New Year 2017

Sofia and Daniele hurried back to Rome to spend New Year's Eve with their friends. Me and Carlotta spent it here in Finland and were invited to my brother's home. We had a calm and very nice evening.
We arrived there in the afternoon and had dinner with the whole family. Then Carlotta's cousins went out to their own parties and we started playing games. We played a nice game called Wapi and another one that Carlotta associates with my brother's home, because since she was small we have always played it at their house. It's a Finnish game called Afrikan tähti (The star of Africa). At midnight we went out to watch the fireworks. This year many cities had big fireworks because it's the centenary year of Finland's indipendence. My city, Kotka actually claimed to have Finland's biggest fireworks.

On New Year's Day we went to my friend Alexandra. It was really nice to see her and her family. I started my new year's resolution, which is to exercise more. We went on a long walk with Alexandra's dog, Solo. I really need to get in shape, I got exhausted just walking!
The new year brought colder weather to Finland and on the first day of the year the temperature was below zero, but still there was no snow.

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.