Adrian had his birthday party today. Outdoors, in the Ursvik recreation area. Games, an adventure trail, grilled hot dogs, cake, treasure hunt and all that.

We joined forces with the family of Adrian’s friend H, whose birthday is just two days before his, so all in all we had about a dozen six- and seven-year-olds running around, plus a couple of younger siblings. On the other hand, Ingrid helped out as game leader and kid wrangler. Surprisingly we managed to not lose any of them in the forest.

It’s Adrian’s birthday tomorrow. The presents are waiting for him, when he wakes up tomorrow morning, first of us all.

I’m forty years old today. Happy birthday me!

Birthdays are intrinsically not particularly interesting. But they are a good excuse for cake. Ingrid and I picked cherries and baked a cherry and ricotta cake for my birthday.

We have a nifty little cherry de-stoning tool which makes the job incredibly easy, but it’s still very, very messy. Cherry juice splatters all over everything nearby. So we try and do this job outdoors if possible.

Ingrid is working on a secret project of some sort, that requires buying pieces of wood and screws. I suspect it might be related to my upcoming birthday, so I am taking care to not pay any attention to it, so as to allow her to surprise me.

I can’t say I’m in a mood to celebrate anything, but a picnic is always nice.

We picnic’ed at Hammarskog together with my mum. Afterwards, my brother also joined us for a game of Mysterium and a barbecued dinner. (I can’t call it an actual barbecue because the weather was quite chilly so we sat indoors; the only thing outside was the grill itself.)

We painted pretty eggs. They were so pretty that even Adrian, who doesn’t normally eat eggs, ate one.

If it was just about the painting, we could have done many more, but I feel we should paint only as many as we can eat. Which is not a lot. Boiled eggs are a good breakfast food, but not hard-boiled ones. That is not the most delicious way of preparing eggs. Hard-boiled eggs are OK when still newly cooked and warm, but after a day or two… not so much.

Helium balloons at a birthday party.

People have birthday parties. People who have “round number” birthdays tend to have especially large or elaborate parties. I will turn 40 this summer and I feel no need whatsoever to have a party. So if you don’t get invited, you shouldn’t feel left out.

My birthdays are fundamentally uninteresting to me to begin with. And having a birthday party does not appeal to me the least. First there would be all this arranging and preparing, and then all these people, and there more of them I invite the less I have time to speak to them. No, not for me.

I wouldn’t turn down a cake, though.

Christmas dinner was a candlelit affair.

I’ve never quite seen the point of teaching kids to believe in Santa Claus. The “It’s a tradition” argument doesn’t fly with me. “Everybody else does it” is also not a valid argument. “It makes kids be good” is the worst of them all – if the only way you can teach good behaviour to your kids is by lying, then maybe you have problems…

So the kids are fully aware that Christmas gifts are from people to people, and fully involved in the whole project. They buy or make gifts of their own, and they help choose gifts for each other. (Ingrid is markedly better than me at predicting what Adrian will enjoy.)

And wrapping all the gifts is a big, messy, fun project of its own, that we also do together.

Ingrid lighting the candles for a Christmas dinner with her friend M.