{maique}

Special holiday edition. We were away from home for 10 days, back for one, and off again.

🎄 Christmas came first, as it usually does. We spent the week with parents, in-laws, cousins, uncles, friends and family. Driving back and forth on the 24th, but mostly staying with the in-laws, and extended family.

💊 Minor disruption with kidney pain. Some pills, and I was almost as good as new a few days later. Thankfully we managed to escape a visit to the ER, always a chaos this time of year.

🍛 Movies. Food. Puzzles. Food. Games. Food. Drawing. Food. Quizzes. Food.

🛒 Visited Santarém, the biggest town close to the in-laws. Bought them lunch. Went to the supermarket. And back home. It’s a medium size city, felt good after a few days in a smaller village. Lunch was pretty cool too, at a very local taberna.

💍 We met our incredible friend Oxana, tinyMovieStar’s godmother, back in the country for a week. She’s getting married, and we celebrated the engagement.

⛸️ Went to Cascais and toured the Christmas Village. Ice skating for the little one. First time. She nailed it, and loved it. Before that we had lunch with my brother-in-law and (very) pregnant wife (due in less than a fortnight). Walked around. There’s a pan-Asian restaurant in the city that we love, and I can’t help myself when Green Curry is on the menu.

🪩 We then decided (movieStar did in fact, but I support her decisions) to stick around, and spend a couple of days in Cascais. A cousin was moving out for NYE, and we squatted at his place. Gated community, pretty pretty comfortable. We had a good time. We called my brother-in-law again, and they spent the final evening of the year with us. Calmly waiting for the time to sleep end of 2024.

🏖️ Woke up the following morning, in 2025 as expected, and went to the beach. Lots of people there too. Soon the tiny one was jumping around in the freezing water.

🛼 She was also missing her friends from school a lot, so we knew it was time to spend two days in the city. Afternoon of games with one friend, and skating with another one the following day.

🏰 And off we went again. To Alcobaça. My father wanted to make this trip for a while, and it took us months to finally get everyone on board. The monastery is awesome (as far as monasteries go), with an incredible pair of tombs at the end of the visit. Pedro and Inês is a very tragic love story we learn about in school growing up, and this is the place where the couple is buried, in the most exquisitely design sarcophagi. Cherry on top? There was an ice skating rink outside, and tinyMovieStar got to have another go. We then had lunch, visited Leiria castle, and drove back home. It was pretty late already, but we still managed to find the courage to keep driving, and ended up at my in-laws. Again. Final day before school starts, and we have to get used to seeing tinyMovieStar a lot less during the day.

🍿 Grinch. Yes. Again. And again. And again. I stopped counting at 15. I’m sure it was on, at least, another dozen times. A man Called Otto. Finally. Great. Mr. Bean’s Holiday. We tried The Little Women, but it was a very lousy fit for the season. This one was ok. Loved the end. Charlie Wilson’s War, Daddy’s Home 2, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. We watched a lot of movies.

📺 The Black Doves. I’m doing this one, movieStar is not. I’m sure I’ll have to rewatch the whole thing soon. Also waiting for new seasons of a couple others: Theran, and SAS Rogue Heroes.

⌚️ Been using the Apple Watch for a couple of days now. Still hate the fact that I have to charge it so often. I will keep at it until I’m fed up again.

📱 Skeets for Bluesky. Not sure if it’s worth the subscription, the official app is rather decent.

🌊 Testing Surf, by Flipboard. Nice. Needs dark mode, or I can’t use it after 5pm. Need more time with it, for sure.

🐌 The other blogs have been updated a lot less often during the holiday season. I expect them to pick up speed in the next few days.