When ten ten-year-olds have a party, the shelf in the hall becomes a parking lot for phones.

Our feeder is mostly visited by sparrows and tits and nuthatches, with the occasional magpie swooping in and scaring them all off. Bigger birds such as jays and magpies don’t like the new feeder much – I guess it swings and sways too much for their taste.

Occasionally a gang of goldfinches flies in. They’re rarely on their own; they seem to travel in groups.

Greenfinches have the opposite habits. I’ve never seen more than one here at the same time.

That “some snow” we got yesterday? We got some more overnight. And then some more during the day. And more, and more, and more, and still there seemed to be no end to it. I shovelled the staircases in the morning, and by the time I got home in the afternoon I could hardly see the stairs under the snow.

Naturally the city snow ploughs had no chance of keeping up with this record snowfall. (The most snow Stockholm has had in November in 111 years, apparently.) The pavements were buried knee deep in snow with narrow tracks tramped through it, barely wide enough for a single person.

The commuter train service worked surprisingly well through all this, and I was incredibly pleased that I do not commute by car or bus. By late afternoon, all bus services in Stockholm had been cancelled. The queues and traffic jams were horrendous – because the snow came so early, quite a lot of cars had not switched to winter tyres yet but decided to drive out anyway. I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time…

The city mostly looked battled and overwhelmed; Spånga looked like a winter wonderland.

We had some snow overnight, and then some more during the day, so the kids got a sled ride home. An exceptionally good ride, even, because the snow ploughs had not had time to clean our streets. A thick layer of snow, packed hard by cars, untouched by plough or gravel.

I aimed the camera at them with one hand while continuing to pull the sled with the other, so I had no real idea of what I’d captured. Both balancing acts and sneaky snowball attacks behind my back, apparently!

Ingrid and I are making preparations for her birthday party next weekend (yeah, just a little bit late). Invitations, cakes and ice cream, decorations, games, and all that.

This is Ingrid preparing for “pin the tail on the donkey” except in Sweden the donkey is a pig, and the kids draw a tail rather than pinning a ready-made tail.

We went to Bromma church to look at the lights and candles, and remember those whom we have lost.

Many of my relatives were lost to me before I got a chance to meet them, so I guess I can’t even really say I’ve lost them. Or perhaps they were even more lost to me than if I had known them.

We also briefly visited the beautiful Bromma church. I am not the least bit religious, but I do like churches and organ music.

On the way back we discussed the concept of religion with the kids. It’s all a bunch of fairy tales to them, and for Adrian, Jesus and Oden are about equally real. (They spoke about the origin of the names of the weekdays at school some while ago, and Eric has been reading from a book of old Nordic myths for him at night.)

(From Star Wars, in case you’re not familiar with them.)

Did I mention we had sleet yesterday? Today it was snow crystals.

No, we did not have sunshine today. This is from Sunday, when we had so much sun in our kitchen that we let down the blinds.

Today we had icy rain and sleet almost all day. November didn’t waste any time getting into character.