Santa’s Grotto ++

We have enjoyed a FANTASTICAL day today starting with a nice breakfast and then on a bus at 8:30am heading out to Santa’s Grotto. We had a 9am appointment to meet FC and we were second in the queue. What a fantastic experience for all of us – it was our first time actually meeting the big guy and we thoroughly enjoyed it, even if the younger Rust’s were a little intimidated.

Ε΄e also baked gingerbread cookies with Mrs Claus, made some paper snowflakes, took a snowmobile train out to a tadional Finnish hut where we cooked sausages and marshmallows over the open fire right in the middle of the hut. Daddy managed to burn his left birdy finger on a melted marshmallow – for some reason he did not realise that it would be so hot and sticky πŸ™

We also did lots of sledging, played football with an Elf before heading back to Levi on the bus.

We wandered into the local town for lunch and found a nice pizzeria and enjoyed a cheeky gluhwein along with a tasty super thin pizza. We found the alcohol store where we picked up a few bottles of Minttu for back home and then back to the hotel via a couple of gifts stores.

Then spent an hour or so in the vast swimming pools in the spa which included swimming outdoors (was-20 celcius so daddy’s hair, eye brows and beard actually froze while the boys were outside….),the long slide, several hot tubs and a cold (-8C) plunge pool – all the boys sampled it πŸ™‚

We completed our day with dinner and more sledging – tomorrow wear going to have a relaxed start and head over to the town sledging park (since this seems to be the boys favourite pastime), have a late lunch in town, all befor a horse and sleigh ride out to hopefully see the northern lights πŸ™‚
Finally, the day started out at -23C – cold does not begin to touch how utter it was- however we all had a great day – very much looking forward to trying to have a similarly good day tomorrow πŸ™‚

Lapland baby

It’s been a pretty long day but we arrived in Kittila finally at around 1pm local time (2 hours ahead of UK time). Β The transfer on the bus took all of 20 minutes although the sun had gone down not long after we arrived at the hotel (there is only 4 hours of sunlight during the day here at the moment).

Since then, we have sat through an orientation session, eaten dinner in the restaurant (not bad at all for buffet and included mulled wine πŸ™‚ ), taken a nice walk around the local town of Levi (the kids were pulled along in sledges so they were all set) and finished up with a shower before getting settled for bed.

The town of Levi is stunningly beautiful, especially at night with the twinkling of the lights set against the snowy roads and ski slopes.

Tomorrow we set out early doors to Santa’s workshop to play football with some elves, bake some gingerbread cookies, check out the mail room and see Santa himself πŸ™‚

Daddy is trying to persuade all to have a ski taster session – wish him luck as there appears to be resistance in the force…

Winter Preparations

So it seems that winter rain and winds are here even if the cold isn’t yet.

We have begun building up on our winter vacation and rainy dog walking gear so that we don’t have to run around in a mad panic in the days before we head North πŸ™‚

So far we have base layers, snow pants and jackets for all but mummy and the boys all have snow boots which will also prove useful for dog walking in the winter weather later in the year.

By the end of the day we should also have a bag packed to go in the car for that situation where we get caught short following a walk somewhere.

Mummy has also had her flu shot on Friday evening before the fireworks and dinner at Grandma’s house. We are still not sure why the surgery sent a request for her to have the shot and neither are they it seems but she had it none the less.

We are still seeing daytime temperatures of around 15 Celcius which just seems crazy but we are not complaining.

Finally, the boys are back at school in the morning following their two week half term break and th are definitely ready to go back πŸ™‚