Snapshots from our Christmas

This year we spent Christmas in Finland. Unfortunately my husband couldn't come because first he didn't get enough days off and when he finally did, it was too late to book the flight. We didn't want to leave my father alone on Christmas, so me and the children went to Finland. We had a nice Christmas, although we missed my mummy a lot. There was no snow in Finland this Christmas, but we decorated the Christmas tree, went to the Christmas sauna, baked Christmas goodies, ate a good Christmas dinner and opened presents.

On Christmas Day we spent a lazy day eating chocolate, we learnt to play a game called Fia, which became our Christmas game and I took a little walk out with Sofia and later also with Daniele. The days are really short here and so dark without snow.

Our Christmas card 2016

I used to be good at sending my own made Christmas cards to people by post, but now it has become more and more difficult. People don't send letters or postcards anymore, so it's not easy to find stamps anymore. Also I'm getting slower and slower to get things ready for Christmas, so this year I decided to share this card only on my Facebook account and to send it by post to Armando's cousins and aunt in America because we always get so nice cards from them.
Going throug my photos of this year I noticed that I had very few nice photos of the whole family. In our everyday life we don't spend so much time together, a part from dinner in the evening and this year Daniele didn't travel with us at all.
This was the Christmas card I managed to do this year. The photo was taken on Carlotta's Confirmation day and I added Icoon to the photo in post processing.

Charming Hamina

Time to look back at some of the things we did in Finland these summer.
There are many nice towns in Finland that live up especially during summer time. One of these is Hamina quite near my father's place. We go there once in a while to have a coffee in one of the nice cafeterias. It's one of the few cities with a circular town plan.
Every second year in the beginning of August the Hamina Tattoo military music festival is held there. It's a very nice event. This year we went there to see the historical gardens in the centre that opened up to the public during the festival. There were concerts, pop up cafés and art exhibitions in the charming gardens.

What we have been up to here in Finland

Now I have been here in Finland over a month and a half and soon it's time to go back to Italy. I'm so glad I have been able to spend this long a time here to help my father and keep a bit of company to him. It has also been good for me to see that life continues also without my mother, although I miss her every day and all the places here bring back memories. Often I find myself wanting to tell her something or ask her something.
One positive thing with all this is that I have seen and talked to my brother and my sister more often than I usually do when I'm here in Finland. I have also seen some relatives I hadn't seen for many years.
I have done lots of things with the girls and my father has done some of the things with us. Of course his daily rhythms are getting a bit slower than ours at the age of almost 91, but he has come with us for example to the swimming pool, to the summer theater and out for lunches.
We have seen many sunsets, been to our friends' summer cottage, to summer theaters and other summer happenings, celebrated Carlotta's birthday, done bicycle tours, gone horse riding, met friends, picked blueberries and baked blue berry pies, just to mention a few things. It hasn't been a warm summer here in Finland, but nice anyway. The Finnish nature is just so beautiful!