Worst Weekend Ever

I always look forward to every other weekend mainly for the fact that myself and Marie are fortunate enough to get it kids free, well when i say kids free i actually only mean the twins, since they go away to their dads every other weekend which only leaves us with our oldest daughter but she is 14 so we very rarely see her since she is the typical teenager who sits around in  her bedroom all day and only comes down for something to drink or to ask if she can get something to eat.

So every other weekend we always make big plans of how we are going to spend our time, this weekend we decided that we would have a nice dinner, Marie would bake something and then we would spend the night watching movies and just having a nice relaxing night together on the couch, however it didn't quite go to plan.

The day started off great, we sat around enjoying ourselves and just generally relaxing, but after dinner i became increasingly tired and i don't mean just tired but i was nearly at the point of falling asleep, what surprised me more was the fact that it was only 8pm, and by the time 10pm came around i was done and made the suggestion that we just have a early night instead, i was making jokes through the whole night that this was all Marie's fault that she had created a old man, since before i moved to Sweden i used to be able to stay up all night doing whatever and never got tired, but i found myself on Saturday unable to do anything except think of how great it was going to be to head to bed. So we did, 10pm on a Saturday night without any children except our teenage daughter and nothing to get up for the next day.

However apparently the reason i was so tired was not down to being a old man after all, as at about 5pm on Sunday morning i woke with massive stomach pains and felt generally sick, sore throat headache you name it i had it. So what was meant to be a stay in bed until i can be bothered to get up day turned into a day where i was up at 5am on a Sunday morning rushing back and forth to the bathroom, i can tell you now that is not how you want to spend your Sunday morning EVER! So after about 2 hours of feeling really bad (You know what men are like when they get ill, it's not just ill it's really really ill) Marie finally handed me a few tablets to stop my stomach pains and get rid of all the other symptoms (Sometimes being engaged to a nurse really has it's benefits).

But it didn't stop their, well it did for me but then Marie started to feel really bad as well and ended up at around 7pm last night coughing and everything else that goes along with the cold, so looks like our nice relaxing weekend turned into a weekend from hell, all these wonderful plans just went down the drain.

I hope everyone else had a better weekend than we did that's for sure.

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

The Day Just Keeps Getting Better.... NOT

Well today didn't start at all as planned, the whole plan for today was get a hair cut and then meet up with my job coach since we haven't had any contact for two weeks, but unfortunately i received a text this morning from her saying that she was unwell and would not be able to come. Great, not exactly what i need is a Job Coach that i only get for 3 months getting unwell but not much we can do about it, got to admit i have been feeling a bit under the weather myself the last few days with a blocked nose and a horrible throat.

So that kind of put that plan in the trash, i still however headed into town to get my haircut with my lovely blonde bimbo hairdresser, she's really nice but she remembers NOTHING i am actually pretty surprised she manages to remember her own name and where she works, since every time i go in to get my haircut she asks me the exact same questions over and over again, every time i have been in their same thing always, how's Marie?, where does she work? i think i have told her a grand total of about 10 times now where Marie works and what she does but she still forgets lol, she's alright though i guess.

After that the plan was to go into a local video game store and speak to the gentleman that runs it and see if there was any chance of a Praktikplats there seeing as i'm a big gaming nerd it could possibly be a pretty decent place to work, but he was not there today and i was greeted with some young lad, who works there, so i guess i shall need to try and go in again next week and hopefully he is around, if not i'll just phone him and talk to him that way, but we shall see.

After then sitting for about a hour at the train station reading my Game Of Thrones book i then got the pleasure to sit on a train with a mother and her four children, it would have probably been ok if she actually paid any attention to what the hell her children were doing, but instead decided it was more productive to sit on her ass and play with her mobile phone, while her 4 children jumped around the chairs playing with buttons and screaming at the top of their lungs. I seriously wanted to slap the mother around the head and tell her to sort her kids out, but of course i didn't. Wasn't my place but i wanted to so badly.

But i think the rest of the day will be a day of chilling out, my poor fiancée is home today since it's her day off and was meant to get at least 5 hours of just being able to relax in the house on her own without anyone being about, something she never gets to do normally, since i am normally always home. But seeing as my Job Coach cancelled our appointment i'm back home to ruin it for her lol.

But i think that's me done for the week, sorry for not posting anything yesterday but with having this cold my brain is completely fried and i honestly couldn't think of anything to write about, but i'll try and make sure i have a new post everyday next week.

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

Happy Birthday Babe.

Today is a very special day for our family, today is the day that my lovely fiancée Marie turns a whopping 34 years old (Oh yea we're still young pups over here) I thought of a million things to do for her for today but i couldn't come up with anything because well when it comes to Birthdays i am not the best, i'm the type of person that likes to forget his own and not care about it and so is Marie, but i refuse to let her.

*Spoiler Alert: Post Contains Alot Of Love And May Make You Want To Be Sick*

So this post today is just for her and the reason why i love her so much.

My Hunny & My Puppy.

For anyone who doesn't know the story of how myself and Marie met let me tell you, it was just over 5 years ago and both of us were playing a online role-playing game called "World Of Warcraft (WoW)" i know we are both sad finding love over the internet and even worse finding love in a computer game but that is how it happened, we were both leveling our characters in a place called Burning Steepes within WoW and i was stealing her mobs, so of course the only thing she could do was hurl abuse at me in the online chat. From then on we ended up joining the same guild (A guild is a group of people that play together under the same name) and eventually after a few months we got talking which eventually talking and spending so much time online together turned into feelings for each other.

From the minute i met you in the game i knew you were the only one i wanted to spend the rest of my life with, your ability to make me laugh and smile when things are going rough still amazes me to this day, and although we have our problems like every couple i know that it doesn't matter because in the end we will make up and once more be madly in love.
What amazes me even more about you is how much you give to everyone around you, not even wanting anything in return, your generosity and love for everything and everyone around you is the reason i love you the most and waking up to the sight of you everyday is like dying and going to heaven because without you my life would be dull, boring and not worth living.

So although it might be lame to have found love inside a game, i am so glad that we did play that game and that we met each other, you are the love of my life, my soul mate and the reason for everything good in my life, i will love you to the end of time and beyond and know that nothing in this world can ever replace my love for you, my only regret in my life is not meeting you alot sooner than i did.

I would like to finish off this post by saying I LOVE YOU! you are my past, present and future and i am so glad to call you my fiancée and cannot wait until the day i am able to call you my wife.

Rejection.

As the image above states, rejection is something that starts from a very early age and you should get used to it but it is something i have never been able to handle all to well. Sure you tried but who in their right mind likes to be rejected.

I for one personally hate being rejected, i had been given a task from my Job Coach that i have been seeing over the last few weeks to give companies a call and see if it would be possible to get what we call in Sweden a Praktikplats basically translated it means a Practice Place. So what happens is you find a company willing to give you a praktikplats and then you go and work there for around 3 months, you don't get paid from the company but the government themselves give you a small pay, it isn't much something like 50kr per week or something there abouts but you get experience which is what most companies look for when you are looking for work.

Well today i decided to sit down, phone in hand and start making some phone calls, i had written up a list of about 7 different companies that seemed to interest me in terms of what they did and what i'm interested in (all of them pretty much computer related since i'm a computer geek) but let's just say it did not go well at all, keep in mind that i am still learning Swedish and although people say my Swedish is great i still feel very self-conscious when speaking to people, but i put that aside and gave it my all.

7 different companies, 7 different no's, i have to admit that most of them were really nice about it and explained to me why they couldn't take on a praktikplats, but it still didn't make the rejection any better. Even having it in the back of my mind that it would happen didn't make it better, the reason i had it in the back of my mind was because my Job Coach had said to me to try but expect alot of them to just say no without even considering it because that's just how it is but it made me feel utterly crap.

But i tried i guess and that is all i can do, at least when i go to my meeting with my Job Coach on Friday i can say yes i did it, and i tried my hardest and see if there is anything she is able to do since she said last time we met that she would also try and get me a Praktikplats and with her being a job coach that it might be a lot easier for her to get me one than me phoning up random companies, but i wanted to try and although i didn't succeed and feel really bad right now, i'm still pretty proud of myself for doing it. Phoning and talking to people about things like this has never been my strong suit, not even in English so to go out and do it in Swedish is just even better.

I didn't succeed but i haven't given up either, i am sure that something will come up i just need to keep fighting.

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

Children's Friends.

About a month ago my fiancée made a blog post about our son Maximus's friends at first i thought nothing of it because well sometimes children go through phases where the adopt a attitude problem, and Max? well unlike most he normally has the biggest attitude.
He ain't a bad kid he is just very easily influenced by people, unfortunately the influence doesn't extend to his parents, i guess it's because we try and teach them good things, like being respectful and things like that.

But on Friday i finally found out that what she wrote couldn't have been more accurate.

So the story begins on Friday when i took the boys up to school, on the way up Max was his normal self, pretending to be on a motorcycle with his brother and generally chatting away and just being a normal kid, laughing and talking about the stars and moons with his brother Alexander, and telling me what they were going to do today, everything was nice and then.....

We entered the school and who was there? well remember my guest blog post about the mother who had no control over her child and was basically more of a friend to him rather than a parent? well he was there and apparently Maximus and him have become good friends. It all became apparent that he was part of the cause to why Maximus thinks he can get away with talking to everyone like dirt and generally acting like a little brat.

After getting there jacket and shoes off we went into the after-school program class where they start in the morning and Max took off into the other room where this little boy who i shall not name was sitting playing, now normally they come up give me a hug and cuddle (Yes they started doing that again, apparently it is now cool to do so again) but this time Alexander was only one that came up to do so. 

Alex then proceeded to shout to Max and ask him "Are you not going to come and say goodbye to Ben" to which the reply was a very harsh scream of "Noooooo, i don't want to!!!!". In all honesty i am not that bothered if he doesn't want to come and say goodbye but what really made me want to go through and slap him off the back of the head was the attitude that came with it, safe to say i didn't.

But i just couldn't believe that in the space of not even 5 minutes that he managed to go from being this semi-sweet little boy walking up to daycare on his pretend motorbike talking and laughing with his brother to this little boy with a attitude problem.

So what are we to do? we can't tell Max that he can't play with "x, x & x" because of course if we did he would no doubt go to school and when the little boy or boys asked him to play he would turn around and say "No, my mum & Ben said i'm not allowed to play with you" which of course will just generate more problems, such as parents coming up and asking us why we don't want our child playing with theirs etc but at the same time i don't want him to have this attitude problem either that he seems to be adopting lately.

I'm pretty much lost as to what we can do to stop him from playing with them, since it's more than obvious this is where his problems are coming from, obviously seeing these children talk to people like dirt etc puts a thing in his mind where he thinks it's ok. Of course we are telling him off and putting him to his room in severe cases but i would rather that he not play with them at all. 

So what are you thoughts? or idea's for that matter? I would be really interested to see if any of you guys have experienced it and how you handled it.

Haircuts - Should Children Decide..

There is very few things that myself and my fiancée Marie disagree upon when it comes to raising the children, sure there is a few things here and there but most of the time (I'd say probably about 99% of the time) we both agree or i am able to put my point across in such a way that she actually see's the logic in why i am saying or doing something towards the children.

Most people would probably say i'm a pretty strict parent, although i would disagree with them on that i just feel that being parent is exactly that parenting and i refuse to let me kids do and decide stuff that they shouldn't be deciding upon, but yesterday myself and Marie had a conversation about haircuts and i wanted to get everyone else's opinion on it, it's not so i can get one up on Marie because normally when it comes to this subject i win anyways, but i wanted to see what everyone else thought.

So the kids hair is getting to that stage that it badly needs a good cutting (saying that they are not the only one, but i have my appointment booked for next Friday so yeehaa!), but every time this event comes around we always end up in the same discussion, the discussion normally begins because Maximus one of our twin boys is determined that he wants a Mohawk, to me a 6 year old with a Mohawk is the most ridiculous thing i have ever heard or seen in my entire life (Yes! i actually googled Children + Mohawk in google images and had a look at them).


Personally i feel that children at least at the age of 6 shouldn't really have a say in what sort of haircut they get, i mean if you let children decide important things like this they will come up with most stupid and ridiculous things possible, and to me a Mohawk is exactly that. But as i said every time it's time to get their haircut he goes on about it and each time i tell Marie that i refuse to let him get one, but do you think i'm right?
Sure it's not like it's going to kill him or anything like that, it's not exactly a bad thing i just personally think it looks stupid on children and who is the one that going to have to get him up every morning and put hair products in his hair to make it stand up like a real Mohawk should? me!

For people who don't know me i am NOT a morning person, it is the worse time of day to speak to me, see me or just generally know me. So having to spend "x" amount of time messing around with hair products to get his hair to stand up and look stupid just doesn't really appeal to me.

But what are your thoughts and opinions on this? should i let my son who has been going on about a Mohawk for about 2 years (Yes he started going on about it when he was 4 years old, and don't ask me where in gods name he came up with it) now get one? or should i stick to my guns and make him get a "normal" haircut? I would be really interested to see what everyone's opinion was.

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

Children's Nightmares.

Last night turned into quite the adventure it seems for Marie, it would have turned into one for me too but i think i was just to tired to wake up for anything, although i really have no idea but it just seems as Marie said to me last night that when it comes to this time of the month you feel more and more tired, it must be have something to do with the weather changing and the fact it gets alot darker alot quicker this time of year. Literally by the time 6pm comes around over here the stars are already coming out.

But last night we were both woken up by the sound of Alexander standing in our door saying "Mamma" over and over again, i have no idea why he doesn't just come up and poke us to wake up and instead insists on standing in our door way repeating himself for however long he stands there before we finally awake. Eventually however we did wake up to find out that our little boy had a nightmare, so Marie told him to go back to bed and try and go back to sleep and that everything was ok it was just a bad dream and it would be alright, so off he went back to bed.

I have no idea how long past but then i was woken up by him doing the exact same thing and found out he had another, i tried then to tell him to head back to bed and put his bedroom lights on and try and go back to sleep again so off he went, but apparently it didn't end there, i have no idea how long it lasted but Marie informed me this morning that she had been up at least 4 more times with him during the night with the same thing, taking him back to bed and trying to soothe him to get him to fall back asleep.

But it then occurred to me that i hate nightmares, especially when children have them because it leaves you feeling so helpless, i mean what can you literally do? you can't take the dreams away, all you are able to do is tell them that they are just bad dreams and that everything will be ok and try and comfort them the best you can and that is it.
It just reminds me so much of when i was a kid, some nights my mum & dad would be in my bedroom around 20 times trying to get me back to sleep after having nightmares and i now understand how frustrating and worthless it leaves you feeling when all you want is your child to have a good nights sleep but they are constantly disturbed by bad images going through their little heads.

I have no idea what he was dreaming about as i never asked, i really should as i think it would be interesting to find out what he considered to be a bad dream, but it must have been something really bad as i have never seen or heard him get up that many times during the night because of it, i guess it is something i should ask him when he comes home from school today.

But what about you? how do you deal with your children when they have nightmares, perhaps you are able to give me a few pointers in the way of helping your children during what is really a awful time for them. I will however say i'm one of these parents that are Anti children in bed so any advice of letting them sleep in your bed is out of the window, but anything else i would be really interested in.

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