Getting out the Christmas cards in time this year. I buy them in good time, and I know I want to send them, and then December arrives and I get caught up in other things. This year, though: calendar reminders, and Ingrid’s help.

Ingrid, aiming for an A in sports, practising volleyball.

Ingrid’s school had a concert and an art exhibition for parents, with performances and artwork by the students.

Art is Ingrid’s favourite class. She chose this school because they offered art as an elective, and she’s been lucky to get a wonderfully inspiring teacher. The school has an art programme – like Ingrid’s class is focusing on economics and law, you can have art as your focus – so they’ve got more resources than maybe some other schools might.

The two works that the “non-art-focus art class” has done this term are a monochrome study of light and shadow with a crumpled paper bag as a subject, and an abstract print using some fancy type of printer that I’ve forgotten the name of. Numbered copies! This was Ingrid’s take on the abstract print.

Ingrid’s actual birthday was a week ago, but that day was a party for the extended family and her and Adrian – rather than for her alone. To give her a celebration that was only for her, we had a family-only second birthday party for her today. With lemon merengue pie, of course!

It came out very lemony this time. Lemon is good, more lemon is better, but apparently there is a point where there is too much lemon in the pie.

The Great Annual Measuring.

Adrian is over 160 cm.

Ingrid is still growing and has passed me in height.

We’re taking turns keeping Nysse company throughout most of the day. Spoiling him, perhaps. But when he is not allowed to even walk around in the house, much less go outdoors, and the only alternative is sitting in his cage, then taking him out for cuddles doesn’t feel like spoiling him.

He spends a lot of time asleep. He did so even before the injury, and I learned that cats can sleep up to 16 hours a day. Now it feels like he sleeps even more. But I also get the impression that he might be half awake at night when he has to be in his cage, sleeping with one eye open, and only relaxes properly when he’s out of it.

It’s like having a baby, all over again. Luckily only for six weeks.

Last year’s canoe trip on Ahja river was a hit so we did it again, but slightly differently. One canoe rental place has invented/introduced canoe rafts – three canoes attached to each other, with a wooden platform on top. It handles like a raft, sturdy, no wobbles. A bit less nimble but still decently steerable.

The big bonuses are that it’s much more social than a bunch of individual canoes – and it is very child- and dog-friendly.

There was eleven of us, and we ended up with one raft of adults and one of kids, with one dog each.

The dogs had to be split up and weren’t entirely happy about it. But two large, playful dogs on a raft getting the zoomies or starting to tussle with each other would have been too chaotic. They longed for each other, though, or perhaps they just wanted their herd to be all in one place.

We were on the same lake and river as last year, but only did half the distance, and in the other direction (upriver). Not that it felt like the direction made much of a difference – mostly we paddled along a lake with no noticeable flow.

At around the halfway point we steered our rafts into a little bay, tied them to each other, and had a lovely picnic. The rafts made it very easy. Dogs and paddles and kids and food everywhere.

The lake turned into a river for the last kilometre or so, and the paddling was more challenging now, with logs, submerged broken branches, sand banks and other obstacles.

I got fewer photos this year since the rafts didn’t exactly allow any darting around to the side to get new angles on things. And with four of us paddling, I couldn’t just stop my part whenever I felt like it, or we’d end up going in circles. Ingrid helped out and took over the camera for a while, too.

Ingrid’s most favourite burger ever, that she’s been looking forward to for a year. The sweet potato burger at Veg Machine at Aparaaditehas.