22 Jan. The dog on frozen lake Rönninge

Snowmen family

So finally some snow that's right for making snowmen! So we made 3. 

Skating in the New Year

 Neela and Nicholas skating in Södertälje.

Christmas and opening presents

Here we are opening presents on Christmas day. 

Emma and her family came too. Unfortunatly Hannah was sick with a bug and so could not join us this year. We had a turkey dinner and all the trimmings. Only the cake was missing as I had only got as far as the marzipan topping. We ate that on another day.

Emma and Dylan on Christmas Day.

Making mince pie’s and other Christmas food

19th Dec. Christmas Tree up!

Neela's gingerbread merry-go-round 2021

So this year Neela wanted to make the Christmas gingerbread house, but wanted to make somthing different. She ended up with a Merry-go-round idea. After checking some online pictures, so setteled on a design and we cut out some paper templates together. Neela did most of the rest, with a little help from Dad and put most of it together after first baking the parts. A great end result!

Something different this year!

2021 Christmas Cake

2nd of December - first snow of the year

Yep, 2nd of December was our first real snow this winter.

Happy Father’s Day

The start of Halloween

The highlight of Nicholas's year, Halloween. Kickoff with pumpkins and Halloween taco dinner featuring graveyard guacamole dip. 

Then dressing-up and off for trick-n-treating with friends.

To the UK for Sam and Laurens wedding

This was my first and last trip abroad in 2021! Neela and I went to England to visit family, attend Sam and Laurens wedding, and take part in the small ceremony to place mum’s ashes in their final resting place. We stayed with Penny and Les and it was really good to see them and the rest of the family after such a long Covid-restrictions induced break. We spent time with Ross too and that was good to get that quality time with him, also for Neela. The wedding was held at Brian’s house in the garden of his house. They had three huge tipi tents which were interlinked to create a fantastic space, all beautifully decorated with lights and flowers. I think there were more than a hundred guests and the whole occasion was so well organised. Neela had a ball and danced into the night with many of the guests. The following Monday we went with Ross and close family to have the small ceremony to place mum’s ashes in their final resting place. It was a lovely location set in the woods near Headlydown. Afterwards we went back to Rosses and had a family meal. Neela and I flew home on the Tuesday, just 5 days, but great fun and very worthwhile.

Here is Ross with the plaque that he had chosen to mark the spot where Mums ashes would be placed in the woods.

Birthday children

 Here's Liam and Neela this weekend celebrating their birthdays with the family. Liams was last week and Neelas is this comming week. Fabulous cakes by Caroline which everyone enjoyed, including JoJo the cat!

Noah’s Christening- 2nd October

After a long delay due to Covid-19 restrictions, Hannah and Marcus were finally able to go ahead with Noah's Christening. Here they are during the ceremony in Sofia's church on Söder with Noah getting involved with the holy water!

After that, family and friends then joined them for a coffee and cake at the nearby church hall.

Wall repairs progressing

After much indecision, I finally started repairing the wall across the garden. It’s been slowly losing stones and concrete patches for some years and I had in mind to completely rebuild it. But that’s a big and costly project so I’m just patching it up for now. Quite satisfying work actually!