This is a family portrait we took last week - styled by Tiss. I love it. Unfortunately it didn't "make the cut" into the new blog that we have just launched - www.4windows.blogspot.com.4 windows is a photo blog whereby the Smedes brothers and their families post a photo a week from their respective corners of the world - which are Latvia, Indonesia, Australia and Africa. A way of keeping in touch and hopefully will give viewers an interesting peek through our respective "windows". There's not...

Just a few pics of our winterwonderland of the last two days. These first ones are of the boys out in the forest in the blizzard of yesterday (no, we couldn't convince them to wait until the high-speed winds had stopped before we went out). Jon and Courtney, those beanies you brought back from South America have been put to good use!And here are some snaps of today's trip to the park. The boys ganged up on me in snowball fights, which quickly degenerated into "great big hunks of snow" fights....

This is a little description for our friends and fam in Australia, who have not had the pleasure of living in a snowy climate - for those of you who already do, it won't be interesting at all! Snow is a wonderful thing. I think most people who live in Latvia have a love/hate relationship with it. When we first started living here, it was more love, than hate. After a couple of years though the relationship is starting to balance out a bit.The boys, of course, can't get enough of snow. Especially...

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First proper snow - boys are ha...

Ok so here's the Latvian 90th anniversary celebration roundup! Someone up high smiled at us benevolently this year and gave us a four-day weekend to celebrate. One of the highlights was definitely the light festival that was held over the long weekend. I'm glad I wasn't on the organising committee for the celebrations, because if someone would have pitched the idea to me: "our major event for Latvia 90 is going to be a festival where we light up objects all over Riga" I would have told them to...

Only after quite a few years of living up here in the top part of the Northern hemisphere have certain things crystallized for me - it's taken me a few years to realise the magic of this time of the year. It's all pagan and patriotic and mysterious. It's a time when nature takes a deep breath - after the furious flowering and fruiting of summer and autumn have ended. The world gets very dark - it's not yet dawn when you get up in the morning and twilight already in the afternoon. And misty....

So here's the thing. Latvian parents have a penchant for dressing their young sons up in mini suits for special occassions. This isn't an age-old tradition, it's definitely stemming from the Soviet era. On important days of the year - particularly related to things on the school calendar, like the first day of school, last day of school and various seasonal concerts and celebrations - the kids get REALLY glammed up, and the boys (some as young as three!) turn up in suits. The full deal - shirt,...

Drove out this morning to Ķemeri National Park to go for a walk in the marshland there. Never been in a marsh before! Kinda eerie, beautiful in a same-ish kind of way. Very, very still and quiet. An obviously clean, untouched piece of nature there. The boys had fun running along the path and falling into puddles, and after 3km of slippery wooden planks they were both pretty muddy, tired and happy as well. Seeing as Jem has to work for the rest of the weekend it was a good morning away...