Spring is here

Spring is here! Today it was a really warm day. At 7.30 p.m. there still was this much light

and it was this warm!

Father's day

It was father's day here on Saturday. Carlotta had made a nice present for her dad at school and we ate traditional Italian, or maybe just Roman, fathersday cakes, bignè di S. Giuseppe. In the afternoon Daniele had his football match and me and Sofia went horse riding. Carlotta brought her roller skates and played with the riding instructor's daughter.

Photos from Sillian

Skiing holiday

Back from a lovely skiing holiday in Austria together with friends. Snowy days, sunny days, lots of skiing, lots of eating. Our children definitely never got bored. In the morning they went to the ski school, all but Carlotta who didn't want to ski.  It was the first skiing holiday for the other family and their children learnt to ski really fast, which was nice. Their mother had done some skiing when she was younger and both she and her husband took a ski course in the mornings. Daniele's first skiing day started badly because he got the stomach flu, but fortunately it was over the next day and he was able to start his course. Then Carlotta got it, our friends' son, Armando the day before we left and the rest of our family when we got back to Rome. The most unfortunate thing, though, was that their mother hurt her knee in the slopes on the last day and even if it didn't seem so bad at the moment and she even partecipated in the final skiing competition, it then turned out to be a knee injury that most probably requires surgery and quite a long rehabilitation.
We were very satisfied with our hotel. It was a bit far from the slopes, so we used the car to get there. There also was a ski bus that took Carlotta back to the hotel to the mini club where she got lunch and played while we continued skiing. She was very happy with this solution as she didn't want to ski. The hotel was near the Italian border and the ski complex where we went skiing was in Italy. When we came back to the hotel from the ski slopes there was a snack of warm soup and cakes and the children could play in the mini club or go to the swimming pool, which got a bit too crowded, though, for my taste. Outside of the hotel there also was a slope with sledges that you could borrow. The nearest village was Sillian on the Austrian side and San Candido on the Italian side. Lots of walking paths start from the hotel, so it must be a nice place also in summer. The only negative thing was that it's quite far from Rome and when we came back there was so much traffic on the roads that we spent 11 hours in the car.

Carnival period

Now it's the carnival period. We haven't been to any carnival celebrations yet, but on Sunday Carlotta wanted to dress up. The weather was nice so the children played quite a lot out in the garden and then we went to the park.

What else have we been doing here since we came back from Finland? Well, me and Sofia have made the decision to move to another riding school as there had been quite a lot of problems with the organisation in our old one. Problems, I think, that would be absolutely unacceptable in Finland, but here somehow you accept them. It wasn't an easy decision, but we hope it was the right one! At least I'm very happy with the riding instructor and also the horses. Sofia misses her friends in the other riding school, but hopefully she will soon make new ones.
Beside school and work we spend a lot of time with the horses and Daniele playing football and seeing friends during the week-ends. He often sleeps over at his friend's house on Fridays and usually he has his football match on Saturday afternoon when me and Sofia go horse riding. Carlotta takes riding lessons on a small pony Saturday mornings and she likes it a lot.
Januray and February has been much less rainy than last year, which is very nice for our outdoor activities!

Snow days

We are enjoying winter days full of snow here in Finland. Carlotta had a fever at Christmas and then Sofia got it when we just had arrived to Finland. I also had some work to do, but in the end we have been able to do some things, like meet my brother and his family and some friends, go horse riding, go to the shopping centres, go sledding ... Carlotta didn't like to go out when it was too much below zero. She just stood there without doing anything and of course it gets really cold that way, so I had to take her inside. Now it's less cold and she finally has been enjoying the snow, at least a little.

Happy New Year 2011