Pepparkakor with Agneta

Yesterday afternoon we went to Agneta and Henrik's home to bake pepparkakor (and drink glögg!). It's a Christmas tradition here to bake them before Lucia. August had fun using the cookie cutters to press shapes out of the dough, Leif had fun grabbing handfulls of dough and shoving them in his mouth, and Koster the dog had fun licking Leif's face and hands! (James and I particularly like the glögg).

Happy Easter!

On Sunday morning, we did a little Easter egg hunt with August. Grandma gave him a basket, I hid the eggs, and off he went. He had so much fun finding eggs, and then just as much fun eating the chocolate and stuffing the coins into his pocket.

August hasn't yet learned that chocolate melts in your hand if you grip it too tightly.

The day before Easter we went to my Aunt Jill's house, where my cousins and their kids did an Easter egg hunt.

Here's August hunting for Easter eggs:

Christmas

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days; not only have we been absolutely exhausted recently, but I wanted to take a few days away from the computer over Christmas in order to set those days apart from other days. It was nice: James and I actually talked and hung out with each other after the kids were in bed each night. That might be something worth keeping up...

We didn't get many pictures over Christmas, and very few of them were good. One of the things that I don't like about our apartment is that we get terrible light. Not only are we mired in the dark of a Scandinavian winter with limited daylight hours, but those hours we get the sun is only barely above the horizon. I don't think we've had directly light in here since September. And most of the light fixtures here are terrible and cast an orange glow over everything. All of this means that taking pictures is a technical challenge, and the pictures we do take don't turn out well. Which is so very sad, because we have this new baby and I'd love to be taking a billion pictures of him!

Here are the few we managed.

Leif snuggled in his bassinet after an outing (he barely fits in the stroller bassinet anymore; we probably only have a few more weeks of being able to snug him inside of it, then we'll have to switch to our other stroller):

Our Christmas tiger:

Packing his new bag for an excursion:

Playing with his new crane truck. He loves this thing; today after his nap he walked out of his bedroom cradling it in his arms:

Mama helping Leif open his present:

Augie trying on some of his new goodies: