Ingrid was in desperate need of autumn shoes so the two of us went shopping. A pair of autumn shoes, a pair of winter boots, some luxury chocolate pralines, and then a nice restaurant lunch on top of that!

Buying shoes for the kids feels like a black hole for money. They cost as much as adult shoes (unless you buy cheap crap that breaks apart after two months, which is what happened with the shoes we bought for Ingrid this spring) and after a year they’re already too small and I have to buy new ones again.

Today we had the kids’ birthday party with all family and relatives. I have been more or less unwell for over a week now so I didn’t have a lot of energy and basically forgot about my camera, so I only have this one photo… Ingrid loves looking at photos of past birthdays and Christmases so I will have to make it up next year.

Our developer team took a day off from ordinary work and had a “dev day” with a few discussions but mostly with coding for fun together.

Another frosty morning.

Today was this autumn’s first truly frosty morning. Ingrid is still bravely sleeping in the tent – now with our warmest down-filled sleeping bag, a thin fleece blanket inside it wrapped around her, and a woollen blanket on top.

Adrian and Ingrid both had friends over to play.

I went to the theatre with Ingrid and my mum. We had coffee and croissants during the break. My mum was less amused than I was by Ingrid’s attempts to sneak eat sugar cubes.

Eric, catching up with work late at night.

Marbles come and go like a super brief fashion trend. A few trendsetters start it by bringing marbles to school, and then for a few weeks during spring, all the kids at Ingrid’s schools are playing with marbles during breaks. And then they’re not.

For some reason, marbles are a spring thing. Autumn weather may be the same as spring weather but the kids don’t play with marbles in autumn. Except this autumn for some reason marbles have made a comeback.

Ingrid has so many marbles that they don’t fit in her marbles bag. (Yes, there are special marbles bags, in sturdy cotton with a drawstring closure.) She spent this evening sorting them by type so she could decide which ones to take with her to school.

The types all have names. The most common ones are cat’s eyes. The milky white ones that look like porcelain are Porsches. There are planets with bands around them and speckled sausages (i.e. salami) which are speckled of course and disco balls which have some other kind of speckles, and so on.

Some types are more valuable than others: the larger ones and the rarer ones are worth more on some kind of generally agreed Marble Value Scale.

Angry-looking mammoth guy in scary-looking mammoth stomper.