St. Lucia and December Fun!

Today is St. Lucia in Sweden. I don't know much about the tradition, but I wanted to do something nice for Patric to bring a little of home to him. Apparently, they make cookies called Pepparkakor (basically gingerbread) so I made the dough last night so that we could roll them out today. We had a pretty busy day, so we didn't get to them until after dinner, but WOW--THEY ARE YUMMY!!

I got some shots of us working on them, for those in Sweden who follow this blog.

Josh helped roll out the cookies.



Josh helped cut out the cookies...and licked them too! He got A LOT of flour all over him, but that is part of the fun of making cookies.

We didn't have gingerbread men cookie cutters...so we had to make gingerbread snowmen, angels, and holly leaves.
An action shot...while they are baking! They smelled SO yummy!!

The finished product. They smelled SO good!


Josh is testing them out...to see if they are good.


Patric and Josh relaxing, watching a Christmas movie...while Josh continues to snack on his cookie. Look at his hand, he did not even let me come near him because he thought I would take his cookie away.



In other news---today marks the day I officially lost 20 lbs. I have been dieting and working out for about 6 weeks...of course Thanksgiving was in the middle of it all on top of any cheat days I gave myself...but I am SO happy to be 8 lbs less than I was when I got pregnant with Josh. Ideally, I would like to lose another 7 lbs before I get pregnant again...but I am just so happy I have lost what I have.

I will be bold and post a picture of me in my bathing suit. Patric took it today...just to show how much I have lost. Patric has repeatedly told me how proud he is of me. I have resisted trying to get pregnant, because I felt so miserable about my body and did NOT want to gain on top of pregnancy weight. Now I feel much more confident about getting pregnant...though I will not get to enjoy my body much, if I do get pregnant fast.




Yes family---Patric and I will be trying for another kid this month. Cross your fingers that conceiving this kid will not take over a year like Josh did. Josh was sure worth the wait though!

It's the holiday season!

So--

We had these REALLY AWESOME tickets to the Giants v Redskins game on Nov 30. Did we go? No! Josh decided to get some type of stomach bug and was pooping and puking a lot the weekend of Thanksgiving. We did watch the game together at home, and Josh actually fell asleep on his daddy..which he NEVER does...so I had to capture it.




I took some pictures of Josh playing outside when it started to get cold out. Also--it was a way to kill time...as Patric has been working later than usual and I have a hard time adjusting to that! Planning dinner is about the most stressful time of my day.


Patric got a hard hat for Josh at work like a year ago...and he LOVES to play with it. I am sure I have posted pictures of him wearing it, but I had to show it again, because I think it is pretty funny. Don't mind his red face...i guess he gets a dry face when its cold...didnt have this problem last year.



I am NEVER in front of the camera...I generally am behind it...so I thought it was kinda nice when Patric thought that it would be cute to take pictures of me reading to Josh before bedtime. Josh FINALLY likes us to read to him...I was so sad when he would keep closing the books when we tried to read to him when he was younger...but now it is something we do before every nap time and bed time.


Next time...I hope to post some Christmas pictures...I bought Josh's christmas outfit (and all of the pieces were on sale!! Like majorly...like 50% off...gotta love shopping after the rush)