The sun has been shining for an unprecedented number of days in a row. Yesterday the sky was solid blue all day long and today there are little white fluff-clouds floating around. The trampoline is up and the pots have been planted with multi-colored pansies. Spring is here and we want to wish YOU a very Happy Easter!
One of the best things about elementary school was the preparations for each holiday as it approached. I shudder to think how many trees elementary school children go through in the form of construction paper. The whole school would be transformed by the new decorating scheme each month: orange & black for Halloween, orange & brown with gold buckles for Thanksgiving, red and green for Christmas, green for St. Patrick’s Day and of course, in February the brightest colors to cheer up the blah-est month: red & pink for Valentine’s Day! All the kids would bring shoeboxes from home and...
Turns out staying up until 3:30 a.m., after eating a huge feast and standing outside in the cold for an hour with your neck craned will decimate you nearly as much as if you were drunk while doing it. At least if you are 29, like me. Even though I’ve been in training all of vacation for the staying up until 3 a.m. part of New Year’s Eve, today was pretty much a complete wash. The teenager blew us off last night, so we were only 15, but man, the 5 kids (2 of whom were ours) made it feel...
If you are sad, we wish you joy. If you are sick, we wish you health. If you are lonely, we wish you friendship. We wish you peace and love and cookies! May this holiday, whether bright with sunshine or smothered in snow, be the start of a year full of blessings for all our family and friends, wherever they may be around this great glowing globe.
The children are lying all tucked in their beds. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and there has been too much cookie-eating in this house and not enough carol-singing. I plan to sing carols all day tomorrow except when we are actually at my sister-in-law’s house since I know my kids will kill me dead if I try it there. 😛 Most of the presents are already wrapped and under the tree, except for the super secret Santa ones and the stocking stuffers. Tomorrow is the last (thank the baby jesus and his red-nosed friend) julbord of the year. We are contributing...
Well, even though I’M done shopping, Martin still wants to buy something for his father, and even though Anders is going shopping tomorrow (for me!) Martin doesn’t want to go with him, as he doesn’t want Anders to guess what his present is, so I guess I have to go brave the malls again. I also have to go to Lund anyway to see if the optician is open because my eyeglasses broke this morning…one of the earpieces came loose… (they’re very discreetly taped for the moment) to see if they can be repaired. 🙁 ARGH. The sun was shining...
The holidays are now officially in FULL swing! Vacation is upon us and it’s only 5 days to Christmas! Wheee! I stopped by the postal counter after work to mail a late present to my sister and pick up a package, which turned out to be a HUGE box from my brother, and while I was there I peeked in the bargain DVD bin and lo! what to my wondering eyes should appear but a 59 kronor copy of The Polar Express which we’ve never seen, so I bought that for myskväll. Then we all went back into town: the...
I still have the 2 batches of sugar cookie dough in the fridge, as we ran out of time this weekend. They take the longest of all the cookies to do, what with the rolling and cutting and patching and baking and swabbing with sugar glaze and decorating with red hots and colored sugars and dragees and sprinkles and nonpareils. We’ll do them this coming weekend, most probably, along with watching The Grinch. So, because I had limited time possibilities this evening, I whipped up a batch of green Holiday Balls instead and undercooked them on purpose and they were...
What a long day this has been! In fact, what a long weekend! I’m really looking forward to vacation now. 5 more days! 5 more days! 3 more choir Christmas concerts today for a total of 7 (I missed 3 others which were during work hours or it would have been 10 total) and now I’m free from choir until the end of January. The 3 performances today were at 2 different elderly care homes in Malmö; the second one we sang in 2 different departments. It’s kind of funny, the reactions we get from the people living there. Some...
I’m pouting right now. Sulking, nearly. It’s not attractive, I can tell you, yet my sad little pouty heart doesn’t care because it is feeling VERY put out. This morning was a leisurely one, what with the waking up early but going back to sleep. Dreams shivered past, helping to erase the disappointing memories of a work Christmas party gone terribly wrong and boring. Got up at a decent hour, had breakfast and then we set out for Dalby and the tree nursery where we met up with friends and traipsed about in the woods, hunting for the perfect Christmas...