In this month’s issue of Keeping Up With the Erikssons: We spend most of the month, either preparing for Christmas or feeling a bit under the weather.

Distinguishable December, Issue 12/14

544 words about life — 17:30 · 29th Dec 2014

Last year, Lucien had a Lego Advent calendar. The year before that, a chocolate one.

This year, Rebecka had the idea that instead of having a store-bought calendar, he could have something hand-made. To which I signed up with enthusiasm because I thought it was a wonderful idea.

So, whilst Rebecka begun crafting the Christmas calendar from felt, I went out to buy some of the little presents we would hang in it.

We spent the evening before December 1st wrapping all the 24 little presents, to have them ready for the morning.

Wrapping Christmas presents with the Eriksson family.
Oh, the things we do for our children.

Lucien loved it and woke up every morning, excited to open up another little presents, counting down to Christmas Eve.

Much of the remaining December was spent with either one or two of us feeling a little under the weather, nothing as serious as last year, but enough for us to spend a lot of time resting.

Before that though, we did manage to go to Rochester for their annual Dickensian Festival. This is the third year we’re going, making it a bit of a tradition at this point.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any decent pictures from the festival—of the five I actually took—so you’re going to have to make due with a picture from one of my morning walks to work.

Morning frost on the walk to Turkey Mill, Maidstone.
The crisp morning air always wakes me up.

Between coughing and complaining about various aches, we still managed to keep up with our preparatory duties of baking saffron buns, hunting down a Christmas tree and baking and decorating gingerbread cookies.

Gingerbread cookies with writing on them.
No Christmas would, of course, be complete without the traditional Poop Pig.

Thankfully, once Christmas finally begun to rear its head we had begun feeling better and come Dan för dopparedan, the day before Christmas Eve, I took out the last of my holiday days for this year, so I could spend my Christmas holiday time with Rebecka and Lucien.

And so far so good as we’ve gotten to spend time together, eating Christmas dinner, watching films and playing the board game Scooby-Doo! Hide & Shriek, which Rebecka had picked up at a charity shop a few days earlier.

Wrapping Christmas presents with the Eriksson family
Ho, ho, ho, are there any nice children here?

We are now looking forward to celebrating New Year’s Eve with prawns, halloumi, fireworks and champagne.

Stay tuned for the retrospective entry about 2014, which is due this Wednesday.

You’ve just read Distinguishable December, Issue 12/14.

In which, 9 years ago, I wrote 544 words about life and I covered topics, such as: keeping up with the erikssons , christmas , rochester , and board games .