Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

Hi there! Yes, we're alive and kicking! Sick and pitiful but happy to have survived and enjoyed the first Christmas in our cozy little house... And here's a few highlights from our preparation and celebration of Christmas of 2013...

 Lovisa getting in Christmas shape with my Core training DVD...

Christmas is certainly about seeing your dear ones and since my dear grandmother is to old to come see us I was happy to see her over a lunch when I visited my hometown over the day, the week before Christmas. She's 85 years old and she's always been there for me when I was growing up and she has a special place in my heart...

 Lunch with grandmother

Since we had the Christmas celebration at our house we did a lot of cleaning, well at least more than usual anyway, and the cleaning H and the girls enjoyed the most was of course cleaning the car...

 No snow...

Our tree is incredible beautiful and it was a major treat to buy it, bring it home and decorate it together with the girls... 

 And finally Christmas Eve came and the girls found new dresses in their Christmas socks. The guests arrived and this year Santa was to busy to come in, he just pounded on the window and waved to three very excited little girls and then left a big sack with gifts on our porch.

Lovisa opening gifts in her new dress...

Lena, Andréa and my mother keeping themselves busy with one of Andréas Christmas gifts...

A real downer is that both girls been sick since a week before Christmas, H got sick on Chistmas Day and I got sick yesterday... A good thing is that now I really can't do anything but relax and recover and I have more than a week of Christmas Holiday left!  

Merry Christmas to all of You!

Christmas hysteria, Saint Lucia and finally disease...

The closer to Christmas it gets the crazier our lives seems to be... At work it's the busiest time of the year, at daycare it's all kind of activities like pottering evening and Saint Lucia celebration, at home it looks like a bomb struck and in the middle of this chaos we're suppose to get into the Christmas spirit... And H and me communicates more by SMS than actually talking to each other and when we finally think we're going to have a moment together after the girls fall asleep we're to exhausted to say anything... Friday evening I fell asleep around 8:30 pm... But hey, one week to go and then we're off for two whole weeks!

And even if I'm complaining about the girls daycare activities it is cozy and beautiful watching them at the Saint Lucia celebration:

 Lovisa insisted on being Lucia while Andréa wanted to be a Santa...

It strikes me again and again how fast they grow up and the other day I discovered that Lovisa actually writes her own name now... 

 She even got the S right...

We were visiting good friends yesterday and I was bragging about how healthy the girls have been all fall and of course after that Lovisa fell sick with high fever and an aching body... At least she had the energy to celebrate 3rd of Advent with me while H and Andréa attended a birthdayparty...

Ricepudding is yummy!

And I found some yeast in the fridge that I needed to use so I baked some more Saffron bread...


Now I just have to write 12 Christmas cards before I can go to sleep... Better get started...

November check-up!

January: 50,1 km
February: 42,3 km
March: 39,7 km
April: 38,5 km
May: 61,0 km
June: 103,9 km
July: 165,6 km
August: 84,5 km
September: 106,1 km
October: 118,5 km
November: 197,2 km running, 178 km cycling and 4 strength training

Total so far during 2013: 1007,3 km

This means that another goal of 2013 is accomplished and I feel really proud about that! To run over 1000 km total during 2013 seemed pretty hopeless around May before I really started to speed up but now I'm here and I can honestly say that I never in my entire life ran so much during one year...

Now it's bedtime because guess who's defying "Sven" tomorrow morning and is running to work? Goodnight!

First of Advent.

Welcome December! Welcome bright lights, gingerbread, saffronbread and minus degrees!

 Gingerbread in the making...

 Saffronbread in the making...

 These turned out to be delicious and H managed to squeeze down 3...

If you look carefully you can see not only my Christmas decorated window but me taking the picture, our kitchen and our lights in our hedge outside... What a professional photographer I am!

Now I'm pretty stuffed with goodies and exhausted from decorating, cleaning and baking... And this is just the beginning...