Tis the Season

I  love Christmasy time, don't you? We got all the decorations up the 2nd last weekend of November and have been enjoying bright lights and relaxing by the glow of the fake tree ever since. We've been to and had our share of parties and though I swore we were "done" until 2012, I managed to invite the neighbours over for some holiday cheer this Wednesday night. Well the families of the three little kiddies the little man enjoys playing with.

We will not be "home" for Christmas this year but I'm ok with it. After a month spent in Canada this summer, I'm still running on family steam and am just as happy to relax cozily here in our home away from home, Sweden. We'll spend Christmas Eve (which is the day they really celebrate here) with our Swedish "family" and then feast on our turkey Christmas Day.

Temps have been unseasonably mild the past few months with only two baby snowfalls. A request to Santa via Facebook status to please send us some snow for Christmas was met with snowfall #2, thanks Santa. And with sticky snow, my uber creative husband gets his hands wet. And voila! Most people build snowmen, hubby creates snowangels :-).

Hope you're all enjoying the very best of the season: family, friends and food!

xo

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...

On our way "home" or "back"?

Well it's been a hectic, fun-filled time with family and friends back "home" in Ontario, Canada. More on that later.

But now I'm sitting in my sister-in-law's dining room, severly overweight bags packed and proudly sporting an extra 10 lbs of holiday goodness. Counting down the hours until the waterworks begin and we head down to the airport for our very long journey "home". Not sure where "home" is anymore but it sure doesn't feel like Sweden, especially after being "home" for 3 weeks..sigh.

I haven't blogged, I haven't surfed and I've barely facebooked for 3 weeks. Instead, I had meaningful conversation and loads of laughter and nasty amounts of forbidden food with most of the people that mean the most to us in this world. And it felt good. It felt real good. By this time, I'd usually be eager to hop on the plane and get home to the comfort of our space and our stuff. But this time, even after sleeping on couches and too-small beds with little privacy, I don't want to leave.

I think it's soon time for another big change in our lives. But we'll see. We'll roll with it and we'll fly.

Happy New Year to All of You!

Over and out and Merry Christmas!

Well our blessed little trio is headed home for the holidays starting tomorrow. Overworked hubby really needs a break so I'm super glad we opted to stay in a cottage instead of with the family, at least for the first 10 days of our trip.

It was difficult breaking the news to eager family at first but now they seem more excited than we are and will make sure everything's all set up before we arrive.

Hubby is a little perturbed still, wondering why we couldn't take the money and relax somewhere on a beach in the sun, sipping fruity drinks and watching our son frolick in the sand. Much like our dear friends here are doing.

Unfortunately, our dear friends have their family here. We, on the other hand, are overseas and taking precious vacation without visiting family is well, a sin. ha! I did promise him (again) that the next time, we'd take some time for ourselves. But I can't imagine Christmas without our extended family around. And I am also trying to convince myself that hubby would have been longing for family on the 25th in the middle of downing Mai Tai's.

So bags are almost packed and we'll be flying the (hopefully) friendly skies back home to those we love and cherish starting tomorrow. I'm hoping I packed enough toys and stuffs to keep the 3-year old relatively occupied on the 12-hour journey. Who am I kidding? I overpacked as usual.

Feeling bad for those who booked their trips through British Airways this holiday season though.

Wish us luck, safe travels, health, happiness and all that. And I wish you all the same and a very Merry Christmas/Holiday Season. Jenn xoxo

Giddy with Christmas Spirit

T-minus 1 week until we hit the (hopefully) friendly skies from Stockholm to Toronto. I can't wait...
- To see FAMILY
- For Joe to see FAMILY again
- For FAMILY to see Joe again
- To settle into our own home away from home. That's right folks. We were brazilliant this year and opted (much to the chagrin of family) to dig our heels firmly into the ground and rent our own cottage over the holidays, merely a 3-minute drive from the main family. Hooray!
- To resurrect our Annual Christmas Party
- To put Joe on Santa's knee
- For Santa!!!


I CAN wait...
- For the chaos that always ensues, regardless of where we're staying
- The dreaded flights with a little guy
- For jetlag
- For overeating and over consumption of alcohol
- For hubby to look into our wallet and say, "Where did all the money go?!"

Sing with me: I'll be home for Christmas....

First Advent

I've been complaining a lot about how lonely it is in this country and how it's so hard to make friends cuz the folks here are, to put it politely, reserved. To put it bluntly, Stuck Up.

But today I was reminded of how blessed we are to be here.

Today was the 1st of Advent. For a not-too-religious country, they sure take the four weeks leading up to Christmas very seriously. I don't know of anyone, save us, that doesn't have four advent candles (on my shopping list). Every Sunday a candle is ceremoniously lit in every house until Christmas Day; here's it's the 24th, when all four are glowing.

Swedes are big on tradition. Today we were invited to spend the day celebrating with our adopted Swedish family and their real family. We celebrated a daughter's birthday, a cousin's immigration to Sweden from Armenia and the 1st of Advent. As is customary in the weeks leading up to Christmas, the food was "Julbord", which means Christmas Table. An array of yummy foods including ham, this amazing scalloped potato dish called Jonsson's Surprise, pickled herring (it was seriously to.die.for), red beet salad and of course, meatballs. And those are just the highlights.

There were too many of us to count.

And after we feasted, we migrated along with the rest of the townsfolk, to the botanical gardens to witness the annual 1st of Advent firework display. Even amidst a heavy fog, it was impressive. The little guy was in awe.

These reserved Swedes truly astound me when it comes to preserving age-old customs and celebrating as a community. I should also mention we partook (is that a word?) in "Julmarknad", which means Christmas market, in downtown Uppsala yesterday. "Since 1287". Yup, that's how long they've been doing the Christmas market. Outdoor Christmas Craft Fair with pony rides and a petting zoo for the kiddies. Well worth shivering for.

But it wasn't the Jonssons or the fireworks or the white pony or even the wine. It was being a part of centuries worth of tradition with our Swedish family. As they have for over 10 years now, they wrapped us up in their inner circle. We were the only non-family there and that, my friends, was a very special blessing. Today we were far from lonely.