Our favorite things

Familiar lyrics to the song My Favorite Things from the movie The Sound of Music…

“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things”

Okay, for me with my cat allergies, I can’t say any more in life that whiskers on kittens are some of my favorite things…..getting that close to a cat would send me right to the emergency room of the local hospital!  But this blog post isn’t really a reflection on woollen mittens, though these have become my new favorite thing when winter descended with a vengeance on us just 2 weeks ago here in Minneapolis!

These thoughts are rather random reflections of our last weeks since Thanksgiving, hanging out with family, feeling blessed by life and all its’ joys, colors, decorations, traditions, friends…..enjoy the slide show!

All excited after 4+ hours with friend and missionary colleague Pete Ekstrand working on mission finances.....and in the end, the accounts balanced!  You gotta love the smiles :-)

Erickson cousin reunion in Indiana ~ 3 Boca girls thrown in just for fun (that would be me and my 2 sisters), and we had a great lunch at Which Wich in Schererville.  Congrats, Casey, store manager and cousin Ray's son!

On the way to the Swedish consulate in Chicago, we stopped by the Kriskindlemarkt....looking for that German Christmas market fix that we get every year when we're in Europe.  Steve even got the chance to speak some German, which makes for one happy camper...

Steve is always on the lookout for the roasted almonds at a Christmas market, and this year he wasn't about to be disappointed either....but in Chicago, the nuts are a mix of almonds and cashews (mostly just almonds in Germany).

Here I can only say "only in America!"  This treasure was found at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis.....somehow I don't remember those riding horses looking like that when we were kids!!!

Setting up our Christmas "tree" at home in Minneapolis, remembering how we carefully picked out 10 ornaments last Christmas in Belgium as we packed our decorations away, knowing that we would need to travel lightly to America this year.  The 3euro wooden tree (that's about $3.11 today) was a great find last January in the winter sales in Antwerp.