Family Christmas at our place

This Christmas was the very first one that we have been in our own home. Of course, I spent all my childhood Christmases in our home, too, but now home is mine and not my parents’.

Anyhow, we had prepared well — spent a good amount of money to groceries, sweets and other stuff. One cannot imagine how much five people eat before you have to shop for them. I bought a Christmas tree and arranged a Santa Claus to bring the presents on Christmas eve.

Sanna baked a lot, including (but not limited to) gingerbread cookies — really delicious, by the way — sweet bread (pulla in Finnish) and some other species of delicacies that I cannot translate to English.

My parents arrived on Saturday and stayed until Thursday. The days were mostly lazy, Sanna or I spent some time in the kitchen to prepare the food, Aapo had jolly time with grandparents, and we all ate too much. Every meal.

My sister and her family visited us on Christmas Eve and we visited them on Christmas Day.

There were an abundant amount of presents. I bought Sanna a Mulberry bag (that she selected) and a Hermes scarf (that I selected) and got back a Wii and a scarf. Not bad. The boys, Aapo, Onni and Eino got a bulkload of presents. Aapo’s favourites were two Thomas The Tank Engine wooden trains — he just stopped opening new presents after getting those and Sanna had to help him to get interested in the rest.

All in all, the festive season was extremely nice and surprisingly relaxing, too.