"The bestest day ever!"

Mattias and I are coming to realize it doesn't take a whole lot for the boys to proclaim any day, "The bestest day ever!"  Lordags godis, or Saturday Candy is a tradition in Sweden where children forgo all sweets during the week, but get a small amount of candy on Saturday.  It sometimes involves a trip to the candy store (which they have a lot of in Sweden) or a special trip to the grocery store, all of which has a special bulk sweets aisle.  No surprise, every Saturday at our house is proclaimed "The bestest day ever!"

The only day that tops Saturday, is Julafton or Christmas Eve, when Tomte (Santa) comes to deliver presents.  After a wonderful dinner cooked mostly by Kerstin, Mattias descended into the basement, donned the suit and beard, added a pair of aviator sunglasses for added disguise and knocked on the front door.  This was Magnus' first year understanding the whole concept and he seemed to be excited and but not scared.

Again, Linus was not convinced.  After Tomte left, Linus told us he knew it was Pappa dressed up because he noticed a wedding ring, and that meant the guy in the suit was married to me.  Little booger notices everything.  Here are the boys with their stack of presents.

Lille Magnus, taking exactly after Mattias, revels in every gift he opens.  It was game over after he opened his new espresso machine from Lolo/Lola-- every attempt to convince him to open one of the 15+ presents left was met with a quick "Nope." or "No thank you."  Linus was thrilled to get the talking, web slinging Spiderman he requested by letter.

We didn't do many gifts for us grownups this year, figuring it's just more to move back to California in May.  We have everything we need, and watching the kids enjoy themselves is really the greatest gift there is.  Here's a bunch of happy Karlssons.
Christmas morning we finally got Magnus to open up a few more presents, his favorite being a pack of superhero underwear from Lola.  In true superhero style, he put them on top of his pants and gave me his toughest pose.  Linus built a gas station with mini mart from Jonas & Lauren.  We love that it came with a toilet, too.

Our house was littered with boxes and paper, and more small toy parts than we knew what to do with.  However the boys' enthusiasm and excitement, to us, made it "The bestest day ever!"