Greetings from Lapland

This past week I've been having a blast with my family, it's holiday time here and we went to Lapland to enjoy the christmas time. Lapland is truly a wonderful place and I wanted to share with you 10 pictures I took there. You will notice there is not much sunshine and the images are blue, that is because the sun does not come up from the horizon for many hours during this time of the year near the arctic circle. It makes the place even more magical to me.

The darkness does also get to your mood though, days seem to never start and then they have already ended. By lunchtime it's dark again. I never understood how people cope up there in those loooong winters! At least the snow makes it white and creates more light. If the skies are clear at night the moon reflects from the snow and it's actually surprisingly light and easy to navigate outside. The air is so crisp and fresh,although it was mostly -5C daily, this doesn't feel too cold when you're appropriately dressed.

Here we are going for a walk, my niece is pulling my daughter behind her in the sleigh. Kids love to play in the snow and never did complain of cold! In fact the adults have to watch that they don't get frost bites because children won't tell you they feel too cold in fear they will have to go back inside!

This is what the locals traditionally wear, a reindeer fur coat and the typical Lapland style hat.

I love to look at all the different kind of shapes small trees take when they get covered with snow. This one is pretty clear to me, but what do you see sitting on the top?

The place we went to also has a ski resort but this time we didn't have much time for skiing.

Icicles on the edge of the cabin roof.

We went for a husky sleigh ride, it was fun and all the kids sat in the sleigh! My daughter was not scared at all even though the dogs were barking really loud. That's my girl!

A snow lantern I built outside the cabin, I put an electrical candle inside to prevent it from melting.

We saw lots of reindeer, these were on a farm and were quite tame but still very shy.

Christmas lights on a log cabin.

And finally, in this picture you will see how tough it is to push baby strollers in the snow, but nevertheless we Finns LOVE to walk outside and we always take the babies with us. They sleep so much better outside in the fresh air!