Christmas Eve

So it finally arrived, Christmas Eve. Even if we try hard to take the focus off of gifts and presents it is difficult. I must say, the joy of giving makes it hard not to buy gifts… This year all the boys had made sure to get gifts for all their brothers and cousins. It probably started with Gabriel wrapping gifts early. His love language is with no doubt gifts and he is such a thoughtful gift giver. It was sweet to see them care for each other and plan each others gifts without me intervening at all. I will admit though that they did threaten each other more than one time to not give the gifts on Christmas when another brother upset them. 😂

We started Christmas Eve by going to church and when we got home it was time to start sharing gifts.

Christmas Eve was a very cold day this (last) year but we enjoyed some outdoor time where the kids could try out some of their new gifts. David got to wear his new sweater that mormor made him. It is a copy of one of her sweaters :-)




A great end on a great day. Farmor had made a delicious dinner and we did our best to keep the kids behaving at the dinner table after all the fun this day. 


Merry Christmas!! God Jul!!

After repeating myself we are finally at Christmas

No wonder I cannot catch up when I post the same thing over and over again. I apologize for that. Thank you pappa for pointing that out!

We drove down to Miami to celebrate Christmas with farmor, uncle Cory and the cousins. We had a great time. A little crazy at times but that’s how it should be right!? :-)

Gabriel and David decorating the tree ❤️❤️

Organizing cars never gets old!


Lucky boys got to go on the jet ski with uncle Cory!




He wanted to sleep like his big brothers, on a mattress on the floor ❤️


Since this little guy has been very reluctant to talk farmor had the great idea to just practice each letter in the alphabet. He seemed to like that!


As every Christmas the Swedish television (SVT) shows the Adventskalender. Thanks to the online streaming we could watch all the episodes. 


Yay, me and the boys managed to take a trip to ikea before Christmas. So delicious and fun shopping!!


Visit to Deering Estate. So much fun and very interesting. Found some Swedes in houses - Greta Garbo (actress) and Anders Zorn (painter). We also saw manatees and a very unafraid pelican. 


























Alex, Cory and I were going to go camping with the kids on one of the islands. However, the weather got pretty chili and I did not feel like I was well enough prepared to bring David so I stayed home with farmor. The boys had a wonderful time but I was still glad that me and David stayed home in a warm bed :-)


Preparing labels for the stockings. 


I did not prepare a lot of candy, drinks or food for Christmas this year (except for lussekatter) but I did end up making fudge/taffy right before Christmas. It ended up perfect, not too hard, not soft, just “lagom”. 




Getting closer to Christmas Eve…

It’s not even Christmas yet…

I was going to finally start posting about our a Christmas and then realized I was not even there yet. I have not even posted Alex’s birthday in mid December!!! 

So here we go. Happy birthday Darling!!!

After our traditional breakfast in bed I took Alex on a surprise trip to Jacksonville. We left the kids with Cindy and Danny who took them to the zoo :-) while we went to an amazing bookstore. I had just heard about it and never been but it was truly amazing. It was both used and new books and I have never been to a store with that many books. You could easily get lost in there!!

After the bookstore we went back to Cindy and Danny and we all went out for dinner. Of course the waiters and waitresses sang for Alex since it was his birthday :-)



The day after Alex’s birthday the fun kept going. We went go carting in Port orange. 









We have some friends who are Jews and they invited us to celebrate Chanukkah with them. It was so fun and interesting. The boys learned to play Dreidel and kept playing at home after. 

They did not have a dreidel so they made up some extra rules and used a die. 


Bikes and skateboard sat over at a friends house. Gorgeous day and so much fun for the boys! 






Time to bake Lussebullar!! I know a double batch is a little too big for my machine but it’s okay :-)

Yay, one step closer to write about our Christmas!! Only a month later…