Catching Up Points

As you can see I missed last Friday's Gallery and I haven't blogged about anything else for almost two weeks either, but I will try to catch up with this post and a few other posts coming up in the next few days.  So what have we been up to lately?

• My mum visited two weekends ago.  As you know, her visit ended up being a bit different than what we had planned - no time for Christmas shopping mainly - due to the flight debacle, but we had a good time anyway, and we went to the Christmas market at Sainte Catherine (too much ugly knick-knacks and kitsch, and too little genuine crafts) and baked both pepparkakor and lussekatter with Isolde.  Mamma, jag lägger upp bilder vid senare tillfälle!
• At work I have been rather busy, but there has also been time for some work-related social activities, e.g. two Christmas drinks (one with my unit and one bigger event with several units) and a lunch gathering at the Swedish Permanent Representation to the EU.
• In terms of non-work related social life, we have been to two adventsfikor (coffee, cake, glögg, etc.) at Petchie's, one with just us and one with other friends of theirs, and to the Lucia celebration (family friendly version) at the Swedish Church, and we've had Petchie and family over for dinner on Nobel Day (though with four kids we didn't get to watch much of the banquet on TV).
• Last weekend I managed to get most of the remaining Christmas shopping done by taking a trip to the nearest shopping centre to us which was open even though it was Sunday (not normally the case in Belgium but around holidays they can stay open), and also on Saturday the whole family went to the local toy shop here in Stockel (and for the best gaufres in town from the local market!).
• The whole family except me have had colds on and off, though Isolde has only had the sniffles so she has been attending school every day.  Harald, poor thing, was better for a while but has a fever today.  I hope he feels better by Saturday when we're flying to Sweden.
• I have started packing for our two weeks in Sweden, but will do most of the packing tomorrow Friday when I'm not working (last working day today, yay!).  It doesn't look like it's going to be that much colder in Stockholm than in Brussels, but I'll pack the snowsuits and winter boots just in case.  I really hope there will be some snow during the two weeks, for Isolde's sake!
• What else?  I've been preparing Christmas cards and other photo-related projects, and also performed my Secret Santa duties!  Tonight Isolde and I are going to bake gingerbread cake (mjuk pepparkaka) to give to her teachers tomorrow as a little token of appreciation.
• And only two days until we go to Sweden!  Can't wait!

Friday Gallery: Advent

Annika has taken over the hosting of the Friday Gallery for the month of December (and she's permanent hostess for the FG widget) and for our first task she's given us Advent. Easy one. This is what our home looks like since last weekend/first of advent:

Isolde helped out with the advent candles:

On First of Advent Isolde and I went to the Swedish church here in Brussels to get into the Christmas spirit: 

And of course I have to bring some "adventsmys" to the office as well:

And for those who have read the below post I'm happy to report that the ordeal was finally over just after 3pm today when I set foot at home again, 17 hours after planned arrival. The 10:35 flight this morning was of course delayed twice and it wasn't until 12:45 that we left Copenhagen. Next time I will definitely bring underwear and deodorant and a few other key items on day trips just in case. And by my next work trip I hope to have stopped breast-feeding, as towards the end of the delay my breasts were rather full and painful, after not having been "used" for over 36 hours. I don't nurse as much anymore but at least once every morning and twice at night, so still regular enough to keep milk production up. 

All is well that ends well, or however it goes. Peter made it to Stockholm as planned this morning and the kids had a great time with my mum. Isolde missed Saint Nicholas at school today but luckily she's too young to care, though apparently has little friends had missed her and even cried for her sake because she missed Santa (bless'em). 

Now I'm off to bed for some very needed sleep! 

A Long Thursday

Just a quick post this Thursday. As I write this I'm watching TV (rest in peace, Mandela) from a hotel bed in Copenhagen. I flew here this morning for meetings together with the European Commissioner for Employment but our evening flights were cancelled due to a big storm affecting a big area of Sweden and Denmark as well as other countries. This was not good timing for me at all, as my mum arrived in Brussels this evening and Peter is going to Stockholm for a couple of days tomorrow morning.

I should have seen this coming last night (I knew about the storm of course and that we might be affected, but there was also another bad omen), when I realised at 11pm when attempting to check in online that my booking reservation had never been confirmed. I called our travel agent and it was sorted, but perhaps it was a sign...if you believe in those things which I don't really but sometimes you wonder...

And today almost as soon as we arrived there was talk about closing the bridge between Denmark and Sweden (we flew to Copenhagen and then crossed the bridge by car to go to Malmö and Lund). Usually the trains can keep on running in much worse weather conditions than the cars, but in the afternoon they announced there would be no trains after 16:00. At that stage we couldn't get to the train station in time so our only option was to take the ferry between Helsingborg and Helsingör (a bit further north so a bit calmer). Unfortunately the drive on both sides of the straight was longer than we thought and due to the strong winds we couldn't drive as quickly as normal (and sometimes there were falling branches hitting the car), and soon it was clear that we wouldn't make our flights. My colleagues' flights got cancelled quite early anyway, and soon my flight was cancelled too, so rather soon we didn't have to worry about catching flights anyway. We rerouted to a hotel in the city (everything at the airport was fully booked) and after dinner at the nearest place (Hard Rock Café - haven't been to one for years) and a visit to a 24/7 pharmacy for deodorants, toothbrush, etc., I'm now hoping to get some sleep despite the noisy winds outside. 

I'm booked for the 10:55 flight tomorrow, by which time the storm will have hopefully moved on, fingers crossed!