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!