Ramblings: Christmas Preparations

There are Christmas Markets all over Sweden around the holidays. We decided to visit the one in Lund. Unfortunately, it was really cold and rainy. We were rather disappointed with the Lund Christmas Market. I had thought there would be more for the kids to do. It was mostly craft booths - homemade nick-nacks for sale. The one thing the kids really enjoyed were the personalized pepparkakor gris (gingerbread pigs.)

The other part that the kids really enjoyed were the fire jugglers. Tipton was fascinated (this makes me worry about his teenage years.)

Lilli has become very interested in cooking. She is always wanting to help me in the kitchen. Her favorite part of helping is licking the beaters, whisks and spoons.

December 13th is St Lucia Day. This is a very big holiday here in Sweden. The children wear costumes and sing St Lucia Songs. Tipton chose to be a pepparkakorgubor (gingerbread boy.) Lilli chose to be a tomte (Christmas elf.) They tried on their costumes the night before.

Tipton had two St Lucia performances. The first was at his school, in his classroom.Afterwards we all went to the classroom nextdoor for refreshments provided by the parents (mostly plates of pepparkakor.)

For the second performance the kids put coats on over their costumes and walked down the street to a little cafe. There they performed for the lunchtime patrons. Afterwards they were given lusskatt (safron buns with raisins) to be eaten on the walk back to school.

Lilli's St Lucia performance was in the afternoon. I didn't get any pictures of the actual performance (I was too busy videotaping.) Everyone declared Lilli "the star of the performance." She definitely sung the loudest! Afterwards they had milk, juice, pepparkakor and lusskatt for the kiddos. Here Lilli contemplates which cookie she wants.

The next day Lilli pulled Tipton's pepparkakor outfit out of the dirty clothes and tried it on. Even the socks!

One weekend we went to Tivoli with the Scott family (Ian, Sam, Selena and Aaron) to ride the rides, see the Christmas deocrations and eat at wagamama.

Aaron, Tipton and Selena pose in front of the Tivoli Snowmen.

Lilli was too busy studying the snowmen to get in the picture, so we took one of her separately.

The boys run off a little energy before standing in line for the rides.

Daddy and Tipton on the swing ride. Sadly, Lilli was declared too short to go on the ride. We were both very disappointed. But the boys had a great time!