Körkort

Idag har jag fått mitt körkort. Äntligen.

Pièce de résistance

This is can only be appreciated by video:

Christmas lights

Christmas lights are not completely foreign to Lepplax, but the craziness that comes out in the U.S. at Christmas is unheard of there. Throughout the past weeks, we've enjoyed looking at the lights around Butler. Some of them are very pretty like this one:

But they get progressively cooky (note that there are some very beautiful homes in Butler):

Then there are those like this one...

...which can only be appreciated from afar:

Then there are those that cross the line of cooky to crazy:

Christmas Eve service

Julbord - Christmas table

Much planning went into the Julbord as we were trying to set some traditions down this first year. Kristina's mother, Sara, usually makes a huge sirloin roast and a mustard glazed ham for Christmas, and you all can imagine what happens at Tanglewood Dr. Since there were only two of us, some compromises had to be made. The meat we decided to use was a hickory smoked ham (Weslie's choice) with a homemade Christmas mustard by Kristina. It was really a great combination, though the ham needed to be smoked in the Pennsylvania winter:

Final result:

The final Julbord consisted of smoked ham, Christmas mustard, gravlax with lime-cream sauce, fresh limpa, saussicon sec, Sylvia's potato salad, pickles, cheeses, salad, and carrot casserole (morotslåda) and rutabaga casserole (kålrotslåda). To drink we had Coke, since IKEA was sold-out of julmust (although we did get one in November!):

Also, a special thanks to the Ventins for the Tro, Hopp, Kärlek candle holder. We have really enjoyed it!

Christmas gifts

Finally, the wait was over for both of us. Kristina had a not-so-mysterious bag of candy from Finland waiting for her for nearly a month. She also received several neat books for sewing and cooking and a very pretty framed collection of pictures of her hometown taken by mom-in-law while she was over there. Here was the reaction:

Here is the stash:

Weslie got several books, a collection of Moomin things from Finland, and a great pocket knife:

Smaug:

Christmas Eve breakfast

The Christmas Eve service at Faith didn't start until 7pm, so we decided to have a bigger breakfast, no lunch, and then our Julbord before the service. Weslie (me!) made french toast, bacon and eggs.

Kristina was then introduced to the American (and English?) tradition of stockings. For this, Jul tomten had to use the Alabama stockings sent by aunt Jan, as the other ones were hanging in the bedroom:

Kristina got clementines, real Finnish licorice, good Oltermanni cheese, and a bag of mixed nuts:

Weslie got peanut brittle, Nuttella, and a bit of Red Liechester cheese (just like we had in England):