Prep for Thanksgiving

Tomorrow we celebrate Thanksgiving here in the US. It's one of my favorite holidays. I especially enjoy the very heavy, sleep induced foods that you eat on that day. And of course giving thanks to all our blessings in our lives 😊.

I can never exactly remember the story of the first Thanksgiving, but my daughter who is five gave me a rundown of why we celebrate Thanksgiving the other day. Thank god for the little ones 😜. 

This year we are celebrating Thanksgiving together with good friends in LA. I'm so looking forward to it. So today I'm gonna run to the store and get all the ingredients for the dishes that I'm responsible for. Of course I got a cold going on right now, that came like a letter in the mail (as we say in Sweden 😄). Isn't it always like that? As soon as you relax for a little bit (Lilja doesn't have school this week so we haven't had to run out the door every morning) the sickness get a chance to come out. So annoying! But what can you do. Just power thorough. 

How are you going to celebrate Thanksgiving this year?

Aside from last year's celebration with the family we made our own Thanksgiving feast. I had never made a turkey in my life before but it came out pretty good. But gosh there is a lot of dishes to make for the Thanksgiving table. Here is a pic from last year.

Hope you all will enjoy the holiday tomorrow  😘

Diane's 70th Birhtday

Eric's mom, my mother-in-law turned 70 years old on November 19th. It's hard to believe that I have now known Diane from the time she was in her early 50s. Time goes by fast huh?!

It turned out to be such a nice, relaxing, fun birthday with friends and family. Laurie (my sis-in-law) and I took care of all the food, cleaning etc. So Diane could just relax and enjoy her birthday visiting with friends and family.

Here are some pics and videos from this lovely day 💛.

James and Mary

Lawrence - Eric's dad

Cousins 💜

Monkeys🙊🙉

SWEA Sing

As I'm sure most of you know I'm on the SWEA Board (Swedish Women Educational Association) and I'm responsible for all the members. It's so fun to be a part of the group and it keeps getting better and better the more people you meet and get to know. The age difference in SWEA SB varies from I would say late 20's to early 90's. I have to say that mingling amongst Swedish women of all ages have been such a great experience. The older ladies in the group are amazing, so fun and it's interesting to hear what they have to say about living in the US, when they first came here, their experiences in life etc. It can be very inspiring and I've learnt a lot visiting with these ladies.

Our latest event was a "sing meeting" in Oxnard at one of our members' houses, Madeleine. She was kind enough to open up her house to us. We all brought a lunch dish to share, we mingled, talked, ate and sang. Karin, a Swedish pianist was invited to play for all of us. She was amazing. Of course the songs we sang were old Swedish folk songs.

It really made you feel at home eating all the Swedish foods, and singing all the Swedish songs.

So Swedish right?! 💙

This bread was AHHHHHHMAAAAZIIING. Must get this recipe.

Halloween

We had a great Halloween this year. Last year Lilja ended up getting sick on actual Halloween and the costume we had planned for last year was for her to be a cat.  She's been talking about her cat costume for over a year now haha so she was really happy when the time finally came for her to wear it. Since she was sick last year we already had her costume, as well as Sofia's. I had some cat ears and a tail that I threw on and all I had to do was find something for Eric. The plan was to be cats and dogs.

The dog costume selection around Santa Barbara and even online was pretty scarce. The only think I could find was a big dog onesie costume. It looks so comfortable though, and I will most likely end up wearing it like pretty much every single day around the house. Maybe even outside of the house 😝.

Here are some pics from our Halloween fun...

Of course we carved pumpkins like we do every year. It's getting to be more fun for every year that goes by as the kids are getting more involved.

Lilja had a Halloween parade during the day of Halloween that Eric was able to come to which was fun.  All the kids were so cute.

My little cat 🐱💖

Someone else got to partake in the Halloween parade festivities and of course the candy 😆

Look at all these cuties 💞

It was a busy day with Halloween trick or treating that night. But oh so fun! We're so lucky to live in the same town as Eric's sister with kids, and we normally trick or treat together. Our kids and their kids are like siblings and they love to hang out. We're blessed that they can spend this time together and share these amazing memories.

I just can't with these two 💕

I mean....

How cute is little V as Dorothy 💓

Hope you had a great Halloween!

The Coziness Continues

Yesterday was really mellow. We ended up hanging out at the beach for a while and then when everyone transitioned to the campsite we decided to go home, Eric stayed behind.

I was so stoked to be back home to be able to enjoy the fall weather inside. The girls and I decided to do a movie night with popcorn, ice cream and treats. 

Then when the girls went to bed I proceeded to watch my show that I'm currently addicted to "American Horror Story." Eric is really disturbed by the fact that i enjoy those types of television programs and never wants to watch it with me so I always end up watching it by myself. That's fine though, I rather watch it by myself than hear someone complain about what their watching every 5 minutes. 

The fall weather continues today and will continue throughout the week and I couldn't be happier. 

This morning me and the girls went to church. Eric was too tired from the previous night 😝. We ended up meeting a couple of friends there which was fun. Then we ran some errands and are now back home for some coziness. I have a pot roast cooking in the crockpot and I'm gonna make some raw balls in a minute. 

You know that extremely healthy treat that everyone talks about? Gluten free, sugar free etc etc. My friend had made some the other day and I got to try some and it was absolutely delicious. And then you don't have to feel bad about eating it!! It's a no brainer.  I'll have to put the recipe up on the blog for you all to try too if you haven't already. 

I just posted another blog post from the past (hehe) trying to catch up (but it no particular order). It's about our trip to the Zoo for some Halloween fun. You can read about it here. 

Foggy & Cozy

Today we woke up to a completely foggy sky. Thank God!! We've a heatwave here in CA for quite some time now with temperatures in the 80s and 90s. Almost hitting 40°C for all you Euros out there. It's been WAY to hot! According to the iPhone (not very reliable info it seems like these days) the weather is supposed to cool down next week to then the following week involve RAIN!! YAY! The Swede in me is screaming for some Fall weather.

Today we're gonna head up to El Capitan camp site to celebrate a friend's birthday during the day. But as of right now I'm still in bed (highly unusual these days), enjoying a warm chocolate croissant with some coffee and looking out at the cooler weather and foggy sky.

I hope you are all enjoying your Saturday out there.

I just did a post on Lilja's first day of Kindergarten. Click here to read about that. I'm gonna need to back track quite a lot to add some posts I don't wanna leave out of the blog. Gotta get on this!

Boo at the Zoo

Every year it has become a tradition for us to visit the Santa Barbara Zoo for their Halloween celebration, Boo at the Zoo. This year it definitely didn't disappoint. But I have to say that there were way too many people. I've never seen it so packed. And this was on a Sunday! Boo at the Zoo goes from Friday-Sunday so I thought we wouldn't have to be stuck in a crowd, but I was wrong. We had to park blocks away and walk to the zoo and stand in line forever for tickets. Next year I'm definitely buying the tickets online.

The zoo puts on a great show, with trick or treating, disco dancing, spooky surroundings with amazing zoo workers who dress up as ghouls and ghosts, princesses and other creatures. They even have a Haunted House but our kids were too scared to try that. Maybe next year. 

The same day before Boo at the Zoo we made Halloween cookies and decorated them 😀

A mommy cat with her kitty and puppy 💓

Hur fina är inte alla!!!

Otroliga, helt hemmagjorda kostymer a la Susanne.