St. Lucia

Sophia celebrated St. Lucia at her school by dressing up as St. Lucia and singing carols with her class.  Aaron, Ben and I were all at Sophia's debut singing performance and had a lot of fun watching.  Sophia loved it and was very proud of her performance.

Sophia in her St. Lucia costume.

  
There are actually 5 different characters that children dress up as on this holiday.  In addition to Lucia, one is a pepperkaka (gingerbread), and we were able to borrow a costume so Ben could also participate.

All of the kids at school

Sophia with her school friend.

  She got close enough to Santa to get a present from him.  However, before going anywhere near him she informed me, "Mom that is not Santa.  That is my teacher Alex!"  Luckily, she didn't think anything of it...

We had a great time celebrating this Swedish holiday with Sophia at her school and we're so proud of our little Lucia.

After school, we decided to take in some of the city's Christmas Lights.

Yes, they put red carpet down on this street to walk on!

Well, I am caught up through December 13th now :-)  Hopefully we get on our plane to Minneapolis tomorrow afternoon so we can see our family and friends.  I can't handle another day of being delayed!  Good night!

Weekend trip to Mora

Deciding that it was time we visited a destination outside of Stockholm again, we booked a trip to Mora to visit Santaworld and see where the famous Dala Horse originated.

Maybe we should have cancelled when Ben got sick on Wednesday night?  Maybe we should have reconsidered taking the trip when I felt a little "off" on Friday morning?  Maybe we should have turned around when Sophia got sick in the car half of the way into our 4 hour drive?  Maybe.  But we didn't.  Maybe next time we will make a different decision.  At the time, nothing seemed worse than being on vacation in a random Best Western with 4 people reeling from a stomach virus.  

We crawled out of our room on Saturday for an hour to check out the "home" of Dala Horses in Nusnäs.  Luckily, one person was working on a Saturday, so we got to see some horse painting in action.  Sophia loved it!

This artist said that it takes her 3-4 minutes to paint a horse this size.  Amazing!

Lots of painted horses.  Red is the traditional color.

They come in looking like this.

The story about how they became a national (unofficial?) symbol for Sweden is nice.  If you're interested, I found this on wikipedia:  Dala Horse on Wikipedia

On Sunday, we went to Santaland for a little while before heading back to Stockholm.  

This is the closest that Sophia would get to Santa!  She still doesn't like him!  Unfortunately, the picture didn't turn out that great, but it is all we have!  Oh, Sophia is the kid with the purple hood up! :-)

Ben wouldn't sit on his lap, but got close enough for us to snap a quick picture.

How funny that Sophia won't get anywhere near Santa, but she loved the ride she got in a toboggan behind one of his reindeer.

And both of the kids went for a stationary ride in his sleigh.

Santa's house was really cute!

This is his bedroom - I loved it!  Notice the slippers and clogs tucked underneath the bed.  Too cute.

In the end, we accomplished two of the three main things we wanted to do in the area.  Everything was just shorter than expected...

Christmas Markets

Christmas Markets seem to be a big thing in Sweden and we had a chance to check out a couple this month.  I love them!  These Markets are similar to the traditional midwest craft fair, but they are outside...in the freezing cold.  And, of course, the focus in on traditional Swedish handicraft.

The first market we went to was in Gamla Stan, held in my favorite square in Stockholm, Stortorget.  The weather was gorgeous - it snowed most of the day, so it was a nice, warm evening...er, afternoon.  But it was dark, so you can understand my confusion.

Here is a pic of the main tourist/shopping street in Gamla Stan with all of the nice snow!

And pictures from the market...

Note the red sheds on the right hand side of the picture.  These sheds house each of the vendors during the market.

Another market that we went to was at Skansen, the outdoor historical museum in Stockholm that I have blogged about previously.  This time, we skipped all of the animals and checked out the market.  We didn't stay that long because Aaron doesn't really have proper winter clothing to be living at 60N latitude and he was cold :-)  Skansen was my favorite - lots of nice vendors, fire pits to warm our cold hands, and even a Christmas tree that people danced around!

Me and Soph by one of many fire pits.

This picture actually looks cold.  Yikes!

Dancing around the tree!  We didn't participate due to cold feet...no, really, cold feet.

One of the many traditional Swedish Christmas goodies is Lussebulle, or Saffron buns.

Too bad they all seemed to be turned over in the picture - they usually have a raisin in the creases of the "S" on top.

We also went to a market in Sigtuna, a town that we visited a month or so ago.  Not many pics since it was insanely crowded, but I took a bunch of Ben when Sophia and Aaron went to find the bathroom.

I wonder if the underbite smile will last his whole life, or only until we pay for braces?  I don't care - I think it is so cute!

And some pics of the booth we happened to be standing by when I was taking excessive pictures of my cute little guy.

Note Sophia's mode of transportation below.  Kinda funny, but it totally works!  I bought sleds two weeks ago and we bring them everywhere instead of a stroller for her!

Disappointed

We had a very disappointed little girl on our hands this afternoon.  After spending nearly 5 hours at the Stockholm airport to fly back to Minneapolis, we left...by car :-(  Sophia REALLY wanted to go home and see (among many others) her cousins Morgan and Jordan.  We'll try again tomorrow.  Hopefully tomorrow will be more successful.

This extra time gives me some time to catch up on December pictures...let the posts begin!

Christmas Card 2010

Family Story Christmas Card

Shop Shutterfly for beautiful photo Christmas cards.

View the entire collection of cards.