I gave in to the kids’ wishes and installed Pokémon Go on my phone so we could all go out and “Pokémon go” together. That turned out to involve a lot of Pokémons and not a whole lot of “going”.

Apparently the neighbourhood is crawling with Pokémons, and every few minutes you have to stop to throw virtual balls at them.

The kids also noticed that we hadn’t walked so much, after we got home and they saw that their Pokémon egg was nowhere near hatching. (Eggs hatch after you have walked a certain distance with them.) They tried walking around in the house to get it to hatch, but the GPS signal was too weak and this did not work at all.

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!

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

… under the table. I guess the new carpet is comfortable.

With the many large trees we have, we get a lot of leaves. Much of the ground is covered so thickly that you cannot see the grass through the leaves.

Today was an excellent day for raking leaves: sunny, warmish, dry, and almost no wind. And of course raking leaves also means throwing leaves, rolling around in leaves, jumping in leaves, burying each other in leaves, etc.

Adrian, scooping out pumpkin gloop.

Adrian and one of his favourite classmates, who came home with us this afternoon.

The boys have exactly two things they like doing together: playing with Legos, and playing with the iPad. The main struggles between them revolve around (a) should they do the one or the other, (b) whether different Lego sets can be played with at the same time (Adrian is strongly against it them “because they can get mixed up”) and (c) who will hold the iPad.

They are on the whole surprisingly willing to give in to the other’s wishes, after a bit of gentle arguing.

We bought a new rug. The kids knew exactly what to use it for.

Getting ready to put up the Christmas tree.

On Tuesdays, the kids have their Estonian lesson in the afternoon, so they finish school at the same time. I’ve been picking them up afterwards until now, but this morning I asked if they could come home on their own. They had no problem with that.