Santa Lucia

But 1st: A picture of our mountains! We live fairly close to some absolutely gorgeous mountains! Most of the time, you can't see them, but a couple of days recently have been crisp & clear and the mountains have been literally breathtaking. There is snow on the mountains and I don't know if the snow has especially highlighted the whole range, but it seems like we've been able to see more of the mountains than ever before. We really live in a beautiful place with amazing weather. I am especially enjoying it since most of my life has been spent in unattractive TX :-).

Yesterday at Katie's (Scandanavian) school, they celebrated Santa Lucia. Not totally sure who she is (see here: Saint Lucy) but it was fun. :-) My main connection is that this is the celebration where the girls wear the white dresses with a candle wreath on their heads - a bit the stereotypical image of Sweden. I don't know if you can see the girl standing in the front of the group, but that's the image that I recognize! Apparantly they usually do this procession in the dark early in the morning, and one of the Swedish teachers was very put out that we had to do it at 10 in the morning!

Katie did get to wear a white dress and take part in a parade and several songs. I knew they were learning a song in Swedish for the occasion - but she actually learned 5 or 6 songs in Swedish! It was kind of crazy :-). A highlight was the kids singing Silent Night in Swedish, then English, then Spanish! Times like this make me shake my head at the craziness of living in the mix of cultures that we live in :-). Katie looked so cute in her little outfit and really sang along well with all the songs, no matter the language :-).


Here is Katie with her best friends from school: Frida from Denmark, then Katie before she got her glitter on, then Malin from Denmark (Frida's sister), then Ebba from Sweden. As you can see from the kiddos - Katie is attending a school full of very tall, very blond girls and women!

And now at the risk of giving you a stereotypical video of my kid in the school program - here is Katie and the other kids singing her favorite of the songs she learned in Swedish. She is in the middle between the 2 boys w/ the cone hats on (as in the picture above - & just to the left of the girl w/ the red belt on). You can see her nodding her head emphatically as she sings along :-). Enjoy!