Lucia and Christmas party

Some of the ladies who helped making the party.

Today is Lucia and I was up already at 6.45 AM to watch Lucia on TV. A wonderful procession and singing program with both traditional songs but also some modern ones.
We ate breakfast watching it and of course we also had safronbuns, lussekatter, as well as lighting the third candle.

But first is first. I have to tell you about the Christmas party for the Rheumatic association yesterday. We, who were the organizers, met around 11 AM to lay the tables with flowers, candles, glasses, napkins, set of knives etc. We also needed to figure out the tables. 85 persons had reported but when we finally counted they were 90!! Ages varied from 6 months up to 85 or so.

When they first arrived I served them glögg, you know the mulled wine which we serve with raisins and almonds in it and it must be hot. We Patric who entertained us

had it both with and without alcohol since some of the guests drove.
It was a wonderful day with sunshine, pity we couldn't be outside, lol) and the temperature indoors were as sunny. After they had their glögg most of them find places to sit and after that they bought lottery tickets. Of course we had a lottery! We always has and this time they had wrapped them like Christmas gifts.

Me at the end of the day. Can you see how exhausted I am?

When the food was out on the table and everyone was seated I grabbed the microphone and welcomed everyone to the party. We have an artist performing, Patric, an excellent singer and musician, so that's why I had access to a mic. After the welcome I pointed out which table should go first. Since we were that many you can't invite everyone up at the same time. That should have been chaos. So I decided when and which table should go. And they obeyed me :-) So very calm and relaxed atmosphere.

The room ready for Christmas party

Meanwhile Patric played some nice music. I also had to attend to the kitchen and see to it that there always were food and refill when it was finished. Finally it was time for our table (the last one to go) and we had some wonderful food. I just took some salmonpaté, egghalves with shrimps, sausage, Christmasham, bread (vörtbröd), a couple of meatballs and prinskorvar. That's it! And I didn't even ate it all because as soon as I sat down someone called for me or the food had to be refilled... Then Patric called and said I had to sing from the singalongbooklet since I had made it. I went up but asked a friend from the board if she would singalong with me and so we did. It was the waltz from "The Merry Widow" with another lyric. That went well :-)

Then we cleared the tables and prepared for coffee. We had baked some cookies, that is 4 or 5 of us had made cookies, which were placed on the tables as well.

As you might remember I hadn't been able to find a Lucia procession. So when we were in the kitchen one of the female members of the board said: Why don't we sing the Lucia song.
Said and done so we called up all the ladies of the board, who hadn't got a clue to what we were doing. So we said we shall sing the Lucia song and they had no other option than to do just that.
I explained for the guests that we hadn't been able to hire a Lucia procession but we will do it instead. So we sang and that was a huge success!!
We continued by singing "Nu tändas tusen juleljus" a wonderful song that really is Christmas to me (No thousands of Christmas candles are lit) which everyone sang together. It was just beautiful. We also sang some fun Christmas songs with movements which the small ones also did.

Then coffe and cookie and the lottery. I won on 4 of our tickets!!! The last time I was so ashamed I didn't want to fetch the win so one of my friends did. It doesn't look good if the chairman wins so much I think. But half of the lottery tickets were Hasse's (we had 6 each).
After the lottery people started to go home and we started the cleaning up and washing. We did have a help in the kitchen, Ingrid, who did a great job.

Then Jonas called and he and Mandy was on the commute train and we picked them up at Rotebro and then they followed us home and we all had a bite to eat (leftovers from the Christmas table). By then I was exhausted and could hardly walk. My feet and leg were killing me and I didn't know if I could take another step.
Despite that I watched some TV before going to bed at 11.30PM and as I said woke up at 6.45AM.

But after I had watched Lucia and around 9AM I went to bed again and I slept for 3 hours more! How about that for tired?

Tomorrow I'm going to eat yet another Christmas smörgåsbord with my former workmates. We are eating in Old Town Stockholm and I'm looking forward to that. Just have to work a couple of hours before that.
Have a good Lucia night :-)