Time to Buckle Down

Only so many of my days can be filled with "play time", sometimes, I just have to buckle down and do the little things around home that need to be done.  So, after my exercise class this morning, followed by a short fika with the group to celebrate the end of our "term", I had to get to work.  I spent the remainder of the day walking the dog, buying groceries, cooking dinner, making Christmas cookies, doing some Christmas shopping and paying bills.  Yuck!  I would rather be "playing" with my friends but at least it was a great day with sunshine and temperatures in the 40's all day long.  Even Luleå had 46 degrees today!  Some weird weather for Sweden but we are not complaining!  Calvin was feeling much better again so he could go to school as usual.
Because of my boring day, I don't have too many pictures to post but I will include a few from the internet that illustrate the beautiful Nobel dinner from last night...

And, some from around the city...

I took this picture of the army museum on Monday when we still had snow on the ground.  All of our snow has since melted.

One observation from my shopping today is this... In France, shops would always offer to gift wrap an item for you.  No matter what time of the year or what kind of shop.  Here, they do not do that but they do have tables set up by the door or even just outside of a shop, fully equipped with wrapping necessities such as paper, ribbon, tape, tags, etc.  Even hardware stores!  These are free for any customer to wrap whatever they have just bought.  Again, this is a year round thing, not just for Christmas.  Very convenient!