Remember when I declared 2014 my year of new experiences? Well, I'm still at it! We had a month of great experiences and once again the whole family participated.

Here's what I/we experienced in April:

I have a habit of buying allthethings for allthepeople and hardly ever anything for myself. During our recent trip to Victoria I caught myself looking at stuff and thinking: "I should buy that for myself. No, I don't really need it. I should buy something for Marius/Pauline/Roland instead."

The truth is that not a single person in our family really *needs* anything. We are pretty lucky and have everything we need - and then some. 

So - just for the hell of it I decided to treat myself and buy something that I want and thoroughly enjoy it. 

I present you with my loot:

As you might have seen on my social media channels, my family and I went on a little trip to Victoria, BC recently. My expectations are always high, and while our vacations usually turn out to be far from perfect, my husband and I have developed a concept that at least ensures our survival (with our sanity as intact as possible - and yes, that is still debateable).

I know what you're thinking - and the answer is: No, you cannot leave the kids at the same kennel that boards your dog. Believe me, I tried. Here is the secret: you need to anticipate which questions the kids will ask and you need to have the answers ready, including a logial explanation and a back-up plan.

Here are a few examples:

My oldest works in a hardware store on the weekends, and on Sundays his boss buys lunch for the whole crew. This Sunday they ordered Chinese food and when he came home from work, he shared his fortune with me:

A few weeks ago I came across an article on LinkedIn. I don't even know how I found it, since I'm not on LinkedIn and refuse to sign up for yet another Social Network - yet I saw the link somewhere and clicked on it because I didn't even know that LinkedIn has a publishing platform and I was curious. 

(Wow. That was probably the worst introductory sentence to a blog I've ever written, but my head has been so full of client projects, unruly children and whatnot that I can't even get myself to change it because it respesents my current state of mind rather accurately - a little bit too long-winded and slightly confused. I'm glad I already established that I'm a writer in my post earlier this week.)