Getting Back to the Grind

Would you believe I'm actually looking forward to it?

I'm not sure what it was, but I just wasn't feeling Christmas this year.  I enjoyed it - I can genuinely say that seeing my familes was the best part. I think it was just that with all the activity, and my classes, and etc, I never really got a chance to slow down enough to really meditate on it.

The Swedish dinner I've been talking about and preparing for was on Friday.  I did it for Brian's family. Only one of them is Swedish and he was familiar with pretty much everything I made, although he said some of the things were different than what he'd had. I'm not sure what he thought of the meal overall, but the rest of the family loved it. And I think they really meant it when they said that too - they RAVED throughout the meal!  So the final menu was potatiskorv, meatballs w/gravy, boiled potatoes & onions w/dill, rice pudding w/lingonberries, pickled beets (a last-minute addition my mom reminded me to make), limpa (rye bread), hardtack (crispbread) w/bond ost (a type of cheese), and spritz & pepparkokar (thin ginger) cookies. Everyone was stuffed!  I'd made almost everything from scratch, except for the hardtack & pepparkokar, so I was rather emotionally invested in this meal.  In a way I guess I considered it a gift to Brian's family - which is why I would have been hurt if people had refused to try things (unless they'd tried them before).  If they tried things and didn't like them, that would have been fine.  Except for the kids - there's only so much you can do there to get them to even try things.  I was really impressed with my almost-13-year-old niece; she tried everything, even the pickled beets! (And Bailey tried the beets too, which I'm sure she wouldn't have if Andrea hadn't.)

Unfortunately, at the time the meal was coming together, I didn't really get to take any pictures of the food itself.  Here's a shot of my table, though:

Swedish Table

I'm told that Swedes have coffee & rolls late in the afternoon (called fika [fee'-ka]) so I also made some cinnamon rolls (with cardamom in the dough, of course) that Santa Lucia came to serve:

Santa Lucia

With Kirsten

The meal went well.  Everyone was so stuffed that no one wanted the cake I'd made for dessert!  Which is funny, because I hadn't originally intended to make it (I was just going to serve the cookies for dessert), but then I was told that we were also going to have a birthday party for Andrea that night so I should have a cake.  Andrea opened her presents but we never did have the cake or sang "Happy Birthday." And I'd even bought cool candles that burn in different colors.  I guess we'll have to wait until the next birthday to use them.

One of Brian's sisters and her family stayed at our house. They havev 3 kids near our kids' ages, so it's always lots of fun to have them here. The kids all get along really well - to the point where the boys even argue occasionally. :) They left today so now I'm just doing post-company laundry, catching up on the last few days on Vox, and watching the Vikings suck it up. (OK, so Berrian just scored a TD. Maybe they're only semi-sucking it up.) It's all good as long as the Bears lose.

I went to Target the day after Christmas. I usually do this but I wasn't planning to this year.  Primarily, this is because I was going to work a half day on Friday. That didn't happen, as I decided on Thursday that I just had too much to do in preparation for the dinner that night, and my mother-in-law also wanted to have a family picture taken (they're on my fb if you want to see them). It was supposed to be a studio picture originally, but that didn't work out. Side note: in this picture I'm wearing the sweater I picked up at Target that morning as my reward for passing chemistry. It was 75% off, which was an added bonus!

Tomorrow it's back to work! I'm kind of glad to be getting back to regular life. I really enjoyed this Christmas, but I feel fat (my own doing, I know) and I'm ready to get back into a routine. We're starting hard back into South Beach on January 1 (we're waiting so that we can have movie & junk food night w/the kids on NYE). I'm not ready to start school up again, but fortunately I have a couple of weeks before I have to worry about that (they always start the online courses a week later than the classroom courses, which is fine by me). And I'm going to start exercising again, starting tomorrow. I've been doing it very sporadically over the last month, and I'm definitely feeling it.

OK, well, the laundry's ready to be switched and I'm going to go see if the Vikes can close this out.  Later!