Barbeque!

The other night Nels decided to grill some hamburgers and pineapple. He loves to grill. We only have a little tiny one, but eventually we will get a nice big one for him. So it's January, snow's on the ground, it's freezing (like 2 degrees F), and Nels is outside grilling hamburgers. He's a die hard! The burgers turned out spectacular like always. Mmmm good!

Koldormer and Danish Pastries

So over New Year's weekend we were with Nels' family. His dad made Koldormer which is an authentic Swedish meal. Koldormer is a meat mixture (usually hamburger and rice with other stuff...) all wrapped in cabbage leaves. We helped wrap up the meat mixture and tie them up in the cabbage leaves. After that you fry them and bake them. They actually tasted pretty good. Here's a picture of what Koldormer looks like:

The best ones were the ones with green cabbage leaves instead of the white ones.

The Nyborg's (mainly Mom Nyborg) makes danish pastries every Christmas. They take forever to make, but taste extraordinary. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of all the hard work that went into making them and the final product. Quick summary of how to make them: 3 days of rolling them out, letting them rise, and letting the dough sit, before finally putting the filling in and baking them. All the hard work is worth it though when the light fluffy pastry melts in your mouth.

As you can tell the Swedish heritage that Nels' great grandparents brought with them to America is still going strong!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Better late than never to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We had a fun and wonderful holiday. Nels and I went up to his family's home in Valparaiso, Indiana. We enjoyed celebrating Christmas with them. Nels' sister Kierstin came from Portland, Oregon so the whole family was there. For Christmas Eve dinner we enjoyed filet mignon that Nels' dad made. All of the food was delicious, especially the homemade apple pies. (made with sliced fresh apples and not canned apples.)

The Nyborg's have some fun family traditions. One is to make sugar cookies for Santa. So we all decorated sugar cookies and put them on a special plate for Santa. Then all of us wrote letters to Santa. Anna-Lisa is the youngest at age 16 and Nels is the oldest at 31, but we all dutifully wrote our letters to Santa. The letters mainly consisted of an accounting of what we did this year and if we were good or not. Another tradition is to read the book "Twas the Night Before Christmas" before going to bed. Nels' dad reads the book out loud and all of the kids gather round. In the morning we all read our letters that we wrote for Santa out loud to each other and then magically Santa had replied to our letters so we read his response also. I think that is a fun tradition. Then Nels' dad reads the Christmas story about Christ being born. After that it's time to open presents, which is done one by one youngest to oldest.

But wait! One last tradition that is my favorite. The treasure hunt. After the presents are unwrapped from under the tree, Nels' dad says, "I think Santa left a message on the computer." The youngest, Anna-Lisa, starts first and the message is a clue. The clue leads to several other clues around the house until the last one leads to a present. Everyone has a treasure hunt and we follow each other when the person on the hunt is looking for the next clue. Nels' treasure hunt gift was a leather Samsonite briefcase, I received a Breadmaker! Yippee! I have been wanting a breadmaker for a long time. I am so happy I got one for Christmas. So those are some of the Nyborg traditions. We thoroughly enjoyed being there. Here's a couple of pictures.

Reading "Twas the Night Before Christmas."

Reading the Christmas Story before opening presents on Christmas Day.

Sven, the family dog, was involved in all of the celebrations too. I think pictures were taken of him the most. He's very entertaining! Even though Sven and I don't always get along he does keep things interesting.

I even got a video of Sven opening a present. He was very excited about his gift.

What would Christmas be without music? Anna-Lisa plays the cello. So I played the piano and she played the cello and everyone sang Christmas carols. It was a lot of fun and really brought in the Christmas spirit.

Besides napping and eating, we did play some Settlers.We hope everyone enjoyed the holidays! I'll write more about the New Year celebrations later.

Let it Snow!

Saturday night it snowed and snowed! Sunday morning we received a phone call that church was cancelled. Here are some pictures of the snow courtesy of Cindy from work.

Not bad for one night! Sunday was actually pretty sunny all day. Nels and I just stayed indoors though. It was a very nice and relaxing Sunday. Well, we might have a white Christmas this year after all!

Quick note. Nels made it through finals week, so to celebrate we got take-out Outback Steakhouse. Mmmm good. I love steak and potatoes. For some reason Outback has the best green tossed salad too. Now Nels gets to learn how to relax for the next three weeks. But if he gets bored I have a list of things for him to do just in case. :)

Christmas Tree

We finally decorated a tree for Christmas this year. Our kind friends let us borrow a little tree this year. We listened to Christmas music while we decorated it and had a good time. Here's some pictures:


Finished Product.

It also brought back memories of our very first Christmas tree together. I was still in school and Nels was working. I really, really wanted a tree. So, we went to Lowe's and bought a real tree. This was my first time with a real Christmas tree. I still remember laughing so hard when we brought it home because the tree holder was almost bigger than the tree! Well, we had spent all of our money on the tree and we did not have any lights or ornaments to put on it. Sad tree....but I did have a Santa's hat that I proudly put on the top. As people sent us Christmas cards, I put them on the tree. So, by December 25 we had quite a few cards on the tree. Aw, our first tree holds a lot of memories. We haven't had a tree since (because of several moves and transitions), but this year we have a little one to bring in the Christmas spirit.

Here's the picture of our first Christmas tree December 2003 before the Christmas cards came.

Roses

Nels is such a sweetheart!!! Last night he went and ran "errands," and he came home with a dozen roses! Just out of the blue for no reason at all...well other than that he loves me. I love when he surprises me with flowers. So Thanks Nels!

Catch up on Thanksgiving

Well, I haven't updated about Thanksgiving. The first great thing was that it snowed for the first time while we were up in Valparaiso. We tried to take a picture while it was snowing, but you can't really see the snowflakes. But it snowed quite a bit as you can see from the accumulation on the barbecue. Of course, it's not like an Idaho snow, but it still set the mood for Thanksgiving.


Here's Anna-Lisa cooking in the kitchen. She cooked a ton! We all went in and out of the kitchen helping to prepare the meal, but Anna-Lisa stayed the whole time! She's great!




I caught Nels actually reading his Economics book on Thanksgiving day! I kind of made fun of him for reading it, so he stopped and helped make the pies. It was a lot more fun when he wasn't reading! I guess you can take the boy out of school, but you can't take the school out of the boy....well you know what I mean.

After dinner Nels challenged his parents to a checker match. Nels loves playing checkers. He plays online often. He won both games he played with his mom and dad.

We did go shopping the day after Thanksgiving. We did not go at 4 a.m. or any time in the morning. We went in the afternoon up to Michigan City to the outlets. We had a good time and bought a few things. That about sums up our Thanksgiving. I can't believe it is already December. Yesterday, I put up our few Christmas decorations and burned a Christmas scented candle. Well, that's all for now.