Daah-dee.

Leia has been saying "Daah-dee" (daddy) for the last 2 days. :D It is sooo cute. :) And I secretly think Fredrik is super-stoked about it.. ;)

I realized it had been awhile since making brownies, Fredrik's favorite. So today Leia and I made a batch!


My cluttered kitchen.... :T


She was very helpful. ;) She was in charge of the wooden spoon, although you can't see it in this picture. (She is hitting it against the counter.)

I've gotten in the holiday mood today, so I'm trying to prepare and plan some Christmas baking. Most all of my baking is American cookies and candy, and Swedish gingerbread. But I hope to make some Lussekatt this weekend. Last year, when we were in the US, we only made fudge (and we sent a whole bunch to my Uncle Shirley in Hawaii). I usually make fudge, sugar cookies, brownies, gingerbread, buckeyes, and I hope to add a couple new ones this year, including peppermint bark that I've been making here and there. Very easy and cheap to make (much cheaper than buying it). Sometimes I make chocolate chip cookies, I just get annoyed when doing cookies, it just takes so long.. especially while running after Leia. :) Oooh.. and we always make Fredrik's favorite: Swedish chocolate balls. So I guess I usually do fix a couple of Swedish candies at the holidays.

We've had our first Christmas invitation! :)
We're going to meet up with the American woman in Ed, Sandy, and her family after Christmas. I took SFI (Svenska för invandare (Swedish for immigrants)) with her daughter when I first moved to Sweden 6 years ago. The daughter, 5 years younger than me, moved back to the US and now she has a daughter of her own, a year or so older than Leia, so it will be lots of fun to meet up with all of them!

Fredrik will have 3 weeks off for Christmas! From the 22nd of December until January 7th! (Maybe that is 2½ weeks.) So we will have lots of time off. We do have a few other get togethers in the making, but nothing definitely fixed yet. We hope to take plenty of day trips to some shopping towns in the area (Trollhättan, Karlstad, and maybe Uddevalla - haven't been there in forever). We hope to meet up with some other Americans in the area. We won't be meeting any family for the holidays, so our friends are definitely the next best thing!