förlåt

Sorry sorry, I haven't written in ages! I have a lot to write about, but I am on my little vacation, so I am at Fredrik's house, without my computer. I do have access to his computer, but his computer keyboard is the devil. It's really the most frustrating keyboard I've ever typed on! So...I have pictures and updates about Valentines Day, how my vacation is going and all that. It will be fun. A little catch up and is easy to type, so I don't throw the computer out the window. Reading other blogs has inspired me and here is something I saw on another blog!

Right next to me:

Fredrik

On the stove tonight:

Honey beer glazed chicken breasts

On my neck:

The necklace Fredrik gave me, along with the necklace my mom sent me for Christmas.

In my head:

The 3 hours we spent at Fredrik's 'mormor' and 'morfar's' house. Grandma and Grandpa. What a wonderful time.

On the TV:

The British version of Cops! (Really stupid)

In my tummy:

The cowboy cookies I made and took to Fika with Fredriks grandparents.

Needs to be done:

Buy 4 chicken breasts.

Waiting on:

Some mail from the marriage office! COME ON!

Missing:

My mom and Chipotle

Happy about:

My life here in Sweden and the wonderful week I'm spending with my sweetie.

The Swedish thing of the day is the electrical outlet.

These are surprisingly hard to pull out of the outlet! And they are so big!

The Swedish word of the day is 'el-uttag' which is 'electrical outlet'. Interesting looking, eh?

Cooking

As you might have noticed from my newly revised list of blogs I follow, I found a lot of new blogs that I'm really into! They are all about cooking though! I have always loved cooking, but I am the kind of person that needs to be inspired by something to do it. Such as in high school, I was taking 2-3 art classes at a time, so I was painting and drawing ALL the time! Now, if I read these blogs, it makes me want to cook all the time. Plus, I have a nice situation here. They buy the groceries and I get to cook. I love it! Now, I love to cook food I know people will eat. There are a lot of great recipes, but they turn people off. And, I'm cooking for a 10 and 12 year old. So tonight I started with a grilled cheese. But this had, butter, garlic salt, gouda, parmesan, cheddar, pesto and and Italian black olive paste, and for the girls, some ham. They loved it! It was really good I might add. Pretty simple, but it's fun to add some interesting things to a normal meal. Tomorrow I'm going to make them "brinner" and try out some egg, bacon and cheese muffins! Mums! (yummy in Swedish!)

Also, I got great news last night, I get next week off! And Fredrik has it off too! So yay! The girls have "sportlov" which is a week they take in February (week 7, they label each week, I can't keep track of what week we are on, ever!) to go do sport stuff, usually skiing. So it's our version of Spring Break only a little earlier. Ernest parents are coming from Holland to help them pack (they are moving into the city in the summer, but to have the relator take pictures we have to put extra stuff away). So I get the week away from the house and away from work! I'm really happy about this. I needed a week to myself, and to spend with Fredrik. We are on a tight budget and saving to move to the US, but hopefully we can find some nice things to do together.

AND this Thursday we are all going to the Concert House to watch Andreas Brantelid who is a Swedish/Danish celloist. It's going to be so great! I love concerts and Mireille has seen him before and said it's so beautiful. It will be nice to do something with the girls and Mireille away from the house. And I won't be in charge! Just time to relax!

The Swedish thing of the day is Lingon Sylt. Lingon berries are very popular in Sweden. They resemble cranberries and have a similar taste. This jar is REALLY expensive, you can get the same thing in a plastic tube for a quarter of the price. I don't know if there is a different in taste or quality, but this is what we keep in our house. They eat this with meat balls and mashed potatoes, which is a VERY typical Swedish meal. You can also use it on pancakes and I recently used it in a frozen whipped cream dessert. Really tasty! I don't really like it on meat or with potatoes, but I think Fredrik could eat it everyday if I let him! :) Don't know what he is going to do in the US without it!


The Swedish word of the day is "köttbullar" which means "meatballs". Now this word is HILARIOUS for me to say because it sounds like "shuhtbullar". So...kind of sounds like "shitbullar". Yea. I can't say it without joking about it! I'm SO mature!

Glorious morning!

This is what I woke up to. It was absolutely beautiful. The video doesn't even do it justice. Aside from the poor lighting, you can't hear the birds chirping or the smell of chimney smoke. I needed a refreshing, sunny morning like this. I did my best to capture it, but of course, memories are always better than pictures. This is the view from the garage area. It's looking down towards our driveway. the first house is the family's house, then the guest house, my house is the one WAYYY up top tucked in the forest. Then of course, my car and the garage.

The rest of these are some pictures I took while on a short walk.

Icesicles outside of my house.

And up the driveway!

So aside from taking awesome sunrise pictures, tomorrow, Fredrik and I will make dinner for his family. I love to cook, and I love to cook for a lot of people. I think I'm going to make an Italian Cesear salad, Chicken Parmesean with Garlic Butter French Baguette and for dessert a Lingonberry Parfait with Almond Tuiles. I think I might even dip into some Italian Soda making. It's pretty easy, but who knows, some people are a little turned off by mixing milk with carbonated water! :) Who knows!

The Every day thing is...beer! In honor of the weekend!


The Swedish word is "öl" which is "beer" and pronounced "uhl". Pripps is the Brand and "blå" means "blue" and is pronounced "bloah". This isn't the only Swedish brand either, but it's definitely a favorite. I think it's their equivalent to Bud Light. It's pretty cheap.

Mycket snow

Much snow. That's all I have to say or can write about. It's all it has been doing here the past week. Everyday it snows! It's kind of magical and kind of frustrating. But in all honesty, I'm getting so used to driving in it, shoveling it, and walking it in, I'm just...used to it. Even though I do fondly look back on when I first arrived and it was so green, with trees, and grass and flowers. How I LONG for that! But soon enough. I can already see the longer daylight, which is comforting. I think it's an extra hour in the morning and afternoon every month. Yay! 2 hours is actually a lot of time, when you really think about it. Mmmm...I want this back!


This is the car of a friend of Ernest and Mireille. Their car broke down while they were here on a trip from Holland. So now, the car just sits here and accumulates snow. It's what I get to look at everytime I go up to my house.


And that is also my terrible, scary staircase that I get to shovel everytime it snows. I spent a good 2 hours shoveling this last week, and then it was sunny, and I put rock down and everything and was SO proud because they were safe and the sun melted the ice. The next day is snowed. I hate these stairs! They don't even look like stairs! Just a frightening snow slide!


And, the mailboxes. Our is the green one!

So this video is your everyday Swedish thing. It's sort of a strip mall, you can enter some stores on the outside, but you also go inside and enter the stores from there. It's nice for nice weather or crappy weather. The name of the center is "Solkatten" which means "The sun cat". Don't ask me. So, here is a little film of the Lerum townsquare during the snow falling. It's about 3 in the afternoon. When I point, that's my little red Kia Picanto parked, so cute, huh?! :)

Thoughts

2 little people in my life are going through a really tough time right now.

Jayden, who is 4, is going through her 2nd battle with cancer. She has a Wilm's Tumor which is located outside the kidneys, which is extremely rare. She is fighting and fighthing very hard, but she needs as many postive thoughts and positive energy as she can get. I'm thinking a lot about her, her family and my own family lately. As a matter of fact, it's consuming my life, as it is many other people who are close to me. So Baby Jay, I'm thinking about you! Keep fighting!


Jayden and her 18 month old sister, Trinity.

The other little guy is my 3 year old cousin, Sebastian. He was diagnosed with Mononucleosis. Which many people are very familiar with, but when it hits a 3 year old, it's very serious. So he also needs some thoughts and positive energy going his way as well. He's a tough guy with a HUGE support system of mom, dad, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Hopefully he will bounce right back to his same energized self! Thinking about you too, Seb!

Quite a sombering post, I know. But these little people are important to me, espeically children this age. It seems quite unreal and un fair.

On a much lighter note, it has been snowing here ALL DAY LONG! So we are adding a few inches to our already couple inches of ice and snow. Super. Just gotta get through it. Thank goodness I have Fredrik. He is doing his very best to keep me positive through a rough time in my life. I couldn't be any luckier to have such a supportive partner for the rest of my life.

So, here is your everyday thing.

Now this is just silly. This is what Swedish people think American's put on their hamburgers. See the weird looking pink stuff slithering down the hamburger? Yea, that's the "American Dressing" we supposidly put on our hamburgers. I don't know about you, but how many times have you put pink sauce from a pink tube on your hamburger? Never. Me too. It's kind of cute though, and they really like it. I tried it once and it tastes a lot like Long Island dressing. Which is something I would never put on a burger. But none the less, Swedes like burgers, and it's kind of a pride thing, when we really get to be the ones to take claim for creating the hamburger!

Now the Swedish word for the day will not be hamburger, because it basically looks the same, but is nearly impossible to say. So I am going to stick wtih "sauce" which is "sås" and pronounced "soahs". More or less. :)

Norge

Saturday morning we woke up pretty early and Fredrik joked, "we could go to Norway today." But he sort of looked at me in that way that you know your significant other is actually saying "let's go to Norway today." So I looked back and thought...is he serious? I said, "do you want to?" So we agreed and got busy showering, making coffee and planning to get money exchanged and grab my passport. What a great decision! We went to a border town of Halden and saw a huge fort from the...eh...1600s? The museum wasn't open, on a Saturday...guh...really, this town was pretty dead. But it was a blast to walk around and read the funny signs and hear the funny Norweigian people talk. I loved the spontaneity of the trip. Fredrik is such a wonderful man to do something like that for me. He knew I was itching for an adventure with him. We started our tradition, as my mom and Marshall do, buying a key chain every place they visit together. I love this, it's a great way to remember. We couldn't find a sourvenir shop! Ugh! But we found a place that sold some keychains and bought a big letter "N"...for Norway. It took us about 2 and a half hours to drive there, and the same back. Fredrik found I'm not so great to road trip with, especially around 11-1 because I have to pee, A LOT due to large coffee consumption. oops.

I cannot wait to share many more spectacular views with this man. He really is the man of my dreams and I'm so lucky to experience the world with him.As you can see we are kind of far up! :)Such a beautiful time to be up there...I love the pink sky and the mountains!

And here is your normal thing for the day. Some money, with a special edition...Norweigian money too! The top is "our" money which is "Kronor" and the Norwegian language is so close to Sweden they call it "Kroner". And if you are me and speak English you just call is a crown. Like 100 crowns. Haha, the easy way out! And I have no idea who the woman on the Norwegian money is, with some research I could find out, but I don't care so much. The guy on the Swedish money is Carl von Linne who was a Swedish botanist. The back image is a bee polinating a flower. Sooo cool! Their money is so much more colorful and I love the sparkly stuff on the edge! Random note, Norwegian coins have holes in the middle!

The Swedish word of the day is "pengar" which is "money" and is pronounced the way it looks...more of less. :)

a lot.

A lot of thinking has been going on in my head. Jayden, who is my niece Emma's 4 year old cousin, has cancer...again. She is undergonig more chemo than any person should ever have to endure, and especially any 4 year old should have to endure. I am sending as many positive thoughts their way as I can. And for anybody reading this, I'm sure you already know about her, but send one her way, also.

In other news (not that interesting) I have started a new pilates routine that takes me about 45 minutes everyday. I can't WAIT for the snow to melt so I can go running/walking again. The snow and ice, where I live, is just too scary for me to go out and do some cardio walking and running on. I'm a whimp, I know, but at least I got the pilates going on. I know it's so cliche to say you want to lose weight before your wedding, and I don't necessarily want to lose weight, I just want to feel really good about myself that day. I think excersing is a sure fire way to feel good about your body, even if you arent loosing tons of weight. So we will see! :)

Here's your everyday item.As you can see I took some of these pictures around Christmas time, so we have a little "tomte (santa/elf thing)" on the package. Mjuk means soft...because here in Sweden we have
"knäckebröd" which is very hard crisp bread. But honestly, I don't think they need to write the difference on the package, it's really obvious the difference, but...fairness is the name of the Swedish game. And, Swedish bread is a lot tasty than the bread we have. I'm going to miss it!

The Swedish word of the day is "bröd" which means "bread" and is pronounced "bruhd".