Is it really three months...

since I last posted on here? I can't believe how quickly time has passed and it is impossible to even think about catching up. The end of the year was so busy at work, so combined with Christmas shopping I seemed to have no free time. But we had our Christmas a week early. Most of my family came down for the weekend; we had our stockings, presents and Christmas dinner on the Sunday and it was all lovely. But it did seem quite strange going up to the shops though as in my head I had really convinced myself it was Christmas and nothing should have been open! Truly I shouldn't have been going shopping BUT Holly decided that she really did want the first jacket she had tried on on the Saturday for her Christmas present from my mum and could we go and buy it for her as she had a footie match? So my mum and I stopped off from prepping the dinner and walked up only to find that it had been sold just that morning.... and it was the only one they had! Mmmn...I'm sure beating your kids really isn't a crime! Apart from that little unnecessary trip the rest of the weekend was great and it was good to catch up with everyone.

Then....we went to Lapland for Christmas itself. What an amazing holiday. I loved it all. And it snowed on Christmas day (the real one :))so a White Christmas! We stayed in a log cabin; it was huge. It could have slept 9 although there was just the three of us. With a log fire and a sauna. It was perfect.

We went for a night skidoo trip the first night; a 90 minute ride through the fells and forests with just our headlights to light the way. Then we spent two days searching for Father Christmas; during which we spent hours sledging (brilliant fun), snowball fights, more skidoos (not nearly so fast as the night trip) reindeer rides, huskie rides, sleigh rides, more sledging, eating, visiting Santa's post office, workshop and finally the great man himself. It could only have been better if I was five! I did ask Santa why he had such a good London accent? He pointedly said that he had been in Lapland for 400 years. Oh well....but then his sleigh must have stopped working because strangely he caught the same flight back to the UK as us! So funny. Actually he and his wife (Mrs Claus) were both lovely and had had a nice three weeks playing Father Christmas. They said they were off to Moscow the following year! Strangely, none of the other families or their children seemed to realise Santa came home with them :)

I will have to sort out my photos which unfortunately were not that good. Even with the ISO set to 1600 and the widest aperture, I still had blurred photos. But these are a few of them....


Meeting a reindeer....


and huskies


I think this was a sunset through the clouds but as we never actually saw the sun it was hard to tell.


Skiing on our free day. Looking down the blue run. There was no way I was stopping on the red run to take photos...well there was no way I was stopping! I swear the slope was vertical.


Roy, Holly and new friends Messina and Emma.


Mina (pronounced Mika) our fabby tour guide. I have only just got the elf song out of my head....

So as you can see we got one days skiing in and then Holly and I went back on our last morning as we had time to get one hours worth of skiing in before we had to catch the bus back to the airport. We managed 7 runs in that hour although I think I counted more bruises than that when I got home. I had forgotten how much ski boots hurt!
The only disappointment with the whole holiday? The weather was reasonably warm 0 to -3 degrees and mostly overcast. Totally the wrong conditions for the Northern Lights. I was so disappointed that we didn't get to see them but I guss it means I just have to go out again. In fact I have checked out a few websites for a long weekend to Luosto.....