Nu är glada julen slut, slut, slut,
julegranen kastas ut, ut, ut…

Some years we buy a spruce. This year we had a fir tree. The spruces smell nice but shed needles like crazy. This one shed almost none, and just started looking a bit limp after a long time of no watering. Almost hard to believe that it wasn’t made of plastic. Very practical.

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.

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.

Today is the last day at school before Christmas break, and class 2B treated us to Christmas carols.

We made paper stars.

It’s fun to make Christmas decorations but hard to find place for them. It feels like the house is full of various crafted stars and elves and snowmen and trees, and they just accumulate with the years. The kids make new ones almost every year and don’t ever want to get rid of any of theirs. At least these small paper ones don’t feel like a huge investment so we can throw them out (or rather, recycle them) when Christmas is over.

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.