Sweeping beams of November sun

 Right now, November is delivering on the expected. Mornings are dark. You have to wonder what is the point of daylight savings, when it's still dark at 8 am ANYWAY. And afternoons are getting shorter and shorter. Last weekend we saw the sun out and ran out the door to do something - anything! - outside. We ended up at a park in Turku that's set up for all kinds of fun stuff of kids. When we stopped for a bit of hot cocoa and a snack, the light made me think it would be "late". Well yeah! It was 3:15 pm. 

This week Kai has finally started to bike himself home after school. We took our time learning all the possible ways to get lost on the way home, and after he was quite comfortable with them, he's been doing it on his own. The challenge is to remember to bring all the things home that he went to school with. You might wonder what those are: rain pants, gloves, hat (if applicable), helmet, backpack.... Most days he makes it back with all those things. 

Petra has become extremely caring when it's time to get settled for a late evening of conference calls. She often offers to make a cup of tea, and picks the fluffiest blanket to drape over my lap. There are often also love notes. It's quite wonderful, but of course I hope she doesn't dwell too much on whether we are getting enough sleep or not. (We generally are fine) Kai also likes setting up fluffy nests in various parts of the house, and invites others to come snuggle. There have been nights where ALL the blankets and pillows are in the corner of his room. 

One cold foggy day coming home Kai said the forest was looking very beautiful with the sun shining into the fog sideways. We went to see. It was very pretty, and the sun was still slanting through branches and into the golden mist. We took pictures and followed a path we found -- to a small patch of winter wonderland behind the ice rink! Apparently when they take care of the ice, they shave off stuff that looks very much like snow and push it out the back and into piles behind the rink! Although it was quite hard (unsurprising!) we found a corner of snow soft enough to make some snow balls, and Kai had so much fun playing in the snow. We even brought a snowball back for Petra to see, and Kai cannot wait to go back and play in the snow again. I just hope that these rainy days have not totally ruined it. I hope they push out fresh snow fairly regularly. 

Brian has been telling us about Among us, a game app, for a while. Now it has taken off - kids play it, grownups play it, colleagues use it to have a bit of remote entertainment. It's like a cross between One Night Werewolf (a fun card-based game all about the poker face, a Diablo camping favorite) and Spaceteam (a really fun game for playing together on phones, total mayhem). The kids are REALLY into it and at home they are trying to figure out how to play it board game style, which begins with making game pieces. So we have carefully drawn, labeled and cut among us themed bits of paper starting to accumulate on every surface. Petra even used the theme to make characters for all her classmates and arranged them into their class seating chart. It's great. I think she's going to bring it home to remember this by. Oh yeah, and all the boys are dead.