The one where I pat myself on the back and make some resolutions

The holiday season sort of officially ends the day after tomorrow and not-so-coincidentally so does 2010. As much as we missed our families this Christmas, I amazed myself by giving our family a great Christmas. I did it! I threw a huge party, I baked some amazing holiday treats, I made us and some friends a traditional Christmas feast with all the trimmings and I was organized enough to get most of my shopping done well before Christmas Eve (thank you amazon). I'm not just patting myself on the back, I'm slapping myself! But I can't take all the credit..nope. Hubby was there through it all, mainly in the role of cleaning up after me and doing the ahem "manly" jobs like erecting the tree, stringing the lights and mopping up after the flash flood that occurred in our kitchen an hour before the big bash.

And now 2011 is looming. We're celebrating tonight at a house party with the little man in tow. I swear next year I'm gonna slap a TAXI sign on our VW for Christmas Eve. Trying to book a taxi (which you can apparently do here with a handful of cab companies) was a fruitless endeavor as I left that to the last minute. I even resorted to calling "companies" that I believe were fronts for other ahem businesses. Nobody wants to drive us. So I might be the only sober chick at the party. Meh...I'm telling myself I don't need to drink to have a good time...ha!

Poor Little Man has been asking to go to school nearly every day this past week. Being an only child, hubby and I are his only playmates on "off days" so feeling bad, I got out the school directory and invited some of his little girlfriends over for a playdate. They arrived with their lovely Mommy and we took to the hills with our sleds. A few lectures about sharing later and we were on our way back to the house for some fika. The 3. 4 and 5 year olds played well together. Little Man was obviously upset when they had to leave so asked for a parting hug..which he received twice. Like father like son: He went in for the kiss. The 5-year old wasn't so sure but the 3-year old came up to Little Man, pushed him up against the wall and planted a HUGE smacker right on his kisser. Careful what you wish for. Stunned for a moment, he then proceeded to do what most little boys do, he wiped it off. It was priceless.

So, 2011. I have resolved to make no resolutions. But maybe I will make a few, you know, to make some. But they will all revolve around Health & Happiness for 2011. Quitting bad habits and replacing them with good ones and one I know for damn sure....Getting back to learning Swedish. I slacked off the last half of 2010 and lately, I have realized just how important it is for me to have command of this language. So there's a concrete resolution: To learn Swedish, no matter what it takes.

What are your resolutions for 2011? How are you ringing in the New Year? My last post received no comments and I blame that on two things: 1) It's Christmas and bloggers are taking some much needed time away from their screens and 2) I've been one lazy blogger the last few months. Not that I will resolve to blog more often but I will resolve to blog when the urge hits. As it did this morning. Now off to scrub, launder and have a much-needed shower.

Love and Peace to you all! Jenn and fam.

Merry Christmas to you and yours

Well hello there strangers. Yes, it's been forever, well since December 3rd actually. Truth be told: Been way too busy to blog: planning parties, hosting parties, going to parties, baking, eating, drinking and more eating. I have 2.5 extra kilos to show for it folks...but so worth every yummy bite. Here's a recap of what we've been up to, so we can catch up properly.
- We celebrated hubby's 2nd 50th Birthday party here at home. I stressed over it for weeks but a big pot of homemade chilli, some dips and a lot of good folks and it was a success.

- There was no "home for the holidays" this year. Instead, we opted to stay put in snowy Sweden and buy and bake Christmas. Yup, I baked. This is rather monumental for me. As many of our memories are wrapped up in food, I got busy baking the squares and shortbreads my Mom was famous for. They turned out great! We were invited to celebrate December 24th (Christmas Day here in Sweden) with our "foster family" and feasted on traditional Julbord (that's Christmas table). Pickled herring, Christmas ham, meatballs, Janssons (this yummy potatoe dish to die for), salads, etc. DELISH.

And then it was time  to leave cookies, milk, carrots and sugar out for Santa and his reindeer. Noone told me that they make special reindeer food to sprinkle outside...we'll get some for next year.

 Little man must have been really good this year cuz Santa left quite the haul for him. I tried something nouveau this year and did 80% of my shopping online and boy was that a bright idea. Not as much stressing around at the last minute, that's for sure and I was also able to buy a lot of English-language stuff. I guess the one thing I hadn't counted on was that because I was ordering from amazon.co.uk, that English-language stuff is actually "British English". So I'm sitting next to the 4-year old right now whose repeating words from his Little Einstein's DVD with the cutest accent, "Zehbras" vs. "Zeeeebras".

On Christmas Day, instead of slaving over a hot stove, we opted to spend the day chatting with our dear family on Skype. I'd like to thank whoever it was who invented it..we'd never have lasted as long as we have overseas without it.

And so, on the 26th, we invited some friends over to join us in celebrating Canadian Christmas: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, carrots, salad and more. Pretty scary preparing it all myself but I did it! With a lot of help from the hubby.

The only thing missing this year was a visit to church but we kept Christ in Christmas in our hearts.

So that's the play-by-play on our Christmas month. Now we get ready to celebrate New Year's Eve and I try my darndest to work off these extra 5lbs by the time 2011 rings in.

Hope you're all enjoying your time with family and friends. I hope to get back into the swing of things come 2011. Thanks for being patient with me while on my hiatus. Oh and I'm feeling much better..digestive thing almost solved :-).

Lots of love to you all, Jenn xo

Winter's been here for awhile now

Well friends. The other day, we woke up to a balmy -18 here in Uppsala. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Well, except for those poor Australian kids. How they manage to get into the Christmas spirit with +25 and a Santa in a Hawaii shirt, I'll never know. In this season of giving, I'd like to propose an exchange program. I would begrudgingly, in the name of all that is good and right, force my teary-eyed boys onto an airplane this December to switch places with one of those poor, deprived Aussie families. It's the right thing to do. So please, if you know of a family in need, get in touch.

"Little Man, you're not supposed to hit Mommy." "I didn't do it, you did," he fires back with full confidence. Geez, maybe I did? No, wait. Hey...you  little fibber! Have had to find a way to explain "lying" to a 4-year old. Still working on different analogies.

Been a busy season for us what with all the decorating, visiting, eating and turning up and down the heat. Oh and the online shopping of course. Yup, this year I decided to get all technical and stuff. Even had the fams send through some gift cards for amazon.co.uk. Amazing how much time you can spend sitting on your ass clicking around for Christmas prezzies (still half the time and stress involved running around with a zillion other shoppers). Because I couldn't very well leave online shopping to the last minute, I made sure I had everything ordered yesterday with a guarantee on the website that my parcels would arrive before Christmas. phewf.

And because I know my way around the site now, I made sure everything I ordered was both "in stock" and direct from Amazon (as opposed to some 3rd party merchant). So I get some emails last night to confirm that my orders had already been dispatched. They took my bulk order and split into two shipments. No matter, I was eligible for Free Super Saver Shipping, delivery between 7 and 10 working days. Hip, hip, hurray. And then...Only to sit in horror while processing the following line of text for one of my two shipments: "Expected delivery date: December 31st". WTF?????????????????? (the other one said December 20th...wtf?) Cue scathing email to amazon.co.uk customer service with words like "misleading" and "you better" and "asap" and "angry".

So I get a response back to the effect that yes, there was a mistake in the estimated delivery time and a guarantee that my parcel will arrive before December 31st... but no guarantee that it will arrive before Christmas. So I will now spend a significant portion of my already busy day yelling at some poor customer service professional.

Ahhh...the joys of the season. Speaking of such joys, we decided to throw a Christmas party/Hubby's 50th Birthday party here in Uppsala at the house on December 18th. The idea being to replace our disappointment in not getting home with festive cheer and presents! Well, we actually know a few more ppl. then we thought we did and with a guest list of 25 and ALL 25 CONFIRMED (and a few stragglers we feel so bad about not inviting that we may have to), we're sorta screwed. Especially if they bring their kids.  Our 2-level townhouse will not fit that many revelers. So what now? It's Christmas. It's not like we have extra cash to hold it at some hall. So instead, we squish everyone together and pray no one notices their body is pressed up against some stranger's ass.  Oh and the kids. You see in this country, if you have small children and you're invited to a house party, you usually bring said small children. I was worried about this so stated somewhere in the invite that the party is for big kids but if you want to bring your little kids, you can (as my little kid ain't goin' nowhere). What I should have said is: If you can't leave your kids at home, don't bother coming. Insert F-word.

And instead of having it catered, which costs a bloody fortune, I'll be sweatin' in the kitchen most of the time. And they don't have any of those wonderful little stores in Canada that sell frozen, boxed and yummy hors d'oeuvres so I have to make such things myself. Say hello to one freaked out Canadian woman.

If someone, anyone has even the tiniest suggestion for my party dilemma, please, please share it now. I'll owe you one.

I'll get it all figured out. Just breathe Jenn. Breathe.
Happy decorating and entertaining and gift purchasing and stressing Merry Ones! xoxo

It's been awhile...Merry Christmas!

So we've decided we are not headed home for the holidays this year. Cue pity party. Instead, we went out and bought Christmas today. Thank you IKEA for the ornaments and Bauhaus for the fake tree. And 300 bucks later....Christmas! Yes, our tree is up and fully decorated along with the rest of the house. Well...almost.

We always start early but this year was the earliest. We usually wait until next weekend at least, American Thanksgiving. But maybe cuz' we're already sad about not flying home to be with our family we're placating ourselves with early Christmas cheer.

And we are likely the first family in Uppsala to have everything up, as confirmed by a few Facebook friends and the neighbour lady who I overheard exclaim in Swedish as I was taking the garbage out and she, bringing her groceries in, "Wow. Christmas!"

So I've been a bit absent lately cuz I've had some stuff on my mind. Not feeling the greatest health-wise these days, something with my esophagus but noone is sure exactly what. So the ENT specialist has me on some GERD medication which woke me up from a comfy slumber TWICE this morning with a raging case of the runs. TMI? You betcha.

So we'll see what happens in a month or so. Either I'll be close to death from dehydration and all better or the former and not the latter. So now you know why I've been MIA. And I've been avoiding exercising too because I'm afraid that the neck tightness I've been experiencing recently could be because I injured myself somehow. urghhh....

Back to Christmas. Well we've already been invited to spend the holidays with two sets of friends, so that will at least take the edge off. No sooner had I figured out what I'm getting hubby for Christmas and he announces today that he's getting himself a Christmas present and it's OF COURSE the exact thing I was all excited to get him...grrrr. I even checked in with all my expert friends and have it all picked out. So I think I'll order it anyway and when he proclaims he's on his way out to purchase it, I'll tell him it's too late.

Most of my holiday shopping will take place online this year. As it's so damn expensive to ship gifts from Canada, I've advised the grandparents to purchase gift certificates for amazon.co.uk and I'll shop there. What a modern holiday shopper I am.

It's getting dark early here now. Try 2:45pm. After the clocks went back I dealt with a very shoked and saddened Little Man, "Mommy, I don't want the sun to go down," he sobbed.  Neither do any of us. It's depressing.

Not much else in the way of news. Little Man and I made a trip to the library yesterday to return and borrow some more books and were pleasantly surprised to run into a friend of his from daycare and her Mom. And then even more thrilled to discover there was a Children's Fun Hour scheduled. We joined in with about 20 other kids and sets of parents and shook our bodies to some Swedish kiddie tunes. I faked my way through the words by displaying some expert "So You Think You Can Dance"-style routine mastery. I discovered Little Man is quite the lady killer...dragging his betrothed along by the hand in between hugs. So cute. He really has become a little Swedish kid with friends proclaiming that he speaks with absolutely no accent. How proud am I? And a little sad at the thought of leaving this country, and the language, behind one day. But only a little...

Little Man Wednesdays

The drive home from daycare just got 5 minutes longer (again), for a total of 20ish minutes. This is all thanks to the kiddies in town being back from a week off on Fall Break. Yes, they already had a week-long break...imagine. So how do we entertain ourselves in stop and go traffic? Endless loops of AC/DC..that's how.

And the only time I've ever wished for an iPhone to replace my 3-year old pink Samsung came as Little Man belted out the entire first verse to "Shook Me All Night Long". Ok so his version goes something like, "She was a fast machee. She kep her moto keen...." which made it the ultimate YouTube video. But alas, I wasn't able to capture the rare footage on "film"....just in my brain. And because Little Man is anything but a performing monkey, asking him to do it again will always result in him almost never doing it again.

It snowed. Actually it snowSTORMED here yesterday. 2 feet of the sticky white stuff. Someone was just a tad bit excited and ready to make a snowman. Unfortunately shopping for a snowsuit obviously took precedence. I would like to thank the Swedish Mothers Association for forgetting to send me the memo that says, "Shopping for children's snowsuits starts and ends in October." By the time we got to my two favourite stores, they had the wrong colours and the wrong sizes and no sign of new shipments until next year. So instead, we spent the same amount of money on an awesome faux fur lumberjack-inspired hat, gloves and a dicky at  my most favouritest (and obviously most expensive) kids store in Sweden, Polarn o Pyret...ahhhhhhhhhhhh.........So, hand-me-down snowsuit until I find the one I want, which MUST be a red one.

And today Little Man and Dad were out the door to start building a snowman when 2 minutes later they were back inside, "My tummy hurts. I'm gonna throwed up." Great. He was pale but no fever and in an hour, just fine. And no barfing either. But that certainly didn't stop him from yelling it multiple times from upstairs, trying to get out of bedtime, "Mommy, I wanna throwed up." He got me once but I quickly caught onto his little game. Of course, I could very well be eating my words in an hour or two. Smart kid though.

Speaking of smart kid, he's baking bread at school and oh so proud of his little self. And apparently, he's been tracing his letters in Swedish too. And you should hear the kid speak. We actually have to work more proactively on his English cuz while his Swedish is unbelievable, he's a bit behind on the native tongue front.

And the new favourite movie, "How to train your dragon". He insists on watching it once a day. Actually, he insists on 3x a day, I insist on once, while I'm making dinner.

God grant me the strength to make choices

A Wise Friend of mine once told me that life is all about choices. Sometimes we find ourselves saying, "But I don't have a choice." Like take for instance parents who say that phrase in relation to going out into the workforce as opposed to what they really want to do, which is stay at home with their kids. The argument could be that the extra income is needed to support the family. But you could choose to stay at home. You could cut back, move from your big house to an apartment, etc. But perhaps you value the big house and trips and well, food, so you make the choice to go to work.  Ok, so getting an illness is NOT a choice but how we deal with it...is. Some choices are certainly much harder to make than others and I think this all depends on your reality. Am I making sense here?

Well lately we are questioning our choices as a family. We are being taken advantage of and we feel boxed into our current situation, like we really don't have a choice as we do what we do and sacrifice what we sacrifice in the name of long-term security. But I have come to realize, thanks to thinking back on the philosophizing (made that word up i think) of Wise Friend, that we do have a choice. We can stand up for Us, what We want as a family and make a choice. We can choose to take back control over our lives and deal with the consequences, whatever they may be. Or we can choose the "easier" path, the one where we do nothing and wait with our fingers crossed. Where every day that goes by, a little bit of our patience, compassion, innocence and confidence is stripped away.

I can choose to say NO to continuing down a path I am not comfortable walking down. We can choose to demand respect. We can decide to pack up and leave this country tomorrow. We can. But every choice comes with its risks and rewards and each of those must be carefully weighed. But at the end of the day, it's simply a choice that you make. I think making the choice and as Wise Friend says, shouting it out to the Universe, is just as hard as dealing with the aftermath. Because if your choice is a difficult one to make, you likely already know the consequences and are mentally/physically preparing yourselves to deal with them. To summon the courage to say, "That's it. This is what we're doing. End of story," is as intimidating as it is liberating.

If you're now living out your latest choice and it's making you feel a combination of stressed, guilty, overworked, undervalued, bitter, resentful, angry, lonely, sad, confused, lost, little, weak, demeaned, lied to, etc. well, I bet it's time you made a different choice. And now I hear this verse in my head, an appropriate anthem really: "We're not gonna take it. No, we ain't gonna take it. We're not gonna take it, anymore."

ps. I just found out from hubby that the song lyrics I referenced are from a song by Twisted Sister. I NEVER would have guessed that in a million years. So, how cosmic do you think it is that the Wise Friend I'm referring to has a blog called, "Spiral Sisters" and that her post today prompted this essay?! Cue that weird music that plays when something is just plain freaky.

Halloween in Sweden: Showin' em' how it's done!

I am officially a heroine in my neighbourhood of young, hip Mommies. Just call me Martha Stewart.

Hubby and I decided on a whim that we were gonna throw a Halloween party for Little Man and the neighbourhood kiddies. I'll be honest: It was epic. Now if you were to transplant our Spooky Fest into Any Town, North America, it would have been mediocre at best. In fact there wasn't anything we did that hasn't already been done before...in North America that is.

You see here in Sweden, Halloween is a relatively new phenomenon, slowly growing in popularity over just the past 10 years or so. Pumpkin carvings a la cave man days, 30% of any given neighbourhood actually participating in trick or treating and the only costumes you'll find on the kiddies are of the scary variety.  No Buzz Lightyears to be found. And how about going trick or treating and receiving a handful of loose chips or 1 piece of candy? Now that's a fright.

So when we announced to the street that we were having a Halloween party, well everyone was excited to come and discover "what exactly do you do at a Halloween party"? I spent the week collecting Halloween-inspired recipes from family, friends and the Net and just when I thought I'd have to break out the construction paper and pipe cleaners, I discovered the new Toys R Us in town had a whole entire aisle of Halloween decor...woohooo!

Hubby is the creative one in the family so before you knew it, we had a poor, stuffed dude being crushed by Little Man's ride-on tractor, a front lawn full of tombstones, a floating witches hat and other spooky bits and bobs.

See for yourself!

We almost lost a few little party animals, however. You see, it took a few of them a good 15 minutes to make it to our door they were so scared, having never seen anything like this before. And then there were the activities. Nothing too inventive about cupcake decorating, bobbing for apples or sticking your hand in peeled grapes right? Wrong. "Jennifer, where did you come up with the idea to decorate "muffins"? "This is so creative." "I just got so much inspiration." Yes, my ego expanded to the size of a hot-air balloon. But I had to fess up, "We just do these things back home."

The one comment posted on facebook that sent me shuddering in terror, "You have just set the standard for all future Halloween parties." F-word. How the hell are we gonna outdo ourselves next year?!

Happy Halloween All! Love Marta Stewartsson, Buzz Lightyear (he was in costume for a record 10 minutes) and The King of Creativity, my hubby.

Now to work off the 2 kilos gained in the span of 5 days...Thank you birthday cake and Halloween candy! Oh, I almost forgot Hubby's handcarved, no stencils involved, pumpkins: