A White Christmas

So Christmas began on the 24th, at 11 in the morning. My aunt, uncle and I went to my grandma and grandpa's grave. After shoveling away the snow that covered it, we placed flowers and candles on it. On the way home we stopped at the store and got my favorite Swedish food, blodpudding. It is basically condensed pig's blood. Yes I know it sounds gross, but I grew up with it and I think it tastes amazing. I'm hoping I can smuggle some back to Edinburgh:)

At 4 we went to one of my cousin's house because Tomten (a.k.a Santa) was coming to their house to give presents to the kids. This is tradition in Sweden, a family friend will dress up as Santa and come to the door with all of the kids' presents and hand them out. I think it's a cool tradition, although my cousin's daughter figured out that Santa wasn't really Santa. 

After, everyone came back to my aunt and uncle's and the celebrations started. This began with a champagne toast. Then everyone got appetizer's, which consisted of mostly fish (gross!), and then 12 adults sat at the table and the 6 kids sat at a smaller table near it.

Now it got very loud with everyone sitting down and eating. My uncle brought out the schnapps and they all sang a few songs (none of which I knew or could even understand). There was so much going on that I hadn't even realized that people had helped themselves to the main course, so all I ate was salad and some bread, but it was ok. The kids started opening their mountain of present's before we had even finished eating.

For desert there was a very good chocolate cake and passion fruit tart! The rest of the evening we watched the kids open their presents, I opened some as well and got great gifts:)

The next day, Christmas Day, I went to visit my other aunt and her family. This was very fun, as I got to meet my new 2nd cousins, one who is a year old and the other who is only 5 days old!

Today I went to my cousin's house in the afternoon just for tea which was also very nice:)