Today is the 1st Sunday of Advent. We hung Advent stars and unpacked Christmas decorations, Christmas books and other assorted Christmas-related stuff. The Santa hats were best.

The Christmas CDs will stay in their boxes though. We’re 100% digital now, all the way, with the Sonos system playing music from both our own music library (including the Christmas CDs) and Spotify.

A birthday starts with the family singing Ja må hon leva, followed by presents, and then a birthday breakfast.

Normally some/much/all of this would happen with the birthday child still in bed, but since the birthday child is still sleeping in the tent, that was just not going to happen this time.

By the way, Adrian only understood today how birthdays actually work, when I explained it for him. He asked me what time of the year he was born, and when his 6th birthday will be, even though he knows very well that his 5th birthday was in autumn – because he hadn’t connected “birthday” to “birth”.

Today we had the kids’ birthday party with all family and relatives. I have been more or less unwell for over a week now so I didn’t have a lot of energy and basically forgot about my camera, so I only have this one photo… Ingrid loves looking at photos of past birthdays and Christmases so I will have to make it up next year.

Adrian and I made kladdkaka for his birthday. It’s a kind of Swedish chocolate mud cake and it’s his favourite kind of cake.

Midsummer Eve was cold and rainy. We didn’t even attempt to celebrate it outdoors. No picnic, no maypole, no Små grodorna. We had a Midsummer lunch inside, and played board games and watched a movie.

We painted Easter eggs, like we usually do.

Two little Easter witches went out with Easter cards they had made and came home with heaps of candy.

I have a weakness for sparkly heart-shaped Christmas tree ornaments.

(Actually taken on Christmas Eve, but the days are all blurring together into one giant lump of Christmas.)

Ingrid, Lego and Christmas tree.