Christmas eve

I woke up early to make Christmass porridge (more or less like rice pudding, but you sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top). Joyce, our wonderful maid, came to clear the mess I had made in the kitchen. In fact, she took care of the whole house while Heikki, Matias, India and I went to play in the snow. We had booked a 20 minute session in artificial snow at the Canal Walk shopping centre. We went down a snow-slide a couple of times and had a snowball fight. We all thought it was rather wonderful.

Instead of a Christmas sauna, Heikki and the kids went for a dip in the pool. Meanwhile, I prepared the traditional Finnish Christmas meal. Earlier on I had gone round the Hout Bay mall looking for a Christmassy CD to play in the evening, but couldn't find one. Because of the Blooded Beaver mishap the other day, we ended up listening to Il Divo's version of O' Holy Night over and over again.

It's not the heat but the sunshine that feels the strangest. Instead of it being dark, cold and rainy/snowy/sleety, it was bright, hot and windy. As a child I remember looking into the darkness trying to see a glimpse of Santa's elf. India had no problem keeping an eye on our garden in the bright daylight, and eventually saw something red in the bushes. Santa couldn't visit our house [he'd left his red outfit in the UK] but he left a pile of presents at the front door. It took us over two hours to open them, as the children wanted to try out each of the presents as they opened them. Matias and India were almost equally excited and happy with most of the presents - both their own and everyone elses. I was surprised by India's stamina, when she was still jumping and squealing with joy after two hours.

Before going off to bed we Skyped our families in Finland.