A Finnish mother's day

It started with breakfast in bed (yoghurt, banana and toasted bagels), and was followed by an expedition to Outokumpo to the nature park:

We had a picnic in the sunshine (soup and karjalan piirakka). It was a bit chilly, which is why we still have our winter hats on.

And then we trekked around one of the lakes - which took us across boggy bits, over bridges, up and along steep ridges, and in and out of the trees. We saw butterflies and frogspawn, and heard lots of birds. Here we are at the bottom of a particularly steep bit:

And at the top:

We walked for about two and a half hours, so it was a good job we had the Karelian pies first. There was also a small amount of bribery halfway round with chocolate Easter rabbits which we'll gloss over.

After that, we headed home in the sunshine for a barbecue in our garden. A perfect day...

Sky and birds

We had an expedition to Noljakka today, to the Lintutorni. It was a beautiful spring day, with the clouds scudding across the sky and a ridiculous number of birds shouting in the trees. It's rather strange hearing them all again, as the woods have been so silent all winter.

We walked out along the ski trail, which looked very different as a path (and was much longer than I remembered, we must be much faster on skis!). Once you get to the edge of the nature reserve, there's a boardwalk, which takes you through the boggy parts to the edge of the lake.

The view from the edge of the lake was beautiful - all you could see was this huge expanse of water and sky. From the tower, you could see that the lake was still frozen in places, but ducks were swimming in small pools at the edge.





May 1st, and there's still snow in our back garden (in fact it's still here now, and today's the 5th). It feels quite springlike though (the blue skies help, and leaf buds are starting to appear on the trees).

We've also had three barbecues in the last week, which is probably more than we had in all of last year. So far, sausages, frikadellen and koftas have been on the menu...here's the junior chef in action!