I have decided it is time to discontinue with this blog. It has been long overdue as I rarely write in it nowadays. I started the blog as a way to communicate with our family on what we were up to when we lived in the US. When we moved back home to Sweden I thought it would be fun to write for our friends in the US. I enjoy writing so it was never hard to find things to write about but as I share highlights from my life on Instagram and/or Facebook the blog has started to become obsolete. No fun to write about things most people have already heard of.
Of course I also have followers of the blog that are not connected to me on either of those platforms and for you I’m happy to report I’m not going to discontinue writing though.. I have created another blog where the main focus will be more health related (nutrition, fitness and my RA) and I hope that you are interested and will follow me there instead. 🙂 My new blog is called Fit for RA.
So, after 1034 posts I say, Thank you and Goodbye! 🙂
Four days ago it was once again time to go to the hospital for my medication. I’m quite happy to have a medication that only requires me to go there twice a year. It is much easier to schedule other fun things such as traveling when I don’t have a medication I need to take weekly or once a month.
The medication (Mabthera) works well for me and my RA is in remission according to the doctor. I guess I should be happy but considering I have so much pain in particularly my wrists and fingers I don’t feel like my illness is in remission. It feels highly active…
Yesterday I talked with my rheumatologist and was told to take more cortisone pills daily and then we will talk again next week. Normally a higher dose of cortisone works like magic and I feel no issues but even though I’ve taken more pills both yesterday and today my body do not feel good at all. 😦
Some days I just hate this illness and would do anything in order to have it go away.
My bed during the infusionThe machine handling the infusion.For the first time ever I had the whole room for myself. I actually missed having company…
I’ve lived 1/4 of my life in the US so celebrating 4th of July even though we now live in Sweden is important to me. I have so many dear memories from my almost 10 years in Colorado. We moved back to Sweden by choice but some days I miss our life in beautiful CO so much… and right now I can’t wait until February of next year when we will visit the US again, I’m so looking forward to see the Rocky Mountains! 🏔😍
In Sweden we celebrate the day with burgers. When 4th of July happens on a weekday we celebrate during the weekend instead so yesterday we gathered family and friends for an afternoon of BBQ.
Corn on the cob brushed with herb butter Good thing we got a big bbq so all burgers fit at the same time! 😉 Lunch is served! My plate! Yummy!! Everyone is seated and ready to enjoy the meal.
I’m still on medical leave due to my fatigue. I’ve not worked for 7 weeks now and I will continue to be on medical leave for at least 3 more weeks. I was told by my doctor this week that as long as I have difficulties with my concentration and memory I’m not allowed to go back to work. So, I have to find other fun things to occupy my time with… one of them is food! Preferably food without dairy/lactose and grain but on some occasions I do allow myself to eat even those ingredients. If you follow my Instagram you know that I post a lot of images of different food creations, both things I make on my own but also meals that my hubby and I plan and prepare together. Those are actually my favourite moments… cooking together and enjoying a good meal is priceless.
The past weeks we’ve prepared lots of yummy food and as I don’t have anything else fun to write about right now I thought I would share some images of our fantastic dinners. 🙂
Whole chicken on the bbq. First time we tried the rotisserie function.Thai Chicken with broccoli in the making. Fun to use our wok pan for the bbq to make some new dishes that we normally make on the stove.
Entrecote and burning rosemary on the bbq
Fried mackerel rum on crisp bread, topped with fresh chivesStuffed mackerel on the bbq. Gluten free pizza with beef tenderloin. Served with bearnaise sause (not shown).Broccoli and salad drizzled with a lemon and parmesan mixture and grilled chicken thighs. Oh and a sandwich cake made by my mother-in-law and myself.
My parents and I went on a cruise through the Stockholm archipelago and to the island of Åland. We departed Stockholm at 6 pm on Tuesday evening and came back yesterday shortly before 4 pm.
We had warm and sunny weather and the archipelago was looking fantastic! If the weather is good I’m not sure there is a better place to be.
We had booked one of the better rooms and it had a huge window towards the side of the ship. Just sitting there and looking out was quite calming not to mention waking up with that view. I think I slept with the best view ever! 😍 Wish I could wake up that way every morning.
The most difficult part of the trip was probably the buffet on Tuesday evening. It was so much people and lots of noise so I had a hard time enjoying eating. It was a quite stressful setting. Some people really get loud and shameless when the have a good buffet in front of them. Next time I travel I will remember to book the later dinner slot.
I took plenty of gorgeous photos, here are a few…
Our cabinLeaving Stockholm, here is the amusement park Gröna LundCar ferries by OxdjupetSunset in the archipelago
I guess we’re going too slow as another cruise ship quickly passed by us.Morning view from my bed! 😍 The outer Åland archipelago View of Furusund from our cabin View from the rear deck. One of the longest cruise ships visiting the Stockholm area this summer. Hello Stockholm! To the left is the old town.
This past weekend we invited our family over in order to help out with fixing our lawn. We had bought 200 square meters of grass rolls and we figured it would be quicker to get it done if we had some help from our loved ones. A good thing with living so close to each other! 😊
My parents came earlier and helped Mathias get rid off the weeds. I had done a tiny bit on Friday. First off I totally dislike yard work, always have… and secondly my hip still didn’t enjoy too much moving around. I managed to get rid of the weeds in the front section where I didn’t have to bend my legs but the rest I left for others to take care off.
The rest of our family available to help out came around 10am and they started working. My chore of the day was to be the official photographer… 😉📸
How shall we do this? Every job starts with some discussions…Lots of grass rolls! And we had one more pile not seen in this picture.The first grass rolls on the ground!Since we have a stone wall at the front some detailed cuting was needed.Front yard finished!The side of the yard was bigger plus that is has a slope so this one was trickier.Hubby and his niece having fun carrying grass rolls.The side yard is also finished! Now all we need to do is water, water, water…Of course you need to treat your happy helpers with food! Hamburgers and chips!
It’s actually quite amazing to look out from the windows and see a green lawn. We’ve had rocks and dirt for two years now so this is a huge change!
Thanks to everyone who helped out, we truly appreciate it! ❤️
For the fourth year in a row I signed up to participate in Vårruset–a 5K race for women every year in May–together with 5 of my rheumatic friends. We always sign up together as a group as we then receive a picnic basket to enjoy after the race.
For the first time in 4 years we actually had fantastic weather all evening long. Previous years we’ve had clouds, wind, rain and even freezing cold. To be able to walk the race in short sleeves was amazing! To not mention actually taking time to enjoy the picnic afterwards.
For two years now I’ve had major issues with my hip but with the help from my physical therapist in addition to cortisone shots when the pain/inflammation as been to severe I’ve managed to have it more or less under control. During the past 2 weeks I’ve walked longer distances (two times just over 4K and once 5K) in order to prepare for the race and have not had any major issues with the hip. My wish for the race was to be able to be under the one hour mark and I’m very proud to say that I did manage to accomplish it! 😃
Runkeeper stats
Towards the end of the race I started to get an intense pain in my hip plus problems with my left foot. I did not slow down though because I was focused on getting to the finish line “in time”. I also had a friend walking with me so I was able ignore the pain pretty good while talking to her.
On my way home after the race the pain got worse and when I got off the bus around 5 minutes from home I could not walk anymore due to the pain. Luckily my hubby was there and walked home and came back with the car to pick me up. I had a hard time fall asleep but after awhile I guess the painkillers finally kicked in as I did manage to sleep around midnight.
I’m still in pain this morning so I guess pain killers will be my best friend today. I’m hoping to be back to normal pretty soon. When I’ve walked these distances the past weeks I’ve not gotten issues with my hip but I haven’t pushed myself for a specific time then instead I’ve always walked slower in order to actually manage to reach the distance I wanted to accomplish.
I’m also extremely happy to have managed to participate in the race considering my fatigue. As its always lots of music and noise during a race I did bring ear plugs but never used them.
Considering everything with the hip and fatigue I’m so proud of myself for participating yesterday! Major accomplishment and maybe a good sign that I’m on track of getting better.
Last weekend we decided to finally do a major cleaning of our garage. We’ve talked about it for almost a year but never done anything about it. Ever since we moved into the house the garage have been only a storage place for old boxes and other stuff. We want to be able to put the car in there and organize every thing which does have its space there.
We had done a little organization of things to throw away during the Easter holiday so a majority of the things needed to be sorted was already taken care off. Now we carried everything out to the drive way and started sweeping the floor. Since I can’t carry the heavier stuff I started sweeping in the storage room while Mathias handled the items left in the main garage area. I thought I’d cleaned it pretty well but hubby gave it another go to get rid of the last parts and wow it sure became a lot of dust smoke in the room. Suddenly our security alarm went off and we couldn’t figure out what had happened. It didn’t take many seconds until the security company called and it turned out that the fire alarm in the garage sensed smoke and therefore the alarm went off. We had not even thought of that the dust could set if off! They allowed us to temporarily remove the fire alarm so we could continue our cleaning. 😃
Now the garage and storage room looks fantastic! All we have to do now is purchase shelves and hooks in order to really get it looking good! Pretty soon our car can move in too! 😉
All stuff cleared out of the garage and located in the drive way. Thankfully no rain despite the quite cloudy day!All stuff cleared out of the garage and located in the drive way. Thankfully no rain despite the quite cloudy day!All stuff cleared out of the garage and located in the drive way. Thankfully no rain despite the quite cloudy day!All stuff cleared out of the garage and located in the drive way. Thankfully no rain despite the quite cloudy day!
Since the weather is fantastic here in Stockholm right now we decided to go for a breakfast picnic this morning. I prepared as much as I could yesterday evening so all I had to do this morning was fixing the sandwiches and away we went.
We went to a part of our municipality called Garnsviken. It’s a lake connected to the ocean by a canal. The particular area of Garnsviken we went to is a popular swimming spot in the summer.
Garnsviken is part of the old waterway used by the Vikings called Långhundraleden. The waterway used to go between the Baltic ocean and the old town of Uppsala. Nowadays it is not possible to travel this way by boat as there is not water all the way due to the land uplift.
View of Garnsviken The bathing platform Nice view for breakfast Of course I had to take a picture when I found wood anemones 😃
Last week I met up with my mother-in-law at Kungsträdgården in downtown Stockholm in order to see the cherry trees. Beautiful as always! It’s fantastic to walk under the trees and feel that you have a pink ceiling above you.
The nice Spring weather had not arrived yet and it was quite chilly and windy outside so we quickly walked around the trees, took the necessary pictures, and then took the tram to a café where we enjoyed an extremely yummy egg and avocado toast. Just looking at the picture make me want to go back right now. 🙂
Cecilia's Diary 