This week has been exceptionally quiet for us. We spent three days at our bro-in-law’s summer cottage which is about 300km from our place for Christmas eve dinner. The Christmas eve dinner was fantastic! We had karjalanpaisti (Karjalan stew), home baked ham - 5kg, mushroom salad, perunalaatiko, porkkanalaatikko, lanttulaatikko and maksalaatikko. All the food were prepared by our bro-in-law - I must agree men make better cooks - ooopppsss no I am not sexist! In the evening, we went to the “kota” (not KOTA in BM) for glögi and enjoyed the freshly baked pulla by my mother-in-law. That evening, we had sauna and ate more food - lots of glögi and olut. Then we opened our gifts. The kids were the gayest!

Lights …

The hut

Strolling and cycling on the lake

Frozen lake

The platform

My boy pushing his lawn mower on a frozen lake

Thin ice - dangerous!

Snow nicely sitting on the pine

My favorite Christmas tree

Santa-for-hire

Santa enthusiasts

Our cook

Salad and cheese

Cranberry sauce, homemade mustard, italian salad and butter cubes

That night, I didn’t sleep too well because we slept at the attic - it’s a guest room btw. Sleeping at the attic means you could hear all kinds of noises like the sound of the wind and tip-tapping of the rain. The soothing sound of the rain is supposed to lull me to sleep, unfortunately not that night Since we had our own balcony, I went out to get some fresh cold breeze while my hubby and son were sleeping tightly. Our room is facing the lake - ahhhhhhh wonderful view! A day before, the lake was frozen and whitish … but it’s back to water again on Christmas day, thanks to the rain!

Overall I enjoyed the quiet week though all the shops were closed for most part of the week. I’m anxiously waiting for next week so I could go and shop for all the discounted stuff at the stores. I should have gone this week already but my boy’s down with a bad flu. It, somehow, hit me two days later. So, you can imagine the miserable wait - I hope there will be interesting stuff left for me to sweep them off the stores!

It took me two days to write this post. It’s raining cats and dogs now. Strong wind is falling all the stuff in the yard. Darn! Gotta go pick them up tomorrow. The weather forecast for tomorrow is going to be rainy and warm (+6). Can you imagine +6 in winter … in FINLAND?! Next week the temperature’s gonna drop again and we shall expect some snow. Hooray for the kids! Boo for me cuz it means I’ll have to start shoveling again … it’s a tough job but it’s all worth it because it slims me down … *giggle* I’ve been gaining quite abit this past one month … so it’s time to workout! Not at the gym, but in the yard! Alright 5% more and my photo upload is done. Will be sharing some pix with you. Some pix are missing because they were taken with my hubby’s camera. Will get them up once I got them on my hdd.

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