Welcome to the weekend coffee share! Can I get you a cup of coffee? How is your week? My kids had their last days of school earlier this week (my son on Thursday, and my daughter on Friday.) I have one week left before my vacation starts. Speaking of work, I took this photo riding to work earlier his week.
We’ve had some rain and everything is really green now. The weather is very pleasant, reaching 70F/21C midday. I love this weather! I don’t need it to be warmer (I know it will be warmer soon enough.) It’s been an unusually cold spring and beginning of the summer. The winter was unusually dry too, so this rain have been a great blessing. The growth in my balcony garden is not like last year, everything is slightly behind schedule, due to cold nights. The tomatoes started to turn red this week, even though the plants are less lush, and have less greenery compared to previous years. I promise to do a separate gardening post soon.
I mentioned that I have one week left before my vacation starts, and the company I work for (one more week,) held a summer party for the teachers on Thursday this week. We had a pre-party at one of my co-workers place. It was outdoors and we had champagne in their garden. It was a great time! Then we went to a very nice steakhouse in town, where we met up with all the others. The food was amazing. My principal gave me flowers and a thoughtful goodbye gift. I am going to miss her and my colleagues immensely. Luckily we live in a small town and I will definitely see them from time to time.
You may have noticed that my coffee share is a little late this weekend, that’s because I have not been at home. We’ve been celebrating my nephew that graduated upper secondary school on Friday. My brother and his family lives in the town where we were born, Mora. It’s about 1,5 hours from Falun (where I live now.)
The celebration lasted all day Friday, and we stayed the night in Mora. It was wonderful to see my brother and his family. My sister in law is an amazing person. My dad and his wife were there as well. They live in another town, and it was great to see them. My daughter got to see her cousins. I think it is especially important for her to see that she is a part of a big family here in Sweden. She misses her family in the US immensely. Due to Covid we haven’t been able to visit with family in Sweden as much as I would have liked. That made it extra speciell this weekend.
The photo at the top is from a breakfast picnic at lake Siljan yesterday morning. The boardwalk in Mora is beautiful. Mora is a smaller town with 20 600 (Mora kommun; town and surrounding area,) compared to Faluns close to 60 000 (Falu Kommun; town and surrounding area,) and people say hello or good morning when you pass by on the walking trail. We saw a few international RVers enjoying boondocking at the parking lots near the lake.
This coming Tuesday is my son’s 17th birthday and we are going to celebrate him today. I am still debating a couple of different ideas for the dinner. One second I am thinking lasagna (he loves that,) the other second homemade pizza (he also loves that very much,) and then there is Mexican food that he seemed to enjoy a lot lately. I’ll decide within a couple hours, I have ingredients at home for all the different dishes. He has given me free hands with both the food and the cake. I am trying a new recipe for the cake. It is a strawberry mousse cake, and it has many steps. Some of them I made yesterday, and the rest are going to be made throughout the day. You can’t do them all at once, some are hot, and some are cold. There was a video instruction to go with the recipe, and I am excited to try it myself. I am going to follow the recipe closely, except that I am adding 17 candles to the decoration. I’ll post the final result https://www.instagram.com/greendreamsswe/ when it’s ready.
On Friday I also got the grades for my last class at school (Magisterprogrammet i Pedagogiskt arbete – Degree of Master of Science, Main Field of Study: Educational Work,) and I could not be more happy! This has been a wonderful week so far, and I am excited about this season. Thank you Natalie for hosting the Weekend Coffee Share. I hope you are enjoying a fabulous weekend!
Love,
Maria
GreenDreams 
A busy and fulfilling week by the sounds of it. One week left, woo-hoo, to vacation time!
I’m sure your indoor garden will catch up soon. It has been cool and rainy here, too, one night left us over 1″ which made the garden happy. I’m not in a big hurry for warmer weather… 70s suits me just fine. 🙂 Nearly every day I tackle a garden chore or two. It is very satisfying to see the results. Have a great day celebrating your son’s birthday and enjoy the week ahead.
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Yes! Last week was a great week. Busy, but not stressful and lots of fun!
I believe I moved my plants outside a little too early. The plants next to the wall of the balcony that are against the house are doing great, but the ones along the outer wall are affected by the cold nights, they have some damaged leaves. We’ll see. I have lots of new growth coming as well. Gardening is indeed satisfying. I am happy you got some well needed rain.
Enjoy your new week!
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What a wonderful week indeed! I’m so glad your season is wrapping up with so many celebrations and abundant positivity! I hope your last week at work wraps everything up nicely for you 🙂 Cheers to new beginnings in so many ways!
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Thank you so much! Cheers to new beginnings!
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Congratulations on your good grades, Maria! And, Happy Birthday to your son. The flowers are beautiful, and the food looks delicious too. Have a great new week, Maria!
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Thank you so much John! Have a fabulous week!
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Such great stuff Maria.
I just love starting a day with your photos from Sweden.
And, BTW, I still can’t tell you why, but the network issue with accessing your blog site continues, but every time I hit it with your site or Shari’s in Canada, I’ve found that shutting off my VPN solves the problem. I wish I knew why because working within a VPN is a good safe thing to do, but when it keeps me from sites I’m pretty sure are fine, like yours and Shari’s it’s annoying that this problem exists.
Hope you’re having a great weekend.
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Hi Maria!
What a wonderful post and how fun for your daughter to finally be able to visit some of her Swedish family! I just Love the Swedish horse and your photos are AMAZING!! I feel like I’m there visiting and can almost taste the wonderful food at the steakhouse. I know you are looking forward to your summer break and how exciting for your new job. I hope this last week will be wonderful, bittersweet I’m sure and the flowers you received are so pretty! 💖
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The weather sounds perfect! And the photos are all great. I’m glad your were able to visit your brother and family. You did hit a bad time to move! Your daughter looks very happy in all of the photos – I hope she is adjust better. I hope your week goes well, and your summer break after if I don’t talk to you. Good luck with the new job!
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70s F is fabulous temps, Maria, glad you are easing into summer weather-wise, maybe not activity-wise–you’ve been busy! I’ll bet you are looking forward to summer vacation.
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