Sweeney Todd at the Royal Opera. Technically a musical, which is nice, because it made the whole thing sound more pop-culture-ish and got the kids to join, but really, what makes this a musical rather than an opera?

I was most impressed by the work of the dialect coach, because Ms Lovett sounded as British as could be, and so did the others.

It’s Christmas Eve!

Knowing Nysse and his habit of attacking wrapped-up gifts, with all their play-friendly paper and ribbons and shiny bits, we didn’t leave the gifts out overnight. But when he’d had his breakfast and gone out, we put the gifts under the tree. He managed to attack one of them – luckily the one where the inner layer was a sturdy cardboard tube, and thus hard to damage and easy to re-wrap – but after that I kept my eye on him all the time and chased him away twice, after which he was almost afraid of even going near the tree, so there was no more damage.

Lunch was devilled eggs, pickled herring of three kinds (flavoured with blackcurrant, apple and curry, and mustard, respectively) and a citrus and gravad lax salad. Plus potatoes and vörtbröd, a Swedish Christmas bread.

Ingrid piped and decorated the eggs, and folded the napkins.

The citrus and salmon salad was a new entry on the menu. Tasted good!

Then it was time for presents. With everybody so grown-up, there’s a lot less cheering and jumping up and down than there used to be!

Nysse, when he woke up, attacked the rolled-up Santa hats as if they were fluffy little animals, and for some reason really enjoyed licking the little olive wood bowl that I gave to Eric.

A Christmas day with my brother.

I picked him up by car in Uppsala as usual. What was not as usual was the thick slush coming down from the sky. I also hadn’t accounted for today being the first day of Christmas break and thus large crowds heading out of town to their cabins in the woods or wherever. The roads were slippery and full of snow and a lot more traffic than usual for 7:30 on a Saturday morning. The drive there and back usually takes me an hour and a half, but took two and a half today. For a good chunk of the way, we were all driving at 40 km/h behind a pair of snow ploughs.

Anyway, I managed to not become a statistic (and we saw no cars on the side of the road and no cars with sirens on) so all is good.

Then we baked. More lussebullar in all sorts of shapes, because after a while we all become bored with the traditional ones. There were lusse croissants and doodles and swirls and twists, and even a lusse snow lantern.

And then we made a batch of mince pies, too, because those are delicious and everyone should have access to mince pies at Christmas.

Adrian took up drums again this year. He tried five years ago but lost interest. Now he’s re-found it.

The end-of-term concert was quite a bit longer than I had expected, and a lot of it sounded better than I had expected, too. I guess my expectations were partly still stuck in 2019.

Adrian played the bass drum in a drumline (which was my favourite piece of this evening), the standard drum set in a rock song, and the marimba for Jingle Bells.

If the photos look weird, it’s because I’ve blacked out other kids who were in the frame.

Adrian came home with a gingerbread house from the Spånga Christmas market this Saturday. It collapsed under its own weight.

We made gingerbread cookies. Store-bought ones can’t compete, and I realize I need to copy Eric’s recipe because otherwise next Christmas in this household will be a sad affair.

Every year we tell ourselves that we will only bring out the most important cutters and that there is no need to dirty all of them. Our priorities overlap but only partially, and we end up using at least two thirds of all the cutters anyway. I like the traditional shapes, Ingrid wants the ones that are good for decorating, Adrian prefers the small ones that are best at using up the most dough. Eric is happy to just bake whatever we cut.

The dough gets smaller and smaller with each round, but there will be no wastage!

Eric got the keys for his new apartment today. I actually didn’t take any photos today, so I’m “borrowing” these from tomorrow, when we went to take a first look at it.

It’s got three bedrooms, two balconies, and a large living room with a very high ceiling and tall windows.

Eric and Adrian are planning out who gets what room, how to furnish the living room, and what will go where in the kitchen.

Look who came by and did not leave as soon as he’d checked Nysse’s food bowl! Cuddly Morris is back!

He did start by checking the food bowl, but then walked towards the sofa with a very goal-oriented mien, jumped up, and settled on Adrian’s chest. He stayed upright and alert for a while, but actually relaxed enough to lie down after some time.

The party preparations started several days ago, with three cakes baked over three days. We had an apple-pie cheesecake (Ingrid), a banana and chocolate cake (Adrian) and an almond cherry pie (Eric).

Today Ingrid decorated the house with golden balloons and serpentines.

Then there were guests – grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins – and presents.

The cakes and cheeses and snacks were eaten with much joy and appreciation.

There had been some concern that three cakes might be excessive, but it really wasn’t.

With no one to take pictures of me, here are two quick selfies to prove that I was also there.

Afterwards, we were tired.

Adrian usually joins me in my corner of the sofa when it’s time for him to do homework. If his homework is reading, we read side by side. If he’s doing something more active, like practising his French vocabulary, that tends to collide with my reading, and I knit instead. Today his homework was knitting, so we actually knitted together.