We took a picture at the wreathmaking workshop last night of all the participants grouped together, holding their newly created Christmas wreaths up with their smiling faces peering through the middle. :) This is the 3rd year that we've had this workshop on Thanksgiving evening here in Sweden, and it is always so much fun. Rosa, the proprietor of the shop, doesn't mind when we going digging around in the back to find pine cones spray painted gold or strange little nuts and dried flowers to use in our table decorations. She feeds us pastries, pepparkakor and cinnamon buns and laughs goodnaturedly at all our thick American accents.

I think my weeks of late nights are catching up with me. I woke up again feeling sick to my stomach and stayed home from work a few hours to let it settle down. argh If I hadn't felt obligated to come into work, I think I could have spent the entire day in bed.

Happy-making: I'm thrilled that one of my brother's photographs has been chosen by the photography editor of the new ezine that I'm on the staff of for the first issue.

Sad-making: A couple of days ago, a club member had sent me a flyer for the child of a friend of hers who was kidnapped, and today she sent me the news that the child has been found. The mother is Swedish, and the father is American and a resident of Sweden. After many court appearances in Sweden, the father was given special permission to take the boy to the U.S. on holiday to San Francisco, where the father’s family resides. Mia’s son never came back and Sweden issued a child abduction warrant for the father. Both Interpol Sweden and the San Francisco DA’s office were actively working the case. Now the father is in custody and the mother is flying to the U.S. to collect her 5-year-old son. All I can think of is how confused and alone that little boy must feel.