I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I have the best in-laws in the world. As some of you may know, my birthday is tomorrow, but with Olof out of town I didn’t have any big plans. This morning my mother-in-law called me and said that she was baking a cake and they would be coming by for fika this afternoon at two o’clock. I said okay and put a little cake of my own in the oven so I’d have something to offer. My mother-in-law called again an hour or so later, and when Lydia told her I was baking a cake, she got on the phone with me and told me that I “wasn’t supposed to bake a cake” then firmly instructed me to do nothing more — she would be bringing a basket with everything we needed, including dishes and cutlery.

So we puttered around the house for the rest of the morning then went to the store to buy diapers and came home to eat lunch. When two o’clock arrived, so did my parents-in-law and one sister-in-law and the other sister-in-law plus family (including brand-new baby Irma) came shortly thereafter. We sat outside on the porch and fika-ed our little hearts out for about three hours. We had a couple of different kinds of sandwiches, coffee for the adults and orange soda for the kids, cinnamon buns, my “official” birthday cake, and the cake I’d made. I also got a couple of gifts, which Lydia is annoyed to no end that I refuse to open until tomorrow morning. I think she’s trying to set a precedent regarding early opening of birthday presents.

I got a call from Olof in Mexico just before everyone got here and we chatted for a few minutes. I gave him the news about his new niece and we talked a little about how his trip had been. He said he had tried to call collect as soon as he checked into his hotel, but the operator had told him that Mexico didn’t have “an agreement” with Sweden and it wasn’t possible for him to make a collect call. Doesn’t that seem a little weird? Anyway, he managed to buy a phone card and call on that, so it wasn’t really a big deal.

Now I’m off to make supper and then settle in for a night with my favorite TV shows.