Christmas Day 2010

I have to say I really don't like the way Blogspot allows you and then DOES NOT allow you to cut pictures, rearrange them side by side or drag them into order....so I'm sorry these pictures are totally out of order

There are a few pictures of us opening presents, while my parents were over for Christmas day dinner. There are pictures of the table, because Jonas's Mormor made the napkin ring holders and the small table runner in the middle. We ate King Crab, Dungeness crab and tri tip! I attempted quite successfully to aebleskiver a Danish dessert, all the while it poured and poured outside! Merry Christmas everyone bring on 2011!

We framed an old advertisement my Dad had made in 1973 for his first dealership Peninsula Mazda, where now his building sits with his office. I think it brought back a lot of memories for him to look at this old ad!

Mom is impossible, I found a fun red patent purse, but I don't think she actually likes it...she is THE MOST PICKY woman ever! We gave Spencer some nice wine glasses a bottle of good wine, some movie tickets among other things in the hopes that he will get a girlfriend already!

You can see Tiger under the table, he always follows me around whatever I'm doing!

I made aebleskiver for dessert!

Me and my Jonas!

Jonas cleaned the crab and cracked them so the pieces were easier to pick out the meat!

Scandinavian's Club Christmas Dinner

The whole family went to the annual Young Scandinavian's Club Christmas dinner held at the Norwegian Club's house in the city this past Saturday. We enjoyed a great meal, akvaavit, singing and a fun cozy night with 100 of the members! I think I've gone 6 years in a row now and my parents have come 3 times. I think my Dad enjoys the Danish traditions!

Today I finished my Christmas shopping, I just can't handle the crowds, the lines to pay and hunting for a parking spot at the mall. The upside is everything is one sale everywhere! It doesn't matter that it is not after the holiday yet, I guess the retailers are getting desperate to sell as much as possible before the close of the year. I got 20 extra hours this week so I will be working the next 3 days, but that is fine with me! I'd rather be earing money than spending!!

Please let this be the end of it!

Another fun filled week of sewer repair. All I can say is after spending nearly $2k on this it better be fixed for like 15 years which is what our awesome plumber Steve told us! Jonas is awesome, he dug up the pipe AGAIN because the only solution to really cleaning out the rust, and rocks and sludge that has built up in there was to cut the pipe, re jett it and pull everything out. So that is what they guys did this Sunday, and then put on a new piece of pipe with a better clean out angle as you can see by this picture.

What you don't really see is that our house sits on 100% clay, so a shovel doesn't work in wet clay, so Jonas had to dig WITH HIS HANDS! And the yard is just a mess, clay everywhere...we are just going to put some sand in and around the pipe and then cover it back up later this week and let the upcoming rain do some of the cleaning of the yard for us! But we are just so relieved this is done for now, so maybe we can enjoy our Holidays!

Grattis to the Birthday Boy!

For dinner on this very special day, The Artons and the Tegneruds went to TOWN for dinner. This is a favorite place to go! http://www.townsc.com/ we had divine steaks and of course they brought out a little strudel thingy for Jonas! Happy Birthday!

2nd Advent

Well, it's our first Christmas in our new home and we want to start traditions. One of them being a nice get together with family and friends which we did last night! Jonas is the best, he bakes! So many compliments to were given to Jonas's Swedish buns! Of course I just ordered some lucekattor buns from Copenhagen Bakery! We also had a bunch of Swedish meatballs and princekorv which disappeared! We had our good friends over and it poured rain outside, it was a cozy sunday afternoon!

The Damage

So we thought we were going to have to have a second clean out spot put in our yard so when the sewer gets backed up we have 2 spots to put a high powered hose in and/or snake and clean out the pipes. We started digging and digging, Joe our handyman came and had to jackhammer the concrete in the front because they couldn't find the pipe. ROTO ROOTER WAS WRONG ABOUT WHERE THE PIPE WAS!!! We found it and it makes about a 30degree turn in the front of our house and then over to the main city line. Long story short they found a second cleanout see picture, that was already built in but some idiot/previous home owner decided to put concrete over it! Well anyhow all is clean now, if we have any more problems, I will rip my hair out! This is a picture of the aftermath...what you can't tell from the picture is that all that dirt on the right is like a little mountain now..we will need to get rid of some of it and I think put a few pavers down around the clean out spot to connect the pathway....

Sunday

Today we thought we would just get a Christmas tree and relax, but noooooo! AGAIN the 3rd time in 6 weeks we have had our main line sewer back up! Poor Jonas took one of our toilets off and snaked every single drain and air outlet which he found to be full of leaves. He cut his fingers up, and hurt his knee,...what would I do without him!? Tomorrow we have our contractor guy coming over to make a second clean out spot by cutting into the pipe and attaching another vent, this way we can make sure that all the pebbles that were in our sewage line are actually pushed out to the city's line. Then we really shouldn't have this issue again. Old houses=old problems!

Oh and our dryer, donated to us by my parents, broke. Jonas looked at it and thinks it's either a minor issue that will be fixed easily or we will have to buy a whole new dryer...oh joy....more $

At least we still got our Christmas tree! It's not fully decorated yet, but Jonas is off to LA again this week so I needed to have him help me get it today so I could decorate this week before our Advent party next Sunday with all the Scandinavians!

There's my Fifi wondering what is going on?

Photo Recap of Thanksgiving Weekend

We skiied on Thanksgiving at Mt Rose, had a fabulous dinner with Ernie and Ivanna from next door, went to Virginia City for the day with Spencer to do some ghost hunting! Then we went to dinner and drinks at our favorite bar and restaurants in the El Dorado Casino, (where we had our wedding dinner), and then drove home!

Happy Thanksgiving

I drove up to our family's house in Reno Monday for the week, and did some damage at the mall with my Mom yesterday! I am utterly still in shock at the amazing selection at the Macy's in Reno, and I am not a Macy's shopper! Anyhow the SNOW came down all day yesterday! And now it is COLD! All the most important men in my life make the drive or fly up today. The roads are icy so my Dad and Spencer need to pay attention but chances are a bunch of people are driving up to Tahoe today so the roads will be wet not icy. Jonas is flying up, out of Oakland airport, I am sure there will be delays. I wonder if he will opt out of the new security pat downs?

Anyhow, our favorite ski mountain www.skitmtrose.com will be open top to bottom all sides and runs starting tomorrow! That's how much early season snow we received in the last 2 storms that came through. So you will know where to find us the next few days!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Bring on the Holidays!

London, Sweden, Mallorca?

So last summer when we flew to Sweden and Denmark I flew on a free ticket with my United miles and then we just bought Jonas a ticket on the same flight. I called in November for June and it wasn't a problem. This year BIG problem, apparently they have nothing June through August for a three week trip. Ok maybe it's time to complain or at least tell Chase I want the Sapphire rewards card NOT the United rewards Visa since we can't use our miles to fly to Scandinavia which is the WHOLE REASON TO HAVE UNITED!!

Uggh so, I started playing around on the travel sites and saw that it was $1800 to fly coach on Lufthansa through Munich or Frankfurt like we did last year on their nice Airbus plane! OMG that is expensive so then I thought what if we go in May? Yes the price dropped dramatically. I also saw that it would be the least expensive to fly through dreaded London Heathrow. This airport always has delays and is always loses your bag! I always try to avoid going that route. But then for fun I checked if we did a stop over for a few nights in London and then head on to Sweden, and the price was much lower and then flying home the same route, ARN to London on SAS and then Virgin Atlantic between SFO and London. I heard Virgin is a nice airplane and great service so I look forward to flying them.

The best news is one of our old friends is moving to London and she offered us a place to stay when we are there! I am so excited this is so great, because I am sure Jonas and I would have fun on our own but it's always fun to be with friends too! So that is the excitement around here for now, hoping we might go to Mallorca for a long weekend too with the in laws.

Jonas flies to LA tomorrow morning for a couple days of work and I got some more hours with Bobbi Brown so I will be working in San Francisco and then next week I will be in Reno with my Mom until Jonas flies up Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I guess it is officially the Holiday Season!

Boat Party!

So last night was the Young Scandinavians Club 60th anniversary party on a Hornblower Yacht. I was in charge, so it was a little stressful, I lost one couples check, oops so they didn't have seats, and one guy made two reservations under the same name days apart so I didn't count it as 2 but only one person, but his date didn't come after all...and the other couple I smooshed in a table that had room and oh boy...but all worked out fine, and in the end everybody said they had a great time. The weather was AMAZING!! I mean warm no wind, we sat near Sausalito for an hour and being up on deck was gorgeous, clear night, the Golden Gate, the city..whoa! I love this city!! So I am super tired today but it was all worth it. I think I love my dress I wore, at first I wasn't crazy about it, but seeing the pics made me change my mind! Of course my wonderful husband helped with set up and clean up and drove us I couldn't be luckier! Enjoy these few pictures! This first shot here is of our friend Liisa Laukkanen the blonde on the left, Pia and then that's me talking to the bartender, and the back of my dress which had beading detail, so pretty!

This is me and Magnus, an old YSC collegue that used to be Activities director. He is now the proud father of 2!

First Fire!

Lucky me!! After coming home from a personal shopping appointment with a client, I walked in to find our first fire in our fireplace! A delicious dinner prepared by my wonderful husband and a bottle of good wine cracked open! Now that's what I call a perfect Sunday night!

Day Date!

Jonas and I had been apart for 2 long weeks what they called in the old days, a fortnight. So, when he came home, I didn't plan anything for work on Saturday so we could take our "day date" we call it. This basically entails, going wine tasting, driving throug the beautiful Santa Cruz Mountains and then either down to our favorite German restaurant or up to Half Moon Bay for dinner. Well, this time we tried something new.

Instead of going up 84 through La Honda and to Thomas Foggerty winery we went down to Saratoga and hit up Cinnabar, Cooper-Garrod, and Mountain Winery. We collected a lot of wine on this trip, figuring it was our last free weekend before the Holiday season hits, and since it's impossible to buy people presents anymore, a good bottle of wine seems to do the trick! Mountain Winery was especially cool to visit because they have a small venue for concerts and really good Sauvignon Blanc. I mean when they describe a wine as having a hint of Apple Jolly Rancher, I knew I found my match! Here are some pictures from the day....

After hitting up a few more of our favorite spots, David Bruce and Byington's we drove down to Santa Cruz because we were starving and it was the closest place to get food! On our way we found a Big Foot Museum and actually went in...very interesting old man working in there! ...smelled weird too...
And finally, we went to the Wharf and had a nice seafood dinner and watched a gorgeous Fall sunset before heading back over the hill!

Danish Potato's!!

Yes we have green sprouts! I think our one little potato I smuggled back to the states, is growing! It's been so warm that all of a sudden the green sprout popped up this week! Hopefully we will have some tasty potato's soon!