Giddy Up!!!

Things here in Stockholm have been quite busy the past couple of weeks, so my apologies to all of the people who read my blog (hi mom!). A couple of weekends ago (the 14th), Blake and I were invited to a Cowboy-themed birthday party thrown by an American-Swedish couple that I met through a friend at work. As you probably remember, the 14th is Valentines Day, which yes, they do celebrate here. They call it "Alla Hjartans Dag", which literally translates to, "All Hearts Day", and most people here also see it as a commercialized holiday (minus hallmark though). Blake and I both agreed that a cowboy part sounded much more fun than a crowded restaurant that night. We brought our friend Bjorn along, who took the theme quite seriously:

He showed up to our apartment and asked if he could borrow some eye liner to create the awesome 'stache. And he got quite a few looks on the subway with his "big guns!"

When I first heard about the theme, I immediately thought to myself, "See! I should have packed my cowboy boots! I knew I would need them!" (This is potentially funny if you know me well enough to know that I am a terrible packer and will always think to myself that I will potentially use something on a trip. You would think after all this traveling that I would be a better packer now, but turns out, nope- not so much. Which makes me wonder what WAS my thought process when packing for Sweden that I ever thought that I would not need my cowboy boots?! How did I talk myself out of that one?) Anyways, after kicking myself for not packing the boots, I realized that I was going to a house party, and that you dont enter someone's home in Sweden without taking off your shoes, so I would have had to leave them at the door all night and just point to them from across the room, which would have been just sad. So I wore a country-ish shirt that Kathleen once dubbed as my, "Texas meets Seattle" shirt, and called it good. Here I am with Per from my work, who actually went to UW for 6 months and was in a room across the hall from me and we never talked. He introduced me to the couple, Elisabeth and Tobias, who were hosting the party (both their birthdays are on February 12th.):

Blake, coincidently has now been to 2 cowboy themed parties in Stockholm. (The first one was his company Christmas party... weird... I know.) He didnt feel like going all out at his company party, because he thought, when would I ever use cowboy accesories again here in Sweden? Boy was he wrong! He had bought a teeny tiny button to wear to the holiday party that said, "Go West" and so he wore that both times. He also stole for me the foam cowboy hat that I rocked during the party that has been sitting around his office for the past few months. Good work Blake!

You can check out all of the pics at my flickr page.