Ingrid had a mini birthday party with her best friends. Pizza, board games and a movie. And cake and a candle.

I feel like a broken record but… she really is growing up. This was such a big girl birthday party.

But the girls did also have fiskdamm, full of nostalgia and “oh I haven’t done this for years!”

Fiskdamm (“fishpond”) is a Swedish party game for young kids, very common at birthday parties. Each child gets to hold a fishing rod and go fishing over a sheet or a blanket which has been hung up in a door frame. An adult sits on the other side and attaches a goody bag to the fishing “hook”. Or they first attach something else, such as a sock, which the kid then throws back before making a new attempt.

The extended family celebrated Adrian’s and Ingrid’s combined birthdays. Plenty of cake was eaten, presents were opened, and cousins of all ages (3 to 18) had fun together. Well, the 18-year-old mostly had fun with the adults. Adrian bridged the age gap, playing wild card games with the older kids, and Legos with the younger ones.

Adrian got a bunch of Pokemon-themed gifts: a Pokemon game for Nintendo, a Pokemon t-shirt with one of those reversible sequin pictures, a Pokemon key ring, and a box with Pokemon cards. Also a mini Rubic’s cube, and a cactus.

When I was a child, the cake I always had for my birthday was a redcurrant merengue cake. We couldn’t find any redcurrants today, so this is a raspberry and blackberry merengue cake.

Back then, a birthday with just one cake was no birthday. My other cake was often an upside-down pineapple cake (without any artificial-looking canned cherries) or a kringel, which is a filled and braided bread. The internet seems to think it should be filled with cinnamon, but I remember raisins and chopped nuts and a chocolatey glaze.

We’re baking. All hands on deck – three cakes in progress in parallel, for the kids’ combined birthday party with family and relatives tomorrow. A tosca cake, a raspberry cheesecake, and cookies. Ingrid is enjoying the feeling of peanut butter cookie dough.

Lemon merengue pie, for Ingrid’s birthday party.

Twelve eleven-year-olds were an interesting party crowd to have. Mostly of the time they seem so grown. They eat lemon merengue pie instead of ice cream with sugar sprinkles. They have party decorations in silver and black. They mostly don’t need adults to entertain them or to arbitrate in their games, unlike younger kids. There are no tears because a piece of cake fell over, or because someone got a pink straw but wanted a green one.

But there were times when I was clearly reminded that they are still children. Especially when they get tired. When they couldn’t agree on whose turn it was to hold the pen for some part of the treasure hunt, or when someone thought that the others were doing it wrong, they really weren’t that different from a bunch of pre-schoolers – they still needed an adult to coax them through it, so the party could end without fights and tears.

I’m taking photos of distinctive objects around the house for a treasure hunt, for Ingrid’s mystery/spy-themed birthday party this coming weekend. She and her guests will also get to decode secret messages, play with fire to uncover hidden messages written with lime juice, etc.

A day late, we baked a birthday cheesecake.

Our (by now traditional) birthday sushi lunch at the conveyor belt place in Kista. Just Ingrid and myself this time, since Eric and Adrian were on a scout hike.

We mentioned Ingrid’s birthday to a member of the staff and she was brought an umbrella drink, which was a real “cherry on top” for her.