They ARRIVED...and now we have things to do...

Sorry for the delay, but as you can imagine, my excitement for having my family together has been all consuming! The minute they walked through the gates in the International Terminal (terminal 5 at Arlanda) on Friday morning, it's been a whirl wind.

Boring stuff first - right before they arrived, I was informed that I'd be working on the Brussels/Sweden part of the SJM project, as well as continuing to help the project I was doing in Texas as well --- double duty at this point. Nuts - that means that I'm going to be working a lot while they are here, whereas I thought I was working double duty before so I might catch a reprieve - not so much. Oh well...it's life. So, that's what I've been doing when I am not spending time with the other 2.

Thursday night, I could not sleep...I was tossing and turning, looking at my clock, wondering "how much longer?" I called Thom about 30 minutes before I knew they were supposed to take off, and was informed that "It was almost too cold for Reese to fly!" Apparently, the gate agents weren't going to let little Reese Bonkers (RB) into the cargo area if it was too cold to send her up. Well, on one hand, "Thank you" on the other hand "UGH!". I mean, we want her safe, but we also want her here in Sweden!!! Thom had to wait in line for an hour at the ticket counter to get the verdict, and it was positive that she could fly! WHEW! I also knew that there was some bad weather moving into the Chicago area...and that airport has been hit with some serious storms, cancelling lots of flights (I was victim to it last December when I tried to return home from Australia). I had to hope and pray that they would get out of there on time and away before the storms hit. I was watching their flight status on flightstats.com and saw that they left the gate a little late....at least they were away from the gate and they would be on their way soon. I had to get up at 5:00 to catch the train at 6:00 to be to the air port when they landed around 7:30. I was a nervous wreck! What if the weather made them have to turn around? What if Reese got too cold? Ah...well, at this point, it's out of my hands, and I can't control it...I must roll with the punches.

Like a kid waiting for Santa Claus at Christmas, I was watching the dotted line go across the world towards Sweden. I got maybe an hour of sleep and was up before the alarm...onto the bus, train, bus and I made it to the airport by 7:20. They landed 20 minutes early (7:30 as opposed to 7:50), and I could watch the status on a little board in the terminal to know that they had landed and when the bags were all off of the plane. Most planes were on the board for landing and back off with all baggage unloaded within 30-40 minutes. So, when the "CHICAGO SK946" flight was on the board for over an hour and I still hadn't seen them....I was curious. I knew that another dog was on the flight with them from Chicago, and I saw a dog come out in a carrier and thought "Is that her?"....and then saw the massive size of the dog and was disappointed. Back to the position of waiting behind the barrier....and waiting....and waiting some more....THEN - the gates opened, my pooch was in her crate on a cart with Thom pushing right behind her. I went around the barrier and over to hug him. I was so excited to see them both!  Thom looked good as usual, and Reese was excited to see me, or at least excited to be out of the cage.  She was still a little drugged from the sedative we decided to give her for the flight, so when I took her out to go to relieve herself before getting onto the public transit system, she seemed a little out of it.  

We loaded the 2 big bags and Reese's crate onto the bus to get to the train station, then had to take an additional 2 busses home.  We could have gotten a ride from coach as he offered many times (thanks Oscar), but neither Thom nor I like to infringe upon people and we weren't sure how long it would take Thom to get off of the plane and get through Customs with Reese.  The customs part apparently wasn't too daunting as they only read the microchip in her and looked over the papers.  Of course though, as they were looking through the papers, Thom was worried about any questions they would have asked....but they were easy questions and they were allowed to come through the gates within 5 minutes of starting at customs.

Once they got here, I had them walk with me through Hagaparken (where Reese got very filthy!!) so they could get some fresh air, Reese could get her blood pumping to move the drugs through her system, and just move in general to try and keep them up a little longer to get them closer to a Swedish schedule.  At

2:30 they were down for the count....and napped until 9:00...and then we were all up until about 4:00 in the morning on Saturday...then back to sleep for a few hours, and back up at 10:00 to go to Skansen where they have a Christmas Market.  This park also has a zoo (where I saw Rudolph and his clan) and is near an amusement park, so

 it was neat to see all of that stuff - we will go back to that area to see the Vasa Museum.  I was hoping to find some good Swedish crafts there, but was a bit disappointed to see more food than crafts.  Oh well...    Later that

 night we went to Elin's house so Reese could meet Roberr because he would be letting her out of her crate on

 Sunday as I had an away game.  We also made Marsipan and had some Glogg.  Yum!  All was

very good and of course the company was great too with Elin, Roberr, Maria, and Linnea from the team.  Back home early and to bed we went because Sunday was a 4:00 AM wake up call.

From the house to the bus station in the morning, then we had to get a ride from there to the ice rink as the buses do not run that early in the morning.  We had a 5:30 departure from the ice rink to get to Kareby where we would take on yet another team.   The bus ride is kinda fun to see different areas of Sweden - as you can see in

 one of the pictures, we stopped near a place that had a really cool old ruin building along a lake.  This was just outside of Jonkoping.  Kareby is about 5 hours SW of Stockholm.  Norma

lly, we

 would have 3 subs on the bench, but we only had 1 sub this game and we were missing 2 of our super stars from the team.

We knew we'd play ok, but without them being some enforcement, it is a bit different on the team.  We did do OK - getting down 1-0 in the first half, then I scored at about the 30 minute mark of the first half to tie it 1-1.  Ended the first half at that score, then we weredown 2-1, but Mikkis tied it up for us again 2-2 and that's how we ended.  We weren't too happy, but at the same time, we had SO many opportunities where we either hit the post or missed the net, or the ball bounced just the wrong way for us, but the right way for them. I even had a rebound that if I had been 1 or 2 strides quicker, I might have beat the goalie to the ball and taken it in for yet another.  We are sure that we will beat them by a lot more in the next meeting with them.  Back on the bus for the ride home....and the bus made a grand entrance to the rink...by hitting the wall of the locker room and busting a few of the windows on thebus!  No real damage to the locker room, but the bus looked like it had been through a riot.  Oops!   We were all commenting on how well the drivers had been doing too....oopsies, maybe we spoke too soon!

Monday we slept in a little bit because we exhausted from the trip, but I got up and did some work while Thom cleaned the apartment and took Reese for some potty trips outside.  Then off to training where we did do a lot of skating and Thom got to take a lot of shots against him.  Unfortunately, his sports hernia is still bothering him as is his shoulder, his back, etc....  the joys of getting older I guess ;)  

Tuesday, I got up and started working and got quite a bit accomplished before we set out to get new bus passes and get money to pay the rent for the month as well as get some "Thank You" gifts for those that took care of Reese while we were off to the game, and for those who have invited us to spend Christmas dinner with them.  We are excited to have such open and welcoming people helping us out here.

The rest of this week - I hope that Old Town is open tomorrow so I can get a few last minute gifts, then we will relax and Christmas Day, I will go to the rink to do some training - some running followed by skating an hour with one of the teammates, then training for an hour or so with the men's AIK team.  I'm sure that I'll be skating really hard that day!!!  Training schedule is a bit altered this week due to the holiday, but it's great to see that so many people still want to take to the ice!  I love it - as Thom pointed out, it's amazing the dedication that the team mates have to getting out there and training.

That is it for now - the family has arrived and we are all getting settled in together.  I didn't

 realize how independent I had grown in a short period of time....I'm not used to having to get 2 people on a schedule and planning for it...takes a bit of adjustment again.  Thom is dealing with it pretty well though I'd have to say :)  I think we are all just happy to be back together again.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas (God Jul!) and a very Happy New Year --- I have to

figure out how to say that yet --- but I have another week and I'll post those wishes too ;)  If you travel anywhere for the Holiday, I wish you very safe travels.

God Jul,

Kristy, Thom, and Reese

(PS - Random picture of a bruise - yeah - you know I'm playing bandy when the bruise lasts for over a week and a half and is that dark still....;)  )