Whiling away the hours until midnight and the new year. The rest of the celebrations isn’t important to me but I do love fireworks so I stay awake.

We have a great spot for watching fireworks – on the roof of our extension. It’s flat, relatively easy to reach with a ladder and high enough to be above most of the trees and other houses nearby. We get great views in three directions, so we see all the neighbourhood fireworks as well as bigger ones all the way to Kista.

We went for a snowy and icy walk. (Kallhäll to Görväln and back.)

I’ve now filled the three-week gap in my daily posts in September, so if you want to catch up and read all about my hike in Jämtland (among other things) then you can start here and then continue with the help of the links to “older posts” at the bottom.

The bird feeder makes for great mealtime entertainment. It’s kind of like an aquarium but natural and noisy.

This year, like last year, redpolls dominate. Goldfinches, great tits, blue tits, nuthatches, jays, and blackbirds are all regular visitors, but none in such numbers as the redpolls.

When the redpolls come en masse, there are tens and tens of them, such a swarm that they are hard to count. The “restaurant” feeder they like best has 12 “seats”, plus some room on the rim. Those spots are all completely full. More birds hang around nearby, waiting for their turn. And on the ground below, there’s at least as many as up on the feeder – and then yet more birds in the trees and bushes that we can hear but not see.

The kids had a grand day out – we went to my work and they played Cuphead on the Xbox in our lounge for hours and hours, while I caught up with my pile of unread issues of the Economist.

We decorated gingerbread cookies.

The Estonian post office knows how to design postage stamps that evoke a Christmas feeling. This parcel fit right in with the prettily gift-wrapped ones under the tree.

Our Christmas tree decorations are as eclectic as usual. The kids’ hand-made papercraft decorations mingle with delicate glass balls, cheap second-hand plastic decorations, novelty decorations in the shapes of moose and pigs, jingling heart-shaped mini-wreaths, hand-painted Ukrainian decorations and hand-sewn English ones, and everything else you can possibly think of. I thought we could perhaps throw out some of the oldest home-made things but when I told the kids to hang up only the things they actually really wanted to see on the tree, they hung up all of them, so I guess everything is loved by someone.

It’s a good thing I have children, who make happy artwork with rainbows and unicorns, and make me make paracord bracelets and gingerbread cookies and watch movies and play Minecraft with them. On my own I’d never dredge up the energy to even get started. I’d just curl up in the sofa from November to March and not do anything I don’t absolutely have to do.