quite positive i feel so i'm not that upset although i had images of me coming home to write a rant post like no other but unfortunately for you it went well, so you don't get to read me screaming about this and that! Although that may happen tomorrow as i have to take the twins into town for their check up at the dentist and seeing as i am definitely not a morning person the thought of getting the twins up and out the door and on a train by 07:30 just doesn't seem all that fun to me, but that's a new post for tomorrow! So until next time have a great day folks! 

Feeling Stupid But Why? Continued.

Well it's been a couple of days since my last blog post and to be honest i have just had nothing to write about, i don't know what it is but i'm guessing all bloggers go through a dry spell and this seems to be mines, what's more worrying about it is the fact it's been like this for a few months now and it's really getting on my nerves. I had big goals this year about making my blog better and getting more views etc and it seems as of now i am failing pretty hard but there is nothing i can do about it.
I refuse to write just pointless garbage that nobody is really interested in, i mean who wants to read a blog post saying i had this for dinner tonight and to be quite honest it sucked, funnily enough Marie made me and the kids Chicken Korma last night and it really did suck. None of us even got half way through it, but it wasn't her fault really it was more to do with the Korma sauce that she picked up from the store, there was just something about it that really did not taste right at all.

But away from that and back to the blog post at hand, i had written a post a couple of days ago about how i had decided that this was the year i was going to switch completely from English to Swedish at home since i was sick of us being a family who spoke half Swedish and half English and i wanted us to become a real Swedish family and for that to happen i needed to stop being lazy and stupid and just get on with it. But i found it really hard i must admit, the thought of speaking Swedish to my fiancée Marie scares the absolute shit out of me and for what reason i do not know.

So a few days have past and i must admit it's getting better, sure i stumble on a few words here and there and have no choice but to say them in English because i really have no idea what they are in Swedish and when your trying to have a conversation with someone the last thing you want to be doing is looking through a online dictionary trying to find what the word you want to use is. Funnily enough i have found a really nice app that i am considering downloading for my phone which is exactly that a translator with all the Swedish to English words in it, so that might be worth a look.

What is even more great is at the start of the week the new series of Swedish Masterchef started up on the TV and this has given me a excellent opportunity to sit down and watch something i like and in full Swedish, i'm pretty sure there is probably more TV shows out there in Swedish that are good, but i have yet to find them and i love cooking programs like Masterchef, Top Chef and pretty much everything Gordon Ramsay makes so when it began i was delighted! So this week i have been sitting on the couch with Marie watching it and although there is some dialects that i am unable to completely understand i have found myself being able to pretty much follow everything that is being said without to much of a problem, again there is some words but then i just simply ask Marie what does that mean and i get the translation instantly, so that is pretty sweet.
Not only has Masterchef begun, but so has the new season of The Biggest Looser Sweden, personally i ain't a big fan of these shows but Marie likes to watch them and it's in full Swedish so why not, so i began to watch that last night as well and once more found myself sitting on the couch thinking AWSOME! i'm understanding nearly everything they say.

So life is getting better! the Swedish is coming along and soon the thoughts that go through my head every time i think about speaking the language to Marie will have vanished, it has been known to happen that myself and Marie can go a few months speaking the language and then something  happens like we take a trip over to the UK or my parents come over here and we end up stopping, but i refuse to let that happen this time. I'm more than sure that my parents would rather see me sitting speaking Swedish to Marie and knowing that once we leave or they leave that it will continue than us speaking English and knowing that again once any of us depart that we will revert back because it's easy. So this is my new life and it's going to stay that way, otherwise Marie better find herself a new man lol as i'll be going out on the prowl for a new Swedish woman who doesn't know the English language! lol i'm only kidding that won't ever happen but it's a nice threat and maybe make her think twice about using the English language again hehe.

But i'm happy and that is all that counts i guess, but for now i shall bid you all farewell and hope your having a great week too!

Until next time!

Feeling Stupid But Why?

It's always quite amusing to me, that every time i decide that it's time to speak Swedish and leave the English language behind that i am always end up feeling like a complete and utter moron, some people might be wondering why and to be absolutely honest i don't know why.

So i made a resolution at the start of this year that i was going to stop speaking English at home completely and only speak the language that this country has Swedish, now if i'm honest i haven't done all that bad but at the same time i haven't done all that good either, speaking to people outside of the house and even speaking to the twins goes fantastic. I might not get the right words and i might end up using the wrong endings etc but the people who i am speaking to get what i am trying to say and i don't think about it at all.

But when it comes to speaking to my fiancée....... well that's a completely different kettle of fish i am constantly thinking to myself, am i saying this right? have i used the right word? have i used the right ending to said word? and i end up sitting half the time in complete and utter silence or using very basic Swedish which normally consists of stuff like "yes, no, i don't know" and a few others that i can't really be bothered to mention. Don't get me wrong i do try but then i find myself getting frustrated and end up shouting "Arggghh" and then just saying it in English and i need to STOP!

It's not like Marie has done or said anything to make me feel this way, she has always been encouraging towards me speaking Swedish at home, could she do better? well of course she could, she is normally the first out of us both to say "I'll take this in English" because as we both know we are both pretty lazy when it comes to communicating, and at times she needs to think about what she is going to say and perhaps change it a bit to make it slightly easier for me to understand, this i can totally understand but it can become annoying since i don't learn that way. But it's not her fault, not even slightly, it's me that gets the feeling of being stupid and i need to get away from it some way some how.
I find myself feeling the same way when i try and communicate with my daughter in Swedish, i know that she knows English pretty well (i wouldn't say fluent) but she can get the meaning behind what i'm saying pretty easily so 90% of the time i end up doing that whole "Arrgghh" thing and then just speaking to her in English if she gives me that confused look that teenagers like to give from time to time.

But i need to stop! i need to put a end to this once and for all and i feel after living in Sweden nearly 6 years now that this is damn well the right time to do it, i can still recall many times sitting on the bus back in Scotland and listening to foreign people speak there language on the bus and thinking to myself "Jesus, you live in Scotland speak English you fricken morons!" and here i am 6 years down the line living in another country and what i am i doing? Exactly what i used to get annoyed at the people in Scotland for, and it's not right, it was me that decided to move here and make a life here and i am the one that should be making the effort, at the end of the day why should Swedish people have to speak English in their own country?
Bottom line, they shouldn't!

So i'm going to try my hardest this year to make a more conscious effort, and i'm hoping that after my fiancée reads this, that she will do the same. Although i know she tries and does a awsome job not getting annoyed or frustrated at me, but she is also allows me to speak English instead of giving me that push which i think she needs to do.

But i think that's my rant done for today, i hope everyone had a great weekend and that life is good! So until next time...

Job Coach Officially Over.

So it seems that is the end of my time with the Job Coach officially, i have to admit i have been some what less impressed with the service than i thought i would be, although i was warned by many people who also live in Sweden that job coaches are not exactly the best thing in the world i still half expected it to be slightly better than it was but perhaps i should have lowered my expectations slightly.

Don't get me wrong i have gotten alot further in my job searching than if i would have done it myself with absolutely no help, but my understanding of the whole process was that the job coaches have loads of contacts or network if you would prefer to call it that, and it seems that is not the case exactly, however saying that i must admit i have a pretty nice CV and a few different cover letters now that i can mix and match and play around with so hopefully next year i will be more successful in my job hunting.

Although my time with my job coach is officially over, we shall still meet another few times seeing as we missed quite a few appointments due to her being unwell and having double booked / meetings etc but officially it's over and i have to admit i'm going to kind of miss it, granted i didn't think it was all that great and still think it could have been alot better but i made it what i could make it and as i said i got quite a bit from it although not as much as i was hoping. And even though i cringed at the thought of having to travel into town every a week to meet her for only a couple of hours (Mainly because i knew i would have a 2 hour wait after the meeting) i am still going to miss the interaction with someone other than my direct family over here.

Perhaps i need to get into something like a sport or something that will allow me to have some social interaction with people other than my family, but i guess that is just something i will have to think about in the next coming weeks.

But overall it was a ok experience and i would do it again but perhaps i would try and make it alot more than it was, maybe demand alot more than i did or something along those lines but i got quite a bit out of it at the end of the day so i should be happy with it i guess, and like i said we shall be meeting after the Christmas and New Year to make up for the appointments i missed out on.

But for now i think i shall bid you all farewell, i don't know how i will do with the blogging next week because well it's the week before Christmas and that means it's going to be a bit crazy over here in not so snowy Sweden, but i shall try my best to make a post here and there over the next week but until then have a great weekend!

Our Landlord Is A Moron!

There is quite possibly a million reasons as to why our landlord can be quite frankly referred to as a complete and utter moron, at first when we got the house from him he seemed like a really nice guy, i mean when he took us out originally to see the house out here in Järpås he even took myself and Marie up to the local pizzeria for a bite to eat and to discuss stuff which was really nice of him, but over the past few years he has turned into a complete and utter jackass.

Take for example in our son Maximus's bedroom a few years ago for some reason rain was leaking through the window and it happened to run down the wall and turned the wall into complete mush, it was so bad that the windowsill that is attached by screws onto the wall has actually came off, and we have been asking him for the last 2 years to get it fixed and is it done yet? hell no it ain't!
And then you have the upstairs playroom floor, when we moved in the previous owners had obviously done something that left a big hole in the flooring of the room and he said that we just had to pick out what flooring we wanted up there and that he would get it sorted, well at first we decided since the boys were only 2 i think when we moved in that we would just leave it and put a rug over it but a few years ago once more we asked him to get it sorted out and still not done.

Now we come to present day, on Sunday the washroom where our Washing Machine and Tumble Dryer  etc is become overflowed with water from the washing machine so Marie called him up and asked him to come and sort it out, he had said that he would be unable to come out tomorrow (meaning Monday) but he would come out and sort it on Tuesday, now this was ok with us i mean sometimes the guy is busy since he does own multiple properties around the area, but Tuesday came and Tuesday went and when Marie had phoned him to ask if he was coming out he had informed her that he was unable to because he got caught up with other things. This is alright if it wasn't for the fact i seen him outside on a snow mobile taking away snow from the apartment building across the street from us!

But we let it slide and yesterday he eventually did come around, sure he sorted the over flowing problem but later that evening when Marie returned from work she got to find the mess he had left, i would have noticed it myself but he had come through to the livingroom where i was sitting and told me he had finished and that it was all sorted now, so i didn't bother to go through and look, but when Marie shouted me through OMFG the whole fricken floor was covered in white powder (Obviously the unblocking agent he had used) which as far as i can tell is actually harmful and that is where the cats food is!

At the moment i'm just so bloody angry at the guy, and just can't wait to get myself a job so that we can start looking for somewhere else to live, because this guy is one absolute moron that i just can't put up with, i would normally start going on about how we should report him etc, but according to Marie's dad we actually can't cause there is no law about it or some crap like that i have no idea so i'm just going to take his word for it, but i mean seriously. Well right now he is actually talking about raising our rent so i have said to Marie that we should refuse to pay the rent increase until everything that is needing sorted in the house is done, but i don't know if she will tell him that or not.

But that is my rant done for today!, Landlords = Morons it's a proven fact!

So until next time, i hope you all have a great day!

Nice Relaxing Weekend.

As most people are aware by now every other weekend myself and my fiancée Marie get a nice kid free weekend, well it's not totally kids free since we still have our oldest daughter at home, but she is the typical teenager who just sits in her bedroom all day sitting online and watching TV etc, so we might as well be kids free.

So i decided that i would have a awsome relaxing weekend and not stress about anything and what can i say it was fantastic. I started my Saturday morning out in front of the computer dealing with this and that and then decided that i would spend the rest of the day reading my book, since i had been going on about getting back into reading i decided that since it was so nice and peaceful in the house that i would take the opportunity to do just that. I think in total i spent around 4½ to 5 hours just sitting listening to music while reading my book and it was amazing.

You know when you pick up a book and then you just get engrossed in it and can't put it down well that is how it was.

After a good read we then had dinner and decided that we would sit and just chill out and watch a new series that i had downloaded called "FRINGE" which is some sort of Sci-Fi type TV show which actually kind of reminds me of the X-Files but without the alien stuff, but i have to say it's a really awsome TV show so if you haven't seen it before i would highly recommend you taking a look at it if your into Sci-Fi type things.

Sunday was pretty much the same as on Saturday, got up and done some stuff around the computer and then sat most of the day reading my book, i don't know what the hell Marie was thinking but as i was sitting there having a nice relaxing Sunday she had decided that she would go outside, in the freezing and very wet weather and cut our grass. Granted it had been needing done since it was a jungle out there but the whole place was soaking wet so i just didn't see the point.

So while i'm sitting in doors enjoying myself, my lovely fiancée was outside cutting our grass, some people would say that was a bit bad of me, but it wasn't my fault honest! 

It was also Fathers Day here in Sweden on Sunday, so i got a nice new massive mug for my cups of tea from my daughter which was also great, another reason why i won't feel guilty about not going out to cut the grass, fathers day should be a day where daddy gets to sit down and relax or at least that's my excuse!

So that was my awsome weekend, i wished it hadn't ended in all honesty, i love having the kids home and stuff but when your able to just sit down with a good book and just relax and read without having to hear children argue and fight over the stupidest thing it is just really blissful.

But i think that is enough for today, what did you guys get up to the weekend? anything exciting?

Until next time!

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!