Home Again

This morning it felt good to be back home in Somero after what was an intense weekend. The round trip up north is more than 1200km, and in two days that's quite a bit of driving. The roads in Finland are good and luckily the weather wasn't bad either but I'm still not planning to go for a drive today.

Luca, Niko and Minttu

One of the nicest things about where we live is that the river which runs through Somero is only about 300m from our house. Our little rowing boat means that over the summer we can go rowing whenever we feel like it. To many Finns this is quite a normal thing to do.

However, having grown up in London, the only experience I had of rowing as a child was on a rented boat on the Serpentine in Hyde Park. That certainly felt very exotic at the time, so now, to be able to walk down to the river and get in our own boat will always feel special.

Today though we had no choice than to pull the boat onto land for the winter. The water level in the river has fallen dramatically recently and it won't be too long before it freezes over. The boat is pretty heavy, but luckily we have plenty of manpower in the family. Of course I delegated the task to the strong ones who had it on dry land in no time....
Now that the clocks have gone back, people will soon start putting lights in their gardens and windows in the run up to Christmas. So this morning we also put our cherry tree full of lights at the front of the house to brighten up the dark evenings. I think most Finns would say that November is their least favourite month. Principally because it's usually dark and wet and the snow hasn't yet arrived. But our hope is to make this a good November. If there's no light in the sky then we just have to be more determined to make some of our own.  :-)