Sixten

Today we went to see Emma and Sixten in their new apartment. Sixten was very happy to see the kids, "my big friends" as he called them.

Nice to see that he now remembered them, as it wasn't that long ago we last were back in Skara.

Julafton 1 in Sweden

In the evening, after having been for our little outing to the 'julbord', we warmed the glögg and prepared the Christmas chocolates we had made, to enjoy it all by the tree while we were going to open our gifts.

Some got warm socks to sleep in, others a pink hoodie they had seen in the shop which the mean Mummy didn't want to buy for them... so Mormor sneakily could:

There was the usual yearly Santas all around, to add to the growing collections, and little houses to add to the Santa Village:

Mormor got a book she had wished for, for her genealogy research:

Mormor and Morfar had bought themselves a gift, a new cutlery set:

I got some accessories for my phone, amongst other things:

And Morfar got some accessories for his Nissedörr (=Santa door), which he installed immediately: 

A Christmas Lunch

We decided with Mormor and Morfar that we would do our own 'Julafton' in advance; since the kids and I weren't going to stay in Sweden for the real Christmas but go back to Abu Dhabi to celebrate with Nathan. Even though we were going to celebrate Christmas with my Mum's side of the family on the 4th of Advent, we wanted to exchange our own gifts and celebrate a bit before that.

So today was 'Julafton'!
To make it extra special, we went for a 'julbord' (=a Christmas smörgåsbord) at Brunsbo Gästgifveri not very far from home, for a bit of a Christmassy lunch. It was really lovely.

It was just the right amount of choices of food for us, all the favourites that I want for Christmas - and it was all delicious.

Making gingerbread houses

We have made gingerbread houses many times before, both at home and while in Sweden. I must admit that we have usually used the ready made ones from IKEA that only need mounting and decorating, but this year Mormor set the kids the challenge of making them from scratch.

So, cookbooks were studied and designs were created:

Dough was made:

Pieces were cut out:

 And when they were baked, the building started:

And then it was decorating time, the fun part!

And here are the finished gingerbread house creations!

Mormors Santa Village

Mormor has been collecting little santas and houses for her Santa village for decades now. It's expanding every year, not just by amounts of santas, houses, trees, animals and other things - but also in size. Currently I guess it's as big as it can get in the space where it's at - about 4,2 x 1,3 meters!

She sets it up a bit differently every year. She uses individual LED Christmas tree lights, in all the houses which are originally intended to hold tea lights, so she can turn them all on by remote!

The lights also work along the roads, on the car etc; the train works of course, and there is even a well with running water!

The village is not only in one layer, but there are also a bunch of santas flying around in airplanes over the village, and coming in by parachutes and from an air balloon:

The fairground is also lit up, and the merry-go-round is also working, of course!

Deck the halls

Mormor had saved decorating her Christmas tree until we got there. Hers is a little bit easier to decorate than mine, as she only has red and gold baubles in hers. It's more just about finding space than making sure the different decorations are evenly spaced out, like in mine.

It took a little while, Mormor has 294 baubles on her tree. We searched the flea market places for the last 6 to make it to 300, but she is rather fussy about what kind of baubles she wants - only old-fashioned, pretty glass ones, so no luck this year. Maybe next year she'll find them!