What would Easter be without painted Easter eggs? Nothing, that’s what!

Ingrid had a theme in mind for her eggs, and I also found inspiration, so we got to work.

Adrian quickly finished his first egg but then struggled to find ideas for the next one. Instead he painted the newspaper protecting the kitchen table, and then got caught up in some article.




Finally I suggested that he just pick a colour and start putting some paint on the egg, and that was enough to get him unstuck.

He usually makes abstract designs on his eggs, and today was no exception. This is him with a dark egg that he energetically splatters with small speckles for a starry-sky effect.

My eggs this year are a picture puzzle, but it only works in Swedish. I made a “vägg-ägg” and a “hägg-ägg”. (Vägg means “wall” and hägg means “bird cherry”.)

We usually go to Uppsala and my mum and brother for Easter. But with all the government recommendations to stay at home, not travel, especially not from Stockholm to other parts of the country, not meet people, especially older people… that’s not happening.

My usual default solution for long weekends is to go out for a walk. Today we went to Tyresta, back to that north-eastern corner of the national park where we camped last summer. The walk to lake Långsjön and back is picturesque and varied and not too long, and there’s a fire place at a beautiful spot on the lake shore where we could heat our lunch. It’s somewhat harder to get to than the area around the main park entrance in the west, and it doesn’t have any of the super accessible stroller-friendly paths, so I was thinking it would be less crowded.

“Less crowded” maybe it was, but definitely not “not crowded”. Dozens and dozens of families had obviously found themselves in the same situation as us, and come to the same conclusion as us. The parking lot at the park entrance was completely full. Luckily there was another parking lot just a kilometre before it, where we got the last but one spot. (Technically we were probably outside the parking area, but the ground was flat and not in a shrubbery, so it worked.)

The resting place with its shelter and fire place was of course full of people as well. But again we were lucky to arrive a bit later than a large group who were mostly done grilling their sausages, so Eric found room for our “hike bombs” at the edges of the fire. (More good luck for us in that someone had brought their own firewood, because the park’s official firewood box was completely empty.)

On our way back we had an Easter egg hunt. I hid eggs for Ingrid on one side of the path, and she hid eggs for Adrian on the other. We’ve done this in our own garden several times, but there aren’t that many good places to hide colourful eggs in a bare, early-April garden, so this was a lot more fun. Under roots and under rocks and under twigs and moss. I wish I had thought to take close-up photos.

Ingrid and Adrian are both in a phase where they enjoy each other’s company. Well, Adrian has always enjoyed Ingrid’s, but right now she enjoys his as well, which isn’t always the case. Lots of silly jokes. It always makes me happy to see and hear that.

A second Christmas, with the extended Bergheden family.

Decorating yesterday’s cookies.

My mum and my brother are here to celebrate Christmas with us. He doesn’t take up much space, but she is like a kid, and not in the best of ways. She needs constant entertainment and she expects us to provide it. If we don’t, she gets grumpy. So instead of relaxing, we need to make a plan to keep these days full of activities. Some of these we’d do anyway, like cooking extra delicious Christmas meals. In fact, it’s possible that we would do most of them. But it’s one thing to go out for a walk together because we feel like it, and another thing to do it because I have to keep other people’s moods up.

It didn’t use to be like this. Probably this is a large part of why I don’t enjoy Christmas any more.

The Christmas thing is in full swing.

Cookies were made, gifts were opened, plenty of food was eaten.

For the past few Christmases, I’ve had to make more and more of an effort to enjoy this circus at least somewhat. I used to be able to. Now it’s just a chore.

Waiting for the knäck to reach the right temperature. (knäck is a traditional Swedish Christmas treat.)

Ingrid and Adrian decorated the Christmas tree today. This year’s tree is a fir again, which goes counter to tradition and instinct but looks better and sheds less.

In the evening, the kids made gingerbread houses with Eric’s help. There are ready-made kits you can buy, but this year they’re making them almost from scratch. (But using store-bought dough, because by the time we eat them they will be dry and dusty and using home-made dough would feel like a bit of a waste.) This way we can make much smaller houses, so it’s conceivable that we might actually eat them.

The supermarket had something called “baking glue” which I haven’t seen before. We’ve tried using melted sugar to assemble the houses, and icing, but neither has worked very well. This baking glue was much easier to use than sugar, and stronger than icing.

Following tradition, we’re falling behind on the advent calendar – Ingrid didn’t have time to open hers yesterday. But this year’s activities are less ambitious than some I’ve had before, so it’ll be easy to catch up. Instead of Christmas crafts, there’s “draw a tomte in your style”; instead of making a gingerbread house, there’s “sing Christmas songs throughout the day”. You can even do both on the same day!

Today’s Christmas activity: writing and posting Christmas cards.

The prices for international postage keep going up and up. The same used to be true for domestic mail, but now there is only one kind of stamp that is no longer printed with a specific price. It just says “Sverige Brev” and the stamps are valid forever, I guess. Or until PostNord decides differently.

PostNord likes selling stamps in packs and not singly. Most years we get one or two left over when we’ve mailed all our Christmas cards. And by the next Christmas, the leftover stamp is useless, because the price has increased. It’s easier to buy a new full-price stamp than to find low-value stamps to make up the price difference, so that leftover stamp remains in the drawer, waiting for a better year.

Now finally the price of domestic mail has nearly caught up with our oldest leftover international stamp, so I used it on the Christmas card going to my mum.

Another thing that keeps surprising me is how rarely PostNord makes any festive international stamps. For Sweden – yes. Christmas trees, snowflakes, reindeer and so on. But for my friends abroad, today I could choose between black and white scenes from Ingmar Bergman movies (seriously!) or a series of motifs with Swedish embroidery. Embroidery it is, then.