So much to be thankful for!

Thanksgiving. My personal favorite in terms of holidays.

Living so far away from "home" at times like these can be difficult. I miss the traditions, my extended family the cozy times, the memory making. And, of course, the day-after shopping spree.

But I am so very lucky to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving with a bunch of great people... my beautiful family, and a group of close American or "almost" American friends who understand not only what it's like to be an expat but also understand what Thanksgiving means. People who can, for example, eat sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows without wrinkling their nose. And pumpkin pie! And cranberry sauce!

We have a tradition (now in it's third year) of celebrating Thanksgiving with Steve and Eva and their kids. For the past two years we've been joined by Camille and Klas, and this year we added Merrick and Ling and their daughter to the mix. We had a terrific, memorable time. Eva and Steve were our hosts this year.

Here's Steve carving the first turkey (we had two -- this is Sweden, after all -- the turkeys are similar in size to a large hen....)

Cam and Klas -- Cam's expecting their first child in just a few weeks!!!!

Steen's plate.... just looking at it makes me hungry. :)

Merrick digs in.

We usually follow Thanksgiving with a day of baking gingerbread... Here you see Matthew rolling out the dough in preparation for the arrival of the cookie cutters.

And Luke, who has found the aforementioned cutters.

Steen and the boys are in charge of making a gingerbread house every year.... and every year they get just a bit more crazy and creative. So I present to you the gingerbread house of 2010:

As we'll be away over Christmas and New Year's, we decided to put our tree up extra early. It was exciting this year because it was the first year when Nico could really be involved. He was thrilled. Every ornament was a discovery for him.

Some of my boys having a bit of fun.

A visit makes a dream come true

Throughout my life, I've watched one celebrity single-handedly change the world, one step at a time, while simultaneously fighting numerous accusations, derogatory statements and court cases with dignity and the utmost respect for her fellow human beings.

She brought us the "Angel Network", lit up an interest in reading in a culture where reading was arguably "on the way out", and used her financial wealth for countless gifts that have brought hope to those less fortunate.

I am speaking of Oprah. While in grad school, I turned down a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attend one of her tapings together with a fellow student. Why?

I had class that morning.

I am nothing if not conscientious. Yeah, right.

Well, I had been regretting that decision ever since. And then, in February last year (at an amazing charity event that is being repeated in just a few days -- click here!), my parents bid and bid and bid again on a pair of tickets to one taping of the Oprah show.

And they won.

And my mom called me and asked me: "Tina, would you like to go to the Oprah Winfrey show with me?".

Jumping up and down, screaming with all the energy this just-a-bit-older-than-a-teenager body can muster, I of course answered yes.

And in late October, I landed in Chicago, proudly announced to the passport control guy that I was returning to the US to see Oprah, and joined my mom for the taping.

Here we are the "morning of".

We left the house early enough to take the train downtown, have a cozy breakfast and a nice cup of coffee, brave the hurricane-force winds to make it to Harpo Studios, where we waited outside for a few hours along with other lucky ticket holders to be admitted to the studios.

Once inside, we spent another hour or two waiting around with 300 or so beautiful women and a few handsome men before being admitted to the actual studio where the taping would occur.

I could feel the energy in the air when Oprah walked into the room. For a few minutes, my eyes were filled with tears at my incredible fortune -- to be in the presence of such an amazing woman who has done so much good for the world and to be sitting next to another amazing woman who has done so much good in the world. I didn't want to be anywhere else.

There are no other pictures from that day except for a couple more we took before we left the house. We were not allowed to bring cameras or camera phones with us to the studio.

The show we saw taped was Oprah and Gayle's Yosemite Vacation, which was good fun. I know I truly enjoyed myself.

After the show, mom and I took a cab down Michigan Avenue, grabbed a snack at a terrific café, did some shopping, and had an amazing dinner at The Capital Grille. I had the most mouth-watering steak ever!!!!! Full, giddy and tired after a day of excitement, we hopped the train home.

Thank you mom for making (yet another) dream come true. I don't know how I can ever repay you.

*************

While in Chicago, I got to spend some precious time with dad, grandpa, Tim, Kathi, and my niece and nephew.

Let's talk about grandpa for a minute -- the man who has taught me so much and with whom I share a love of cooking (along with so much else). You have no idea what the following scene means to me: a kitchen with my grandfather in it.

When I was a little girl, grandpa would make my brother and I anything we wanted for breakfast -- and I mean it. Pancakes, toast, eggs, bacon, oatmeal, cheese sandwich. Anything He'd let me sit on a chair in the kitchen and whip the pancake batter.

When I was a grad student, he and grandma made hundreds of meals, froze them and brought them to me at the university. I've never eaten better than I did those two years.

As an adult, I've spent countless hours in the kitchen with grandpa... whether it be his kitchen or mine, or even mom and dad's. We've baked bread together, whipped up a stir-fry or two, along with eggplant parmesan and pasta galore. We are comfortable working side by side, sharing a few words here and there and happy to just be together.

Well, now I'm just speaking for myself. I'm always happy to be with grandpa.

And here Kathi and I are celebrating our 25th birthday. :)

Cannes, France

Guess what? I'm about to unload this huge sense of not living up to expectations! Starting today!

I've neglected this wonderful blog, this somewhat concrete evidence of the path of our lives, for months now. Sorry about that.

And thank you to whoever is still bothering to read this... for sticking around. :)

I have a plan. Starting today (February 4), I'm going to try to post an entry every few days until I catch up. I'll backdate the entries though so that in 20 years they'll still make sense. Here's what is missing:

1. France
2. The US and Oprah
3. Thanksgiving
4. Pre-Christmas Preparations
5. Steen's 40th birthday
6. Christmas at home
7. Christmas abroad
8. Everyday life

So, true to form, I'll start with France.

My dear husband travels a great deal because of his job. He is always attending one conference or another, or going to meetings with doctors or working with hospitals, or hanging out at some kick-off or year-end wrap-up with his colleagues.

My role in that regard (when he's travelling) is to stay home and handle all of the usual domestic duties -- the kids, the laundry, the shopping, etc. And to keep making money, of course. :)

In October Steen was scheduled to attend a conference in Cannes. Three days before he was set to leave, we had the following conversation at the dinner table:

Steen: Oh, by the way, you need to plan to serve three extra people for dinner on Wednesday.

Me: What? Who? And wait a minute -- you won't be home Wednesday! You'll be in France!

Steen: I'm not telling you who. Just please make sure you have enough food to serve three extra people.

It must be said here that Steen is being very friendly while I'm getting kind of riled.

Me (jumping to conclusions): Why would you invite colleagues or customers over for dinner on Wednesday when you're not going to be here? How am I going to entertain them on my own?

Steen: Also, you need to be at the airport at 6 Thursday morning.

Me (I admit that I am slow to catch on): I can't go to the airport at 6 in the morning! I have to take the kids to school by 8!

Steen (looks at me seriously and takes a deep breath): Tina, it's ok. There'll be someone else to take the kids to school and to watch them for a few days.

And then I get it.

My guy has arranged for for his parents and little brother to stay here with the kids, and for me to meet him in Cannes.

Which I do.

I leave the snow and freezing temperatures of our current home to arrive in 20-degree (celcius) sunny Nice, rent a car and drive to Cannes, and spend 1.5 days working while Steen finishes up his conference (well, I didn't work the entire time -- at one point, I wandered down to the waterfront, had myself a cappuccino, a baguette and a crepe, sat on the beach and watched the sun set).

And then we spend several amazing days together exploring the French Riviera, with our base camp set up at a lovely B&B situated at the top of one of the many hills overlooking the sea. Isn't it just gorgeous?

While Cannes itself is glamorous, interesting, incredibly expensive and beautiful, we really enjoyed visiting the small villages that line the coast and crawl up the mountainsides. Small streets, fun shops and amazing food.


Thank you to my great in-laws for taking on the daunting task of our three boys that weekend. And a special thanks to my sweet husband for bringing me with him.

Meet one amazing woman

There is a woman in my life whom I'm proud to call my friend.

A few weeks ago, she had a birthday... I had planned to post this then, but life took over and, as you can see, I haven't posted anything at all in weeks.

A few weeks ago, I met this woman again for the gazillionth time. She took me to see Oprah. Together we dressed up, spent a day downtown and enjoyed each other's company. It's a day I'll never forget... For me, it was a dream come true.

But that's not why I'm writing this today. I'm writing this today to share the list I wrote for why I love this woman -- my mom. I wrote it at the same time that I wrote my dad's a few years ago (which I posted earlier this year...). I've just tweeked it a bit today.

So here you go. 50 reasons I love my mom... and these are only the beginning.

Mom, I love you.
1. For delivering me into the world (no, that's not me she's holding... it's Nick... if you thought it was me, you're 30+ years off. :) )
2. For going to get my bike, which was always blocks away when I fell off it and came home without it
3. For reading Nancy Drew to me on rainy summer days
4. For supporting me in my dream to be an exchange student
5. For sacrificing so much so that I could attend the college of my choice
6. For attending every single swim meet and cheering me on as I swam lap after lap
7. For telling me to get in my very first car, a stick-shift that I couldn’t drive, and saying “just take it out yourself – you’ll learn it right away!”
8. For helping me move from GW to the University of Chicago, even though I had only packed one box when you arrived
9. For packing up our entire house in Denmark when I couldn’t find the emotional strength to do it myself
10. For coffee breaks in comfy Starbucks chairs
11. For offering your shoulder when I broke up with my first boyfriend (and every break-up thereafter)
12. For calling me right away when you can see from an email that I might need some cheering up
13. For taking us on an amazing road-trip vacation to New Mexico in third grade
14. For being a Brownie and Girl Scout leader

15. For finishing your Associates Degree, thereby showing me (in one of a million ways) that if someone puts their mind to it, anything is possible
16. For quitting your job at MDM after they skipped you over for a promotion (go mom!!!!)
17. For being right there, holding my hand, when Lucas was born
18. For going through 6 weeks of missing dad in order to spend them with me at the end of my pregnancy with Lucas
19. For going on the Carribbean cruise with me
20. For being unable to say “Mitsubishi”
21. For being Rotary President and Rotarian of the Year
22. For allowing me to make meals as a little girl from my Mickey Mouse cookbook
23. For coming to me on endless nights when I couldn’t sleep
24. For being there when I got bit by the dog and remaining so calm throughout the entire event

25. For letting go so many thousands of times when you must have wanted to hang on
26. For always believing in me
27. For being an amazing grandmother
28. For having squirt gun fights with the boys
29. For making manicotti and pot roast on request
30. For endless hours spent in my school classrooms going through spelling tests and helping out whenever necessary
31. For my beautiful, unforgettable wedding

32. For teaching me how to shave my legs
33. For making my first period not so embarrassing
34. For attending every band concert and allowing me to play the instrument of my choice (I don’t think I’ve ever actually paid you back for it)
35. For the amazing trips to Disney World, both when I was a child and when I had children of my own
36. For beautiful Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas memories
37. For your creative spirit
38. For laughter and your sense of humour
39. For showing me the beauty of a marriage
40. For introducing me to faith and God

41. For sharing stories of your family and your childhood
42. For never saying a word as I move around the world
43. For never letting me doubt, even for a moment, how much I am loved
44. For your “Have a great day, Honey” day after day all the way through high school, spoken through a rolled-down window every single morning as I slammed the door
45. For your tears after you dropped me off at GWU
46. For taking the time to teach me how to knit, cross-stich and crochet
47. For trusting me, especially when I was a teenager
48. For choosing dad as your lifelong partner
49. For loving Steen as if he was your own son
50. For sewing endless clothes for me, and in particular, my senior prom dress and my 8th grade graduation dress.

Out of the blue 2

Some more phone photos for your rainy-day enjoyment.



This first one has to be one of my favorites. My dad, boating enthusiast that he is, has a tendency to buy one really big sailboat model every time he and mom are visiting us here in Sweden. Amazingly, the two of them have managed to get every one of them home, safe and sound.



However, Nicholas found the master of all sailboats. It's gi-normous! I mean, look, the boy's head barely goes past the bottom of the sail....



Want it, dad?



Nick at the playground -- the first time he dared to try the swirly slide (with assistance, just in case). This must be taken the same day, as he's wearing the same clothes... Or maybe that's just his uniform.



Lucas's last day of third grade. Here is with his pals Zaq and Alfred receiving their award for winning the invention competition, which was hosted by the Swedish Technical University.

And here we have the crazy, but lovable, inventor himself at our traditional last-day-of-school lunch. I can already see signs of the wacky inventor shown again and again in the movies... Ever see Back to the Future?

An afternoon of dad-boys time, building Warhammer.

Matthew's in on the Warhammer fun...

Out of the blue

I'm one of those people who is always using her phone to take pictures when a camera isn't handy.... you know those situations where you think "If only I could catch this moment on film" and your next thought is "Hey! I can! With my phone!".

Thing is, I never use those photos for much except to pass them time while Tina's Taxi Service is waiting to pick up one child or another from an activity. So this week I decided that I'll try to share a few of them with you each day.

Aren't you lucky?

Here's Matthew putting on his I'm-almost-a-teenager face...

In this one, I love the light coming in from above, making Lucas even more handsome than usual.

Here's Nick on the neighbor's trampoline... our neighborhood couldn't have gotten a better form of entertainment!

Nick waiting for his first "real" ride on the bus into the city. He's getting very impatient because the bus fails to arrive at his command...

Nick pushing his buggy home from daycare.

Matt waiting at the starting line for the mini-marathon.

Here's the whole group waiting at the starting line.

A tale of caution

I have a few words of advice for anyone willing to listen, but first I thought I'd introduce you to Ida, one of Nick's closest buddies since they were both teeny-tiny-itsy-bitsy babies. Ida and Nick are a bit competitive, as you can see... a few days ago I was able to catch the two of them in a rock-til-you-drop race. Aren't they just sooo cute?

OK, so today I have three cautionary tales to tell you. The first one begins like this.

Don't sell your old bookshelf until you have a new one in your possession.

You see, before the summer, we ordered a new bookshelf to replace our old, worn Ikea version (yes, the old one took at least 5 days to build and made one husband very, very angry at it back in the day because it just wouldn't build right!). Last weekend, my husband informed me that the new bookshelf was finally ready and that he would pick it up on Sunday.

Being the crazy woman that I am, I put the old bookshelf up for sale on a Swedish site. It was sold and picked up in less than two hours (I am convinced that people are more than willing to pay for pre-built Ikea furniture... it's well worth the investment just to avoid having to build it yourself).

Then, lo and behold, we realized that we couldn't pick up the new bookshelf because the store was closed on Sundays (as you can probably guess, the store is not Ikea).

So we ended up with this sight all over the house:


Nice furnishings, eh?

Anyway, this past weekend we were smarter -- Steen picked up the bookshelf during the week (all 20+ boxes of it) and yesterday he and Nick (!) put it together. Nick had a crazy good time and was, of course, very helpful. So helpful in ways we could have never imagined.


Surprisingly (or not, depending on how you look at it), the bookshelf came together relatively quickly. Steen and Nick had it up in the span of four hours or so.

And here's the final product:

My second cautionary tale is this: if you have dark brown hair with blonde highlights, don't -- I repeat -- don't every try to dye it yourself at home with a box of haircolor marked "medium brown with red highlights". Seriously, don't.... because this is what you'll get:

HAIR

(pink hair)

I am not kidding.

Believe me, I speak out of experience. Then you'll be forced to drop your kids off in the morning at their respective schools/daycare centers with pink hair... and your youngest will cradle your face in his hands and say:

"Mommy, you've got new hair!"

and the middle one will say nothing, until you ask "What do you think of my hair?" and he goes "Mom, it's PINK!" and roll his eyes.

After that lovely experience, you have to head to the store and pick up a box of haircolor marked "dark brown", and what you end up with is midnight-black hair.

Which is better than pink.

And puts you right in line with the Twilight-saga-vampire lookalike trend.

My third, and final, cautionary tale is this: If you meet a little guy who looks like this, beware!!!! He's probably up to no good in a way that will have you crying with laughter.

Rock star

Just had to share this with you.... I especially love the head-banging, we-will-rock-you movements!

A decade of fun

A few weeks ago, Lucas reached a major milestone in the life of a child.

He turned 10. Ten! The big One-Oh!

When Matthew was born, Steen and I agreed that when our children turned ten, they could pick where they wanted to go for a weekend getaway. Lucas took full advantage of this opportunity and invited us all to join him for a long weekend at Disneyland Paris.

We had a terrific time celebrating Lucas in the realm of Disney magic. There is truly no other place on earth like a Disney park to make me feel like a child again.

Here are most of my men at the entrance to the park (Nicholas has probably snuck through the front gates and headed for Buzz Lightyear).

We enjoyed a nice meal at the Rainforest Café. It was Nick's first time there... he didn't particularly care for the "thunderstorm" part of the visit, but the presence of elephants made up for it.

Turns out that Nick was afraid of the characters... the "live" ones, that is, who were in our hotel in the morning and wandering about the park.

Despite his fear, however, he was really interested in seeing them (just not up close)... Here he is using a little girl (in front of him) and a wall (to his left) as protection just in case Goofy, who is standing just around the corner, should decide to jump out and get him.

The birthday boy couldn't, of course, have a birthday without a real celebration... and lucky for us, he sleeps like a rock (twice we've been in hotels where the fire alarms have gone off in the middle of the night and he just kept sleeping, so that Steen has carried him down 20+ flights of stairs)....

Anyway, here he is, not yet awake... 10 years old!

What is a party without presents?

One of my biggest concerns about this trip was how Nicholas would do with all of the standing line. In my mind, he was going to do nothing but fidget, jump out of line and run away. But, in actuality, he was probably the best line-waiter of us all... Waiting his turn patiently. Often we had to wait 90 minutes for a single ride. Here he is waiting to get on the rocket ships.

The day of Lucas's birthday, we arranged for lunch with the Disney characters. For Lucas and Matthew, this was great fun, but for Nicholas, it was the stuff of nightmares.

Don't worry. He still waved to all of the characters when he saw them in parades, and ever since we came home, he's been telling us several times a day that he is "Mickey Mouse's baby"!

Mickey himself joined us at the table for the singing of the birthday song.

Lucas enjoying his favorite -- cotton candy.

Nick gets a ride with Lightning McQueen, finally!!!! Such joy for a 2-year old.

The big boys hang out with their buddies from Monsters Inc.

Can you guess who's who????

One last ride on Dumbo on our last day, just before we leave, headed for a day in Paris.

Oh, wait, a ride on the horsies too, mommy!!!!

Lucas had also asked that we visit the Eiffel Tower. He gave up a day at Disney to go see it... He was with me when we came out of the Paris Metro, rounded the corner and there it was, right in front of us. Despite the pouring rain, he gasped and whispered "Oh wow!" under his breath. I know exactly what he means.