Birthday party

Carrie and I teamed up to celebrate our birthdays that are coming up. We had some really yummy pizza. Ok, it still is not as good as Swedish pizza but it was not bad.. actually really good. It was a really fun group with lots of laughs. After dinner we went to the Holiday Club and danced to some 80s and 90s songs. Good times! It was so great to hang out with everyone before we take off to go to Sweden. Here are some photos from last night:

Christmas train

This work week has been really busy, since I am not going to be in the office for 3 weeks. Horray!! I am going to Sweden.. I did survive the work week even though it looked pretty bad there for a while, since of course it is a million things that need to be completed this week. However, the highlight of the work week was on Thursday when I left for an hour to catch the CTA holiday train. The holiday train is a crazy decorated subway train with Santa and his sleigh and elfs handing out candy canes. Yes, it was fabulous and so fun. The train is awesome!! Go to the link below to see a video of it. Do it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_-licz-QTY

Weekend of Julebord and other fun

It was my company's Christmas party Friday. It is more like a nice luncheon with drinks and we all get to leave work early, which is nice. Matt and I was suppose to go to a friends house that night but it was just too cold and snowy out so we tried to get a car from the 'car share program' that we belong too.. but it ended up us waiting about 40 min in a cold garage and no one came with the car.. so we were pretty grumpy and never went to our friends house. Instead we went to the movies and saw the movie "Juno" which was really cute. Saturday was a really busy day. We started out with running down to the museum and helped put things in order for the Julebord, which is the annual Scandinavian Christmas party, after that we went home too cook food for it. I mad meatballs (thank you IKEA), oven-baked potatoes and egg halves with caviar. My brother, Niclas and his wife Autumn and their friend Scott also came over and we had a little mini-Christmas and then we all went to the party. The Julebord was a lot of fun (as always). We had lots of good Scandinavian food and lots of snaps and drinking songs. I also got to do the "speech to the men" this year. I was a bit nervous but I really think it turned out ok. After dinner we dances to some ABBA and Ace of Base. Good times. Sunday was mostly spent laying around being lazy. The only productive thing I did was to finally finish all my Christmas cards. I actually think they will arrive before Christmas this year.

The only sad thing with the party was that we took lots of photos but for some reason when we checked the camera Sunday most of them were deleted. I blame too much snaps and my husband (hi hi), he claims I probably deleted them.. Anyway, here are at least 2 of the photos that were still on the camera. One of me and the "Swedish girls" and one of Niclas, Autumn and Scott with a massive amount of empty beer bottles in front of them.

Out Second Anniversary!!

Yes, today is St. Lucia day and we will be heading to church to celebrate because I have my last choir performace (hurray!!) in the Lutheran church in Andersonville. Yes, this day is a national holiday in Sweden but what is more important about today is that it is my second wedding anniversary. Congrats Matt!! You put up with me for one more year. We will be heading to dinner tonight and then I was actually a sweet wifey and bought him a present. It is something 'cotton' since we are following the traditional wedding gifts.

no blogging

I really have no other excuse for not blogging in so long other than... being lazy and things have been busy. I have had a bunch of choir performances. We had one on Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night, and Monday night. I am tired of singing now. The weekend went by way to fast since it was jammed packed with performances. I did go to my coworkers 30th birthday party on Saturday night and stayed out way too long. We did not get into bed until 2.30 am and the next morning at 7.30 am we left the house to run in a race. My friend Elin had 2 people that decided not to run in a charity run so we could take those bib numbers. Not the smartest idea. It was inches of snow and ice and freezing cold. No idea why we were crazy enough to run the race. The race was called the rudolph ramble and was originially suppose to be a 8 K race but they shortened it to 5 K. It was the hardest 5 K, I have ever ran since you had to try to trek through sluschy snow.

Graduation Day!

Today I graduated from physical Therapy. It has been almost 5 months of it now and when I think about how I first hobbled in there I felt like I really have made a great improvement. Sure my knee is still stiff and I am a lot slower than I used to be, but I am planning on running races again next year. It has been kind of nice to have your own personal trainer so I am definitely going to miss that. Also I cannot skip work for an hour or so on Tuesday and Thursday anymore. Maybe I shouldn't tell my boss about graduating just yet.

Christmas Spirit

We cleaned, did laundry and put up the Christmas decorations. Yes, a perfectly lazy Sunday. Here is a photo of our nice tree.

Lucia

Jag har gatt med i Chicago Nordic Choir igen efter att jag annu en gang inbillat mig att jag kan sjunga. Jag var ju med forra aret men hoppade av i sommras pga operationerna. Vart forsta upptradande var igar pa museet (Swedish-American Museum) dar det var julmarknad. Jag behovde inte sta och sjunga falskt denna gang eftersom jag skulle vara lucia. Sa det enda jag behovde gora va att sta dar och hoppas att inte for mycket stearin droppade i mitt har/ansikte. Det var verkligen ett jattevackert upptradande av koren och valdigt stamningsfullt. Jag hadde pluggat in en lucia dikt som jag skulle lasa upp.. jag blev lite sjalvklart for nervos och missade en mening i dikten men de flesta kunde ju inte svenska dar som tur var! lite irriterande men och alla sa att det knappt marktes .. det tog nagra timmar att fa ut allt stearin ur haret ocksa. Men det var jattefint och kul och nasta helg sa har vi 3 upptradaden igen. Bara ett utav dem ar lucia upptradande.. de andra tva ar julkonserter sa da far jag vara med och sjunga och slipper oroa mig for stearin och lasa dikter.