1. Advent!

The first Sunday in Advent, we lit our first candle. In Sweden this is a special tradition that we do every Sunday until it's Christmas. This is how it looked like early Sunday morning when we had breakfast and Cassandra had lit the first candle.

 Benjamin was still a bit sleepy while Isabella thought it was very exciting!

Later in the afternoon I took the babies for a walk to go by the store in hope to find some good gingersnaps cookies for a little "adventsfika"  after dinner. Well, they did have gingersnaps, but nothing like the ones that we make for Christmas, so that wasn't such a hit. Luckily I had bought some other Christmas cookies as well that Cassandra liked. The traditional saffron buns and Swedish gingersnaps we will bake here for Christmas.

 Benjamin & Isabella in their "My first Christmas" onsies.

Would love to have some of those cookies...

 A Christmas tree brownie - better than the American gingersnaps cookies!

In the beginning of Advent, the swedes normally will pull out their electric candle holders and their electrical stars to place in every window of their houses. As this is the darkest time of year in Sweden, it's very welcoming to see these lights at night.

pictures google

On the first Sunday in Advent, many Swedes get together to drink glögg — a hot, spicy mulled wine with blanched almonds and raisins and ginger snaps to accompany it. Here we do have a bottle of glögg, but we will save it for Christmas I think...it's hard to get here, just like the Swedish ginger snaps.

picture google

picture google

This is the kind of wreath I use to make, but haven't this year yet. I don't know where I would put it, so I don't know if I actually will make one this year or not. This is one I made another year..

Thanksgiving celebration!

Thanksgiving morning, after a big breakfast with pancakes and bacon, Cassandra baked some Turkey cookies. No, they don't have turkey in them, just the motive of a turkey on the sugar cookie. When the cookies were done, it was time for Cassandra and daddy to prepare the turkey for the oven. This year we had a 20 lb turkey and it took over 5 hours in the oven!

Chris was in charge (as always) of the turkey, and he did a great job (as always) watching it while he watched the football games on TV. I made an apple pie and was busy with the babies and getting the table set and at 6pm we sat down for our first Thanksgiving dinner with the babies! They thought it was great - kept watching the food and the candles and of course they were not going to miss out of the turkey dinner - they just had a different kind of turkey...Still, they enjoyed it very much!

We invited our neighbor Pearl to join us and Cassandra did a great job entertaining her with a Thanksgiving poem later as I nursed the babies and Chris was busy carving the turkey.

We had a great night, and of course ate way too much - but it was very delicious! As we don't have family here, we celebrate all holidays by ourselves, which of course is a shame and we do miss that we don't have near and dear ones with us. As it's just us, we don't bother to make all the specialties for Thanksgiving. We only make what we all like. So on our table it was "only" the turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry jam, baconbeans , corn and bread. For dessert we had apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Some of the things that we skipped (and none of us like) were pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, green bean casserole, stuffing (well my husband likes it, but we kind of forgot to make it..). I'm sure that most families have their own very special food and traditions on Thanksgiving, but this is what we did! And - we had a lot of leftovers for the next day and for the freezer!

Cassandra and Chris pulled the wishing bone, and Isabella pulled first on her stocking the whole night, getting very upset that the "sock" wouldn't come off like always, and later on Benjamin's ear. Cassandra won the pulling competition, and her wish came true, the movie "Barbie A Fashion Fairytale, amazingly somehow later was placed under her pillow...It's amazing how these fairies always knows what she wishes for and it's such a shame that these fairies never show up and show their magic when it comes to cleaning the kitchen and doing the dishes...Maybe I just like Wendy in the Tinkerbell movie, have to say it louder "I do believe in fairies!"

Turkey cookies!

20 lb turkey ready for the oven!

Their first Thanksgiving Dinner!

 Chris making the first cut.

Table filled with "goodies"

Just perfect!

I'm so thankful for these three!

Turkey dinner for the twins!

 My family - My world!

Isabella pulling on her stocking..

Isabella got a good grip on poor Benjamin's ear!

Pulling the "Wishing bone"

The wish came true!

 Pearl and Cassandra

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing you and your family a Happy Thanksgiving! Hopefully you will celebrate with your loved ones just like we do today! Here the turkey is in the oven and it smells wonderful in the whole house, the rest of the food we are about to get ready here soon.

When we sit down this year to our Thanksgiving feast we have two new members to our family that will join our Thanksgiving for the very first time. I just remembered before that last year I "won" pulling the wishing bone and of course I made a wish. And my wish did come true!! I wished for healthy babies of course, but I also wished for a boy and a girl!! I am so happy that you are here Benjamin and Isabella!

Today, as every day - I am thankful and so very grateful for our three beautiful children, for my loving and wonderful husband, for family and friends far away but still so close in our hearts! I am so thankful that we all are healthy and that I am blessed with one wonderful happy family!

Hush little babies..

Half a year ago our babies were born Monday May 17, 2010. 

I was supposed to get induced on May 18, when I went into week 38 of the pregnancy. That did fit our plan perfectly, as my mother was supposed to come from Sweden on May 17 and that way she would be with Cassandra when we had to leave early on the 18th to be in the hospital at 5.30am.

Well, our plan didn't really work out that way. I had had bad back pain during the Sunday and didn't think much of it more than I probably had done more than I was supposed to. Hard to sleep during the night as always, but at 5 am my water broke! Totally unplanned! I woke my husband up and he got ready and I called the hospital to check if we needed to hurry up or if we should wait. They told us that we should come in, but I could shower first and we didn't have to rush. We had planned for that our neighbor was supposed to come over in case this would happen, and we thought of calling her. My husband first thought that well, we can take Cassandra to school first (they start serving breakfast in school at 7.15am) and then go to the hospital. 

Even if I didn't have that much pain already, I still thought that that was too long to wait here at home. I would rather go to the hospital. We called our neighbor and she came over and at around 6.15 am we arrived in the hospital. They immediately took me up to the room where I had to change over and they started to hook me up to all the things. At this time I was in pain, and I kept telling them that I NEED my epidural NOW, but they kept telling me that yes you'll get it as soon as we got the IV in and everything will be fine. I could tell that my pain and contractions were getting stronger and stronger and finally they checked me, and I was already 8 cm dilated. 

Then they kept asking me all this questions and filled out these forms in the computer, and I was in pain. Neither one of us realized how fast it all was going, but after a couple of minutes I had to tell them that I needed to push! Wait wait, let me check you again the nurse said, and very well - I was fully dilated. THEN everything went very fast!! With twins you have to deliver in the OR incase of a emergency and C-section and now they quickly got my bed out of the room and ran me into the OR. The time was now about 6.45am.

Just in the OR, the doctor was there and everyone was getting ready. I was in pain, and there was no time anymore for any kind of medications and no time for my epidural...I lost track of my husband for a moment, as he quickly had to put the scrubs on I didn't know that he was right behind me. 

Benjamin was in a rush and was born 6.56am. He was perfect and screamed and they checked him over. I got to have him on my chest and it was wonderful and all the contractions were gone. After a while the heart sounds of Isabella was getting low and they now took Benjamin away from me and started to make me nervous. The doctor even got loud telling the nurses that she should get the new ultrasound machine in there NOW. I had no contractions and Isabella was still high up in my uterus, and then the doctor said that we have to get her out now or we would end up with a C-section. They pushed on my tummy and I tried so hard to push, but it was very strange not having the contractions to help. After a little bit of help with the vacuum Isabella was finally born at 7.17am -21 minutes after her brother.

Isabella was so beautiful and she screamed as well right away, and there is no words for how relieved I was. I got to hold her on my chest as well for a little while until they had to take her away and check her out and get her vitals and make sure that everything was fine. They were both perfect, they were coming back with me into my room and because of low blood sugar they had to get an IV in the arm both of them during the first day. The next day their bili rubi was high so they had to be put on the light. Benjamin's number was higher so he ended up in a special light machine and Isabella got the bili blanket on her back. They were both in my room the whole time. It all went so fast and thankfully we didn't wait around at home, because before Cassandra could have gone to school for breakfast they were both already born.

Later that afternoon after school, my husband picked Cassandra up from school and she finally got to meet her sister and brother. The family was finally complete!

  

 

Cassandra with Benjamin

 Cassandra with Isabella

The story about the princess and the mean mean witch.

One day at the hotel Cassandra presented us with this story that she had been working on very hard for a long time. Only being 6 years old at the time, she didn't write the story down but memorized it so she could tell the story showing the illustrations accordingly.

Living in a Hotel

The following three weeks we ended up living in a hotel. We didn't have a house already when we got here, so from day one it was house hunting on the schedule. I had looked into many houses online and talked to a lot of people and I had a long list of contacts with possibilities. Well, after calling them and meeting with many of them the next day, we realized that this was unfortunately not going to be easy or fast to find a decent home to rent.

Most of the properties that was for rent was in very bad shape, not renovated at all, dirty, filthy and very small. Some addresses were located in some strange neighborhoods where we didn't even stop but kept driving. Scary!! After days and days of searching it was getting to a point were we almost considered buying a house. Of course we wanted to rent, knowing that we would only be here for 3 years and with the house market being the way it is - we didn't want to keep paying on a house that we couldn't get sold the day we actually moved. There was a lot more houses on the market for sell than for rent as you can imagine, especially as this was in November 2008, when the economy was really bad.

Living the hotel life, we woke up early, got down to the breakfast buffet after that got on the internet looking for new ads, checking the newspapers and kept calling the realtors all day. Drove around town looking for signs and looking at possibilities. In the evening we went out for dinner - let me tell you that we didn't even want to look at fast food or go out to eat for months afterward...

In the evenings we tried to occupy ourselves the best you can in a hotel room. Cassandra did a lot of school work that we had taken with us, because of course she couldn't start a school here until we had an address, that way we would know what school district she would belong to. It was a very stressful time, but we still tried to have some fun and make the most of it! Luckily, as it was getting into holiday season, there was a lot of holiday movies on TV for the whole family to watch.

Myself looking through contacts setting appointments for the next day of searching...

 Moved into a bigger room in Grand Prairie Hotel with hideous bedspread and curtains...

 Playing with daddy

Playing school with her stuffed animals.

 

The hotel had an indoor pool which was great, if you would find swimsuits anywhere in the stores....We ofcourse didn't pack any and after seeing that there is a fun pool at the hotel, we went to all kind of stores searching for swimwear. Not one had any!! Totally wrong season we were told! Yes, I know that it's not the season for swimming in November, but you would still think that they would have something in a sport store or similar...no nothing to be found. Finally we bought Cassandra a ballet leotard  to wear as a swimsuit, but there was no swimming for me or my husband.

Our new home - unfortunately only in my dreams.

Yes, this house that we found was very beautiful, but :

1. Not in Hutchinson, but in Lindsborg.

2. Not for sale or for rent.

3. Not in our budget even if it would be for sale.

So, I can enjoy the pictures and keep dreaming of my white big house with a wrapped around porch. I can see the swings hanging from the big mature tree in the front.  Absolutely love it!

We ended up "celebrating" Thanksgiving by driving to Wichita to find a restaurant that served turkey. That was hard to find here in town, and the restaurants that did, were fully booked long ago. We were sad about not being able to do our own turkey, but promised ourselves that we would do one for Christmas instead when we would be in the house. 

We did find a house to rent, after a lot of searching. Because of Thanksgiving, our moving company was closed and we weren't able to get our things delivered until December 7. That made it difficult as Cassandra started her new School, and my husband started working on December 1. During that first week, I cleaned the house so it would be all ready to move into on December 7. That day my husband left for training for a week, so he wasn't here when the movers came and he "missed" the first week of unpacking. I tried really hard to get the most unpacked so that we soon would be able to decorate and be ready for Christmas!

 Our belongings finally got delivered!