Holidays

We've had a wonderfully busy Christmas week.

We used to give Heikki a puzzle every Christmas but that tradition has now changed. In the colder countries we tended to spend the Christmas days mostly at home with the kids, with them playing with their pressies, or us all doing puzzles and playing board games. Now that we live in a warm country in the Southern hemisphere, we spend the days outside.

We spent Christmas Eve just by ourselves, but on Christmas day we went to Jesse and Sathi's new place. Jesse is a Finn, Sathi is her African half (of Indian origin from some generations back), and their Sheylen is India's friend. They'd just bought their second city flat, which was still completely empty. There was a bed in one of the bedrooms but other than that the place was empty. We had a wonderful feast for lunch and ate on the floor with some of their friends and family. Jesse, Heikki, Matias and I got hooked on playing cards and played until late in the evening.

On Wednesday, Sathi brought his jet ski down to a beach near us. The kids had a go sitting on it, but then our family needed to rush for lunch in one of the wonderful hotels in Cape Town. The terrace is on the gorgeous rocky shore of the Atlantic. We ate lunch with friends, and just as we were planning on leaving the ambassador arrived with his daughter. Jesse & CO arrived a bit later. We sat there until the evening and then continued on to our house. We got some pizzas and watched the guys play on Matias' Wii.

On Thursday we went to a cherry orchard a couple of hours drive inland, driving over some magnificent mountains. Sheylen came with us and the little ones enjoyed picking and eating straight from the trees. We then went back home for a swim in the pool. The water is now +26. India swims with her armbands on but it won't take long until she swims without them. She had her armbands on with no air in them. We played cards with Jesse in the evening.

On Friday morning we climbed up Table Mountain. We've hiked a lot but this one was the toughest route we've done. There are many places where you can climb up, with some routes so difficult people fall down and die. This route we did wasn't dangerous but it was a killer for bad knees. The ambassador and his daughter had climbed up in 55 minutes on Wednesday, so we thought the climb wouldn't take that long. We had to stop often to wait for the eight year old to catch his breath. It took us roughly two hours to two and a half to climb up. We then went for lunch at one of India's friends. The children were in the pool most of the time. India swam two meters under water without arm bands. Meanwhile, Matias went jets kiing with Sethi.