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...

One month to Christmas!

And that statement could make any full-time-working mother to get an ulcer and that's why I'm happy to say that today I bought all the big Christmas gifts and all the Christmas cards. After debating whether the girls should have Ipads or cross-country skies we finally decided to go with the skies. I really want us to be a healthy out-door family and then it doesn't feel completely right to buy and Ipad to a 2,5 year old, even if it probably would be convinient to have when we travel to Canada next summer...

The rest of this week has been extremely busy as usual. I worked, cooked, cleaned, picked up the girls from daycare, ran 54,3 km (!) and then it was Friday evening and time to decompress... On Saturday we attended my stepmothers vernissage and even though the girls were screaming and running all over the place we actually manage to buy a painting. That feels so grown-up, to walk around on an exhibition and decide that yes, this would look good in our guest-toilet (well, not in the toilet but on the wall facing the person sitting on the toilet...), lets buy it! The exhibition is on until December 13th so you still have plenty of time to stop by and see some lovely art.

And after this crazy Sunday when I got all the Christmas gifts, cards and tons of groceries, H made us a lovely meal - fondue. And this is the only picture from this week, the girls just took their bath and were all excited over the fondue and the fact that they could eat supper in their robs...

Another November week is to an end and next week we're entering a brighter month thank God...

Faster and darker.

Another crazy week has come to an end. We had inauguration of our new MRI camera and I had trouble finding clothes for the occasion, when you usually always have working clothes it's hard to be private at work... Anyway, I found some clothes, the band was cut, champagne was served and everyone was happy...

After the inauguration...

It's getting darker and darker, a colleague of mine fell on her bike the other morning because it was icy and unfortunately it's just a matter of time before I have to store my bike away for the winter. My colleague got away with a few scratches and a sore shoulder but it's starting to feel dangerous to cycle when it's completely black and icy in the morning... A bit of cold and ice doesn't stop me from running though and my plan is to keep running about 3 times per week all winter. I'm trying to run faster and faster and one morning I actually beat my record to work, sub 1 hour and 15 minutes! And in case you're wondering it's not snot on my GPS watch, it's mud from the ground...

This weekend we had good friends over that spend the night and slept over. It's nice to have people sleeping over, the girls thinks it's a big adventure. They were so excited yesterday that they didn't fall asleep until after 10 pm which made them extremely tired today and they managed to fall asleep during a 10 minute car ride home from the store and they kept on sleeping after we carried them in our house placing them in our armchairs... Talk about tired...

My sleeping beauty's... Now time to put the rascals to bed and prepare for a new week...

Honesty.

We're surrounded of November darkness, the worst kind of darkness that goes in to your head and slowly breaks you down... The girls insists on sleeping in our bed every night still and both H and me looks more dead than alive... I've really tried to reason with the girls, explained that mum and dad needs to sleep and we don't sleep well when they're in our beds. They seem to understand it but of course every night they forget it.

During their bath tonight I said "Tonight you can sleep the whole night in your own comfy, cozy bed" Hence they both shouted in each others mouth "NO! WE WANT TO SLEEP WITH YOU!"

Before bedtime Lovisa asked me what day it was and when I said it's Tuesday and tomorrow it's Wednesday and you're going to daycare she sighed loud and said "Do I really have to go to daycare tomorrow again?!? I've been going there for 70 years now, it's tiresome".

At least they're honest about their feelings, something that we grownups seem to have a hard time being...