MrsB

I didn’t take my DSLR to Estonia this year. It’s too heavy to carry around every day and I figured that since I’ve taken plenty of ‘proper’ photos of Estonia already, I’ll have an Instagram holiday this year. If you follow me on Instagram (or FB if you know me in Real Life), you’ve seen [...]

We arrived back in London last night and the muggy heat that welcomed us made me so happy (I’m a sucker for nasty hot weather :). Today, however, after mucho unpacking and cleaning and tidying and errands, I’m tired and a bit blue. …

The days here are nicely monotonous – we wake up, go for a walk, sit in a cafe with wifi while Oliver sleeps, go to a playground/bowling/swimming, go home around 4, go for a run and/or massage while mom looks after the kids, have dinner, put kids to bed by 9, watch the olympics until [...]

After 6 months of not eating any refined sugar, I am finding it impossible to resist the pastries here in Estonia. Oh well. A bit of holiday indulgence won’t completely kick me off the wagon… I am sure of it because once I’m back in London, nothing will tempt me so much – no baked [...]

After a bit of travelling at the beginning of this holday, we have now settled into my mom’s place in Haapsalu and will stay here until we fly back to London on the 19th of August. We swim a lot, walk a lot, visit our favorite cafes a lot. The boys have bikes here and [...]

After a couple of days in Tallinn we spent a few days in south Estonia at my uncle’s farm. It was all about chickens and kittens and a big friendly dog, and a few trips to lake beaches. I blew my sugar free status – when it gets really hot I just have to have [...]

Just as weather has turned really nice here in London, we are off to Estonia for 4 weeks. I know though that the sunshine will follow us there and am looking forward to life in the slow lane. The kids have their bags packed full of dvds and Mr.Men books, I still have to locate [...]

There was singing and dancing and games and bouncing and food and craft workshops and SUNSHINE! :D

We are back in London now after 6 days in Tallinn. It was a shame that we didn’t see any snow, but it meant that we were able to get around town with the pram and do a bit of sightseeing and shopping.

Will reflect on Christmas later on, but here are a few snapshots from our walks.

I saw an image on my Facebook wall today that said:

“If you really want to Occupy Wall Street,
do your holiday shopping at a small independent merchant”.

It’s a great idea, I think… to support the little guys as we start getting closer and closer to Christmas…

One of the prettiest blogs that I know, little red buttons, has weekly Etsy Treasure Lists, and today I thought I’d give a try at making one myself. [...]

My little one has just started to call me “mommy”. He’s almost 3.

Puzzled?

The thing is that in our household I have always been “emme”* and J has always been “issi”** – the kids call us that even when they speak English to us. [...]

Nondigitally Estonian is the name of a photography exhibition that we went to see today in the Europe House. The photos were all taken by the children who go to the Estonian School here in London – for a week in March they had a disposable camera and the “homework” was to take photos of their life in London.

The exhibit was fascinating, mainly because at first glimpse the photos are random and most of them sort of blurry, but when I read the descriptions written by the curators, the photos all of a sudden became very intriguing – I guess that’s what good curating does :) [...]

The Estonian School in London started with lessons this Saturday. From now until next summer, half or most of our family will be spending every other Saturday morning in Chiswick – Oskar will be at school and others will be hanging out in the nearby Chiswick House Gardens.

There is a playground there, plenty of green space for kicking the ball around and a cafe that has very slow service but decent coffee and a great selection of cakes. There are always lots of people with dogs in the cafe, it’s almost like a dog show every time we’ve been there :)

All in all, it’s not a bad place to hang out on weekends. When it gets colder, we’ll venture inside the Chiswick House one day to check out the beautiful rooms inside. [...]

Saturday morning, Notting Hill.

The Estonian School in London started its third school year in the Estonia House in NH on Saturday. There are no classes until next weekend, but there were a few speeches, a lot of good food and a lot of time to catch up with friends whom we haven’t seen most of the summer.

After the official event, many of the Estonian School moms went to continue the catch-up. I wanted to have an afternoon with all my 3 boys so I sent my proxy, as I’ve done previously.

The proxy is my mother of course – my mother does indeed hang out with my friends. Weird, but everyone seems to think she’s a kick a** mother :) And the benefit for me is that I hear all the gossip and prevent anyone from gossiping about me :D [...]

13 girls and 7 boys came to our reunion. Most of us had studied together for 8 years so no one had trouble recognising each other. Except for that one girl who didn’t have flaming red hair anymore, she left a few people puzzled.

Amazingly our teacher, let’s call her Mrs S, didn’t recognize me. I know I was a bit ugly and awkward and had humongous glasses and big frizzy hair back then, but I didn’t think that I had turned into an unrecognizable stunner in the 20 years since :) [...]