Annandag jul

I haven't been writing much because of the holidays. I feel I have not much else to say apart from the pictures that I take, and they say enough. They capture the melancholy of the land, the ageless feeling of a frozen winter wood, a silent road. The twenty-sixth of December is Annandag jul, two days after our Swedish Christmas eve. We drove to our cottage in the woods for a walk along ice-encrusted trails and then to grandmother's snug house for dinner with the extended family.

 All this beauty also resulted in three falls. First Sofia, then Jachin, then Joel. They all slipped without a shout, sliding suddenly and gracefully to the ground where they lay in a mess of moans until someone helped them up.

Warm indoors, we enjoyed dinner, after which there was After Eight chocolates and Sofia fell asleep on the couch and us young folk--Joel and wife Sofia, the cousins Inga-Linn, William, and Amelia, and myself, of course--tried out a variety of no-props-necessary games. We had no board games to entertain us, not even a deck of cards, and so we fell to other means and enjoyed ourselves just the same. Necessity is the mother of invention.