Love is in the air!!

We're back from our trip and I guess the wedding pics are the most anticipated from our mini vacation of five days off, so I'll start with those?!!

Getting ready for my brother-in-law's wedding demanded its preparations...

But we got ready. Eventually!

There were no kids invited, so The Boy stayed with our good friends, 

who took us on as guests the evening before the wedding.

E-dating

The story on how my brother-in-law found love, and we're talking ever-smiling kinda love now, is quite cute and heart warming. 

He experienced all his friends dating and marrying but he never seemed to get it right. I even set him up on some blind dates but without result. 

After some couple of years starting to feel really low and blue he went on the internet, for a dating service and BAM! He met the love of his life.

There's no question about it, like I stated: he has a giant smile on his face ever since he met her. Seeing him marrying her made all of us in the family very happy.

We're on the way, just the two of us: exciting!

I felt I was looking OK in these. Little did I know that they'd almost kill me...

The happy couple.

I must say that a happier looking couple is hard to imagine!

We're at the venue. Gorgeous place!

A nice thing about these occasions: the young and the old, discussing life.

My husband catches up with his father. My father-in-law sure was handsome this day.

The wedding

It was a very fun and intense wedding. The ceremony was beautiful and the groom's choir sang absolutely beautifully. Amazing.

The venue was gorgeous and the staff there knew what they were doing, chatting happily, never tiring of stupid questions from guests in three different languages.

The food was good, the people I sat with where easy to talk to and I sat right by the wedding couple and could feel the shine that they sent out.

There was dancing and I enjoyed dancing with the groom aswell as dancing with hubby, so I was quite pleased. I'm also pleased, looking back now, that I danced when I did 'cuz them feet were starting to kill me. Those nice looking but not quite so comfy shoes were plain torture...

Candles, good music, lots of new nice people, a happy wedding couple, spending time with family: it was all a memorable day.

The bride is from another Scandinavian country and they had some traditions that we don't have.

Whenever the groom left the table, all the men in the room rushed to kiss the bride on both cheeks.

Vice versa, of course, when the bride left for the ladies' room.

All of a sudden guests would start tapping the glasses - 

that meant the wedding couple had to stand on a chair and kiss.

The guy opposite to me. Great guy!

My brother-in-law listens to the speech my husband gave.

Ehh, erm... the pianist. And he played too!

Enjoying a drink with my sister-in-law's fiancé later in the evening, on a terrace.

The first dance.

We felt quite romantic, being out together child-less!!

After brunch the next day, we headed back to our friends to pick The Boy up.

Love is remarkable. We remembered our own wedding very well, being in this blessed day. To think love can turn a man (like my husband's brother) from blue to shiningly happy within a moment. What force it is, what power.

I'm so thankful for my husband and our love.

Among friends!

Different kinds of friendships
There are so many things to say about friends and so many things that other people have said about friendship, before me but I'll give it a go anyway!
Friends are like candy, to me, they aren't family but still they will go the extra mile for you. Often friends care a whole lot more than many realtives, also.
The different kinds of friendships are interesting to think about and joyful to experience.

Here I'm about to leave the house for some BBQ with childhood girlfriends.
I'm showing off my new pink nail polish!

Thinking about it I have these kinds of frindships:

Childhood Friends: my dear sweet friends that I started school with and that I moved back to, when we moved here 2010. These ladies know my history and we love each other regardless. We're totally different from each other and we chose different paths but still.... All good. Great friends!

My network sisters: the probably best and closest are the friends I met when The Boy was a baby. We met online, in a forum, discussing career and parenthood, we manage a big blog together, we speak daily and we share everything. They are definately the ones that know the most about me. We meet once or twice a year but we're really close. We're also a lot alike even though we have different occupations.

My best friend: my best friend is male and also a kind of childhood friend. We met in UK, when I was there on my first language-course-summer and I was 14 then, I think.
This guy is the one who would drop everything and do everything if I needed him. He's like my brother, my family and more. We're different but still the same. I can get goofy, and now we're talking really wacko-kind-of-goofy around him and he still loves me!

My childhood friend Annika has a really wonderful husband,
who BBQ:ed for us.

My childhood friends in their prime!

Capturing the moments.

What do I like doing with my friends?I like being able to sit down and chat aswell as really talk. The great advantage of being "totally different" is you get to learn things, adopting someone else's mind for an hour or two.

After hearing my childhood girlfriends complain about their bosses, I - the boss - gave my point of view.
:-)
I learned a lot from them and they got another perspective through me.

And when they talked about working every other weekend and nights, I sent an appreciative thought to my work schedule, that only contains every fourth sunday and no nights.

Annika and I a rainy Saturday in May. Raindrops hit the roof making the distinct sound 

and it was all lovely!

In commonSo, what do we have in common then? A whole lot!
The love of our children, dogs, husbands, homes, food, jogging and living, generally.
We all have grown up kids, so that's something I only share with these girls. All my other friends have only small children. These sisters I share laughter with talking of our grown up sons, trying their best being cool, manly and macho. And boy, do we laugh hard at that?!!

Still...

I remember it heartbreakingly well, the day my parents told me we were moving - again - and I had to leave these girls and leave the best class I can imaging, still to this day. Oh, how I cried and oh, how the new school was totally different, in the sense: worse.

Annika and I kept in touch all these years via letter writing and the letters were long! The rest of the ladies and friends I lost touch with. Then there was a reunion a few years ago and I went all in, enthusiastic to say the least. I called people, sent e-mails and managed to gather quite a few, including our old wonderful teacher. The evening was every bit as magic as I would have guessed and my heart was warm. Hot. I realized how much I had missed my old friends and how much I had missed, that I would have love to be a part of.

Luck and life would have it that I got a chance to move back, a year ago. 

You can imagine the joy?! You can perhaps even feel the warmth in my heart.

Isn't life a mysterious and wonderful journey? It takes courage and an open mind and then you jump right in!

Great girls.

This weekend we enjoy a prolonged weekend here. We have five days off together. 

Yesterday there was reading in the sun, visiting the beach, premiering with dinner at another favorite place (yes, I know we have so many favorites!): the beach diner.

Today we'll road trip to our old hometown for a visit to my Big Son, sleepover with our best friends and then tomorrow the wedding of my brother-in-law.

And when we get home late, Sunday, there will still be a Monday off, 'cuz Monday is our "kind of new" "independence day". Why it's new and why I use "" I guess I'll have to explain in the upcoming posts on this weekend...?!!

Have a great weekend all you wonderful blog friends out there!

I found this pic of almost all of us, at the reunion. That day was magic!

Annika, wonderful teacher Ola and I.

 

The sky's the limit!

The sky
It's the first teller of what kind of day it'll be.
If it's grey I know to put on a black dress and if it's clear blue and the month of May, then it has to be un-black and maybe even sandals?!
The sky is every bit as magic as the ocean and it's almost guaranteed to make a good photo, regardless of the weather.

We had a grand thunder storm the other day.

It was this summer's first thunder storm but certainly not the last. It brought us beautiful clouds.

It turned from sunny and light into grey and dark in a minute. Perfect candle weather!

Just now I saw geese flying passed my window cheering each other on, up there in the today white-and-blue sky. Do you think I swing for the fence if I say I would have liked to hang with those sisters, flying off to a beach somewhere?
There is something totally free about birds flying together with a clear destination.

Hail came with that thunder storm.

And then it feels like magic when sun comes shining again, afterwards.

I have a new idea, a new plan to make even more the most of every day (yeah, you know by now that's a passion of mine!). 

Will Smith says it so well in "Hitch", he says: 

"Begin each day as if it were on purpose" - darn right and I'll start doing that!

Here's the plan: I'll set everything up in the evening - and get up 10 minutes earlier in the morning - for a "Hotel de la Anna"-breakfast. 

How about that? 

Candles, plates, napkins, soft music, a newspaper (in the iPad, maybe The NewYorker?). 

I can't wait to try it!

We're all happy to see the sun again, whether we're people or flowers!

(how can you not praise the sun and life when you see beauty like this?)

Sometimes it seems like our life is a long row of "Monday snuggles"!

There's more to Monday snuggle than popcorn: there's also lego...

I love lanterns, by the way and I don't think you can have too many.

How about that sky eh?!!

And now we're there again, in the middle of the week. I'm starting to long for the annual summer vacation. This year I'll have five weeks off, in a row. That'll be nothing short of marvellous.