OK, so we celebrated a little early but today was a perfect winter day to hold the annual cricket in the snow. Australia Day is one of only 2 days where the normally slack Australians living in Riga actually come together for an event, the other being the AFL Grand Final. Mikus and I went this year together as Mook had to look after Matiss who was lying on the coach with a raging fever. After a brief kick of the Sherrin we divided into 2 teams to play a very haphazard game of cricket. Suffice to say the playing field wasnt exactly the best, with a thin layer of ice providing both a sense of caution and scenes of slapstick as people slid around trying their best not to fall flat on their arse. The game finished reasonably quickly as it is really is only a device to get us together. After the stumps were drawn we all went to Ala bar where Krisjanis had Sausage rolls and chips and gravy on offer. Mikus made a great friend today and in a surprising reversal of roles I was actually pleading with him to leave the bar.
OK, so we celebrated a little early but today was a perfect winter day to hold the annual cricket in the snow. Australia Day is one of only 2 days where the normally slack Australians living in Riga actually come together for an event, the other being the AFL Grand Final. Mikus and I went this year together as Mook had to look after Matiss who was lying on the coach with a raging fever. After a brief kick of the Sherrin we divided into 2 teams to play a very haphazard game of cricket. Suffice to say the playing field wasnt exactly the best, with a thin layer of ice providing both a sense of caution and scenes of slapstick as people slid around trying their best not to fall flat on their arse. The game finished reasonably quickly as it is really is only a device to get us together. After the stumps were drawn we all went to Ala bar where Krisjanis had Sausage rolls and chips and gravy on offer. Mikus made a great friend today and in a surprising reversal of roles I was actually pleading with him to leave the bar.
We took a week off work to paint our house last week. I always thought we'd paint the interior a shade of white. Classic. And with all the artwork we've got, it would be a simple backdrop to all of those works we have stashed behind cupboards, because there's not enough room in our flat to hang them all. Although I enjoy coloured "feature walls" in other people's houses, they always seem to scream "LATE 1990S!!!" at me from across the room, so decided that we could do without them. Stay with the white. Simple, versatile, understated.
To be fair, though, the colour was chosen as a unifying backdrop for a collection of vintage greek and turkish rugs that I inherited from a very dear friend of my parents - a bachelor, and an avid traveller and collector, who knew just the person who would value and love such a collection. Surprisingly, the colour that seemed to be in common for all of these rugs was the green on our bedroom wall. So I think it will all eventually be ok - when I trot out the changing exhibition of rugs, you won't see the elephant poo for the beauty it is meant to frame and enhance. Or that's the theory, anyway!
But heck, I'm not exactly sure what happened, but my plans for classic style went out the window within the first day. Maybe its because of the metres of snow all around, and we're all kinda sick of white around here. Perhaps it was a reaction to the fact that the boys, when asked, wanted to paint the different walls in their rooms each a different colour. In order to garner a truce, we decided the boys rooms could have one coloured walls each, and proceeded to choose colours based on complimenting flooring choices (carpets, which haven't yet been installed). Hey, they were the kids' rooms anyway, I wouldn't have to live with banana yellow and powder blue anyhow! (ok, ok, to be fair, they could probably more aptly named "sunflower yellow" and "ocean on an overcast day blue" - whatever). And then suddenly, before I knew it, the coloured feature walls were taking over the third floor... and I was there with a roller, painting MY OWN bedroom wall a colour which can only be described as "elephant-poo green". Jem talked me into it, and although at the time I supported the decision with a "marriage is about compromise" mantra, I'm not entirely sure it was a wise decision. Jem keeps telling me the colour should really be called "pistachio", or "olive". It's a grown-up colour, he comforts me. Hmmmm....
To be fair, though, the colour was chosen as a unifying backdrop for a collection of vintage greek and turkish rugs that I inherited from a very dear friend of my parents - a bachelor, and an avid traveller and collector, who knew just the person who would value and love such a collection. Surprisingly, the colour that seemed to be in common for all of these rugs was the green on our bedroom wall. So I think it will all eventually be ok - when I trot out the changing exhibition of rugs, you won't see the elephant poo for the beauty it is meant to frame and enhance. Or that's the theory, anyway!
The other two rooms turned out great, by the way. Fun and colourful, and the kids seem more than happy with the prospect of living in these two rooms. So far, so good. Only downside is that it took us a whole week to finish up the third floor. Only two more floors to go!
I love Christmas time in Latvia. Here, because of the winter and the whole darkness issue it has so much more meaning to me than it ever had in Australia. For me, Christmas is a whole bustling month of light and brightness, anticipation and tradition, as we await the shortest day of the year and welcome the sun back to our lives.
It starts some time in early December, when yellow sparkly Christmas lights start appearing in shop windows, brightening the walk home in afternoons when night falls before you finish work. Christmas markets begin to be set up in the old town, clusters of little wooden booths selling trinkets and other knick knacks. When you walk past you can smell mulled wine. Often in December there is the first proper snow fall and the fir trees in the park match the other Christmas trees set up around the city.
The kids wake up excited every morning, eager to see what the advent calendar has in store for them. Every supermarket sells an arry of ready-to-bake gingerbread dough, and we bake gingerbread (Latvian piparkūkas) often, the house filling with their spicy aroma. This year we even attempted a gingerbread house, which was moderately successful.
The evenings are full of kindergarten and school Christmas concerts and parties, we also attend our friend's band's traditional Christmas concert where they sing winter solstice songs, well known to everyone.We spend Christmas eve at Kūgures. In the morning we go to the forest and pick a tree - always much harder than it sounds. This year it was no mean feat on account of the snow. We spent some time wading through snow drifts, for the boys up to their waists, and then abandoned the search to Jem. He came back with a fine specimen! The amount of snow at Kūgures was unbelievable, and after my family had "made it in", we basically barricaded ourselves in and spent the next two days celebrating indoors, which was wonderful. Everyone was together, sitting around, examining/playing with their presents, eating good food, playing cards, talking.
Another tradition we have during the winter solstice is our Latvian halloween, or ķekatas, which I described some time ago in this post. We went again this year, mainly for the boys, who love going in to stranger's houses unexpectedly and surprising the inhabitants with our songs and masked tomfoolery. They also loved the bit where you ask for food and can take as many lollies as they like!
All of the month of preparing for and celebrating the winter solstice is rounded off with New Years Eve - which for me is always a slight let down. I mean, I enjoy the parties, but after such a long and intense festive season, I've run out of puff. This year we celebrated at our friends' place at Jurmala and counted down to 2011 with sparklers at the (very snowy and frozen) beach. Revellers up and down the coast let off fire works and we watched a host of glittery explosions by the Baltic sea. 
Hope your own festive season was also filled with excitement, light and love! Here's to an adventurous and wondrous 2011!
Today we went to birthday party for a friend of the boys, who turned eight. An arty and determined soul, he had spent the last few months building knight's helmets and armour out of plywood, so that his guests could launch a huge battle in his backyard on his birthday. Today was the day - and the battle was fierce. Funny thing is, although the temp has been hanging around -7 or so, it didn't feel cold. We must have acclimatized. Or our brains might be frozen.
So we aren't going to be in our new house by Christmas. Things were moving a a cracking pace until most of the gyproc and structual work was finished, then about 10 or 12 of the workmen moved onto other houses, leaving one erstwhile builder to finish the first floor. We have been waiting for the last month for him to finish the "dirty jobs" -sanding plasterboard etc - before we bring in new handymen to finish up the inside work. All we have left is the wooden floors, doors, painting, tiling. You know, all the important stuff! In the meantime we have been interested to see if our woodfire heating system can cope with temperatures of minus fifteen and lots of snow. So far, after the inevitable teething troubles, things seem to be going well. I am finally getting impatient, because we are so near, and yet so far, to moving in. Although we have gradually come to terms with the fact that our old wooden house is now a brand new plasterboard box, we are still trying to incorporate old details where possible. Many rooms have "feature walls" where we have left old wooden or brick walls exposed. Above is a photo taken yesterday when we found a beautiful old wooden door complete with wooden handle discarded by the dumpster behind our house. We managed to load it into the car and take it to the house for installation, a small feat in door and child stacking (can you see Mikus in the photo?).
Here are some photos from the last month of work.
Upstairs bedroom
First floor granny flat
Kitchen with a view to the back yard
Loung room with electrician
3rd floor stairwell
My beloved staircase - discussing the finish
... between drinks. Or writing blog posts, for that matter. I have just been inundated with things in the last month or so - with the stuff of real life, I guess.
Jem has been on two work trips, to various Scandinavian destinations, in which we at home went into lock-down, get-through-until-dad-gets-home mode. Then I had to fly to Muenster, Germany for a work conference (with a classic swap-the-kids routine, where Jem flew back home on one evening and I flew out the morning of the next day). We have been in mourning for my grandmother, who I still can't believe is gone. I've also had some kind of dreadful lurgies and sicknesses in the last month, and have spent two longish periods on the couch with high fevers and no energy for anything. Mikus' kindergarten moved house a couple of weeks ago, a future blog post in itself, which has meant a whole new drop-off, pick-up, public transport routine. Somewhere in the middle of all of this we have managed to celebrate the 18th November, Latvia's independence day, and have started preparing for Christmas. (The picture from above is a highlight from "Staro Riga", an annual light festival that is held in Riga in the days around 18. November).
While all this has been happening to us, nature has been doing its thing as well, bringing in the pre-Christmas freeze and dumping snow all around. The long darkness has begun, and we are hurtling towards the shortest day with conviction! As a catch-up post, here's a couple of pics of the last month. By the way, Jem has been involved in a great website project where you post one photo a day for a whole year. He has kept it up admirably, and is now 25% of the way through, or something. He is using the project as a way to improve his photography and knowledge of our SLR camera, but a great visual diary is also starting to form in his pictures. The address is http://365project.org/jeremysmedes/365.
Next post I will give a visual update of our renovator's delight, which is actually almost finished. Hopes of moving in at Christmas have been dashed, of course, but I fully expect we will be moving in fairly soon nonetheless! Yipee!
There was a good snowfall just before the weekend so we decided to take off to the country for a bit of snow action. The house was bitterly cold, and Jem and I spent most of our energy on the weekend hauling firewood and stoking the fire to try to get the house to heat up, while the boys played outside, blizzard or no blizzard. 
The lake has now frozen over, and the powdery snow on top of slippery new-formed ice made for fabulous snow angels.
Another favourite for the boys - icicle hunting. Knock them down with a broom handle and then you've got popsicles for the rest of the day. Doesn't matter how many times your parents tell you that its probably not good to eat the icicles. 
For the last few years we have made an advent calendar for the boys. It always takes a different shape and has a different way to open the "doors". First year the boys had to rip tissue paper stretched over the ends of cardboard tubes which contained little trinkets or lollies. Last year they had to unpeg and untie small fabric bags from a line strung across the room. This year they have a more classic row of windows. After the first year, and a considerable investment of time and funds, I decided an easier option for the following year would be to buy the small cardboard and chocolates calendars you can buy at the supermarket - but unfortunately I created a monster - the boys exclaimed sadly at this thought, and now the expectation is to have a home-made advent calendar every year. Not that I'm complaining - it's fun for us to buy little bits and bobs to put in the calendar, and to think of different ways of delivering the goods. And the main thing - seeing the excitement and happiness in the boys' faces every morning in December is totally worth it. Spoiled darlings :)
Jem was away in Sweden this year on 18. November so we celebrated with a good friend and her sons (their dad was also away playing in 18 November concerts) making a red-white-red Latvian flag cake with all of our boys. Tasted good, very sweet, and quite crumbly, we ended up holding it together with skewers! Didn't stop us from eating most of it in a night though. Afterwards we raced back to the centre of Rīga to watch the fireworks. 
With my super-cuddly godson - he is so placid and gorgeous that I dreamed all night about giving birth to little baby boys!
The artful flag-cake from above
Ooooh, can I squeeze in another piece??? (fyi... yes, I did. Maybe that's why I had nightmares/vivid dreams that night)
