A discussion arose with a friend about whether the kids look like me or not.

To me, they just look like themselves. And Adrian looks like Ingrid and vice versa. I can’t immediately see that any part of their faces looks like mine or Eric’s. We all have normal, average face-shaped faces, mouth-shaped mouths, and so on.

On the other hand, I can look at other kids at school or daycare and notice immediately that they definitely look nothing at all like me, so I guess there must be some similarity there after all.

With Ingrid spending the day (and night) away with a friend, Eric and Adrian and I went to Hagaparken for sledding. First we had a nice long walk in the more wooded parts of the park. Then lunch, and after lunch some great rides down the slope. Good gliding, great speed. Adrian was whooping with joy on the way down; I myself was so out of practice sledding that I was actually secretly pleased we couldn’t go even faster.

Eric with a cup of glögg in front of the computer, late at night when the kids are in bed.

Adrian loves bread. He especially loves the apricot and walnut bread that Eric made this weekend. (Adrian helped put the apricots and walnuts in the dough.)

When Adrian eats food that he really really enjoys, there is no doubt about it: he chews with his eyes closed, going nyom nyom nyom all the time, like in a cartoon.

We walked around in Funchal a bit and heard incredible amounts of grumbling about having to walk. I don’t think I’ve ever come home from a new city with as few photos as I have from this visit to Funchal.

We took the cable car up to Monte and walked around in the lush, beautiful, well-designed, scenic tropical garden.

Last week was Easter break at school. We all took the week off and had a mini-vacation at a farm. I had been longing for greenery and nature, and we also wanted the kids to see farm animals up close.

I grew up in the city but we spent all our summers at my grandmother’s cottage. It was very much a city-dweller’s summer cottage rather than a farm. But one of the neighbours had hens, and there was a sheep pasture nearby, so I got somewhat acquainted with some animals at least.

The farm we visited now, Kullagården, was a proper working farm. Small-scale, not one of those giant places of industrial-scale food production, but still a working farm rather than a hobby. Mostly they grow organic crops (wheat, oats, spelt and beans) but crop farming is pretty boring to look at, especially in April when nothing has been planted yet… But they also had a whole bunch of cows, both for meat and for the manure they produce. There were also horses and ponies, hens, rabbits and goats.

I liked the cows. They turned out to be much more inquisitive and nosy than I had expected. And they were beautifully hairy. The kids found them noisy and stinky and boring, and weren’t even interested in the week-old calves. Too large I guess.

Ingrid enjoyed feeding the hens. Adrian preferred to keep a fence between them and himself. I learned that hens find cheese a treat and prefer it to breadcrumbs. (I guess nobody would normally feed cheese to their chickens – these were leftover scraps from the bed & breakfast end of the farm.)

After some initial shyness, the rabbits were also pleased to be fed. Even Adrian came into the rabbit coop and hand-fed them dandelion leaves.

But the kids’ absolute favourite was the Totte the Shetland pony. They went out riding (on horseback or in a cart) every morning.

When the pony tired, they pulled the cart themselves.

We also took a walk along a nearby creek (Stjärnorpsravinen).

It was a very varied walk with lots to do: there was mud to splash in, fallen trees to climb over and under, bridges to cross, sticks to throw in the water…

We went bowling today. It was the kids’ first time bowling, and I can’t say I’m an expert either – I think I’ve tried bowling maybe 5 times in my life.

I would have thought that Ingrid is too young for this (not to mention Adrian). But Ingrid mentioned at some point that one of her classmates had had his birthday party at a bowling alley. It turns out that many bowling alleys do kids’ birthday parties. The thing that makes it work is a technical fix: the kids get bumpers that make sure the ball doesn’t end up in the gutter.

So we tried bowling, and it worked out quite well. Adrian of course didn’t really understand any of it but was just happy to be on the show. He liked the balls with all their pretty colours, and wearing shoes that looked just like mine.

But he did try some bowling too. First with a ramp, but then he chose to play like us, with muscle power only. But his muscle power is pretty limited, especially when it comes to explosive strength… Once his ball actually ran out of speed completely and got stuck, close to the end of the lane, and a staff member had to go and poke it out. The best technique we came up with for him had him standing with his feet wide apart, with the ball on the floor in front of him, and then pushing the ball sort of kind of roughly straight ahead. Maybe.

Ingrid managed quite well and enjoyed it. She couldn’t roll the ball straight, so after a while she gave up and just planned her zig-zags. “If I zig to the left then it will probably bounce twice against the bumpers and end up at the left again,” that kind of calculations. It worked surprisingly well.

In the end we were all quite evenly matched, actually. Eric and I are both beginners with pretty unpredictable results: anything from total misses to the occasional strike. Ingrid had the bumpers to help her out. Adrian also had the bumpers and got very random results to begin with. But when he tired, Eric and I took turns bowling for him as well, when his turn came up, which further evened out the results.

Back in August, or maybe it was September, we had family photos made in Drottningholm. I was going to share a few but totally forgot. Now Henrik, the photographer, has published the photos on his blog, which brought back some warm summery memories!

The kids were pretty wild and keyed up, especially Ingrid who was running around giggling much of the time. This seems to be her default way of coping with a situation where she is uncertain. So we got lots of photos of kids running and not so many with the whole family together. But they were beautiful photos nevertheless.

And the kids had fun, which is not unimportant: it means that they will be happy to do it all over again if and when we decide to do that. They both talked about the session for weeks, and Henrik’s “snigelfis” (to get smiley faces out of the kids, instead of saying “cheese”) made an especially strong impression.

Here’s a selection of the photos. There’s lots more at Henrik’s blog.

This is going to be another photo-rich and text-poor month: another photo course began this week.