While my readers from the other side of the big pond hopefully recovered from all the delicious Thanksgiving food on Thursday during a relaxing long weekend, we had our Thanksgiving dinner in Gothenburg on Saturday night. And what a great dinner that was! Michael and Orsi, our American friends, had invited us over to their dinner party with 2 American couples and one family from Canada. We had a wonderful evening with everything you could wish for at a Thanksgiving dinner: turkey, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy. For dessert – when we already thought there wouldn’t possibly be any room in our bellies anymore – we had pumpkin and pecan pies baked by nobody else than Jim the pie man! We had started the cocktail hour at 3 pm and after all the lovely food I felt quite knocked out after dessert by 8 pm. It must be the combination of sweet and fatty that lets the food coma set in so overwhelmingly. Anyhow it was a great night and hopefully we can invite Orsi and Michael with their kids Helen and Greta soon for a typical Swedish moose steak with chantarelles. It’s depending on how successful J’s Dad was at hunting this season. I’m also eager to do either a Fondue or Raclette party soon next year! That should be fun!

Today we took it very easy at home before we went over to Jens and Ivonne for some fresh Stollen at the first advent. It’s tradition in my family as well to bake Stollen for Christmas and have the first slices on the first Advent and therefore it felt so homely to do the same thing here as well. At times like this weekend I’m feeling so thankful to be caught in the middle of all those different cultures, to have friends from all over the world!

Back home we also started decorating the house and now I would just like some snow to really get into the right mood. But now it is bedtime for me and I wish everyone a great First Advent, too!