On a stormy night... she brought light

This years Lucia celebrations in Abu Dhabi took part yesterday, a few days in advance (Lucia is on the 13th of December). Again at the beautiful residence of the Swedish ambassador to the UAE. Reason being it was a joined effort between the SWEA ladies, who were in charge of the refreshments, the children of the Swedish community (us!), and the Embassy - who had invited a ladies choir from Sweden, called SALT to come and perform on this date.

Once again, it was a lovely arrangement, and the residence was decorated in red and green, and all lit up for the occasion:

An Advent gathering by the pool with Marcus and Malin from the Swedish church in Dubai:

The children in the Luciatåg meanwhile were getting ready inside, in one of the spare rooms. We had brought some Swedish books about Christmas, so the bigger kids were having a 'sagostund' with the little ones. It was very cute:

Then it was finally time for us to go and set up the Luciatåg. The weather was chilling, you can see how windy it was on the gowns blowing in the wind! Stormy weather!

As the Luciatåg was open to all children this year, instead of just school age children, we had a lot of very young ones wanting to take part as well.
We ended up waiting outside a little bit longer than anticipated, which in the end brought on a few tears and drop-outs from some of the young ones that wanted their mums, some costume failures after "light sabre wars" and a few discussions about santa hats, socks and glitter on or off...

But once we got started, the children sang their little hearts out and did a magnificent performance even though they were all cold. Cuteness overload, they sure managed to warm up the whole residence!

Only Linnea represented our family this year:

Later on it was time to enjoy some 'lussebullar', gingerbread biscuits and 'glögg' (=mulled wine), some mingling and also the performance of the SALT choir.

A beautifully Christmassy evening!