Santa Park

This morning Dexter crawled into our bed for his morning snuggle and the first words out of his mouth were: "Yesterday was the best day of my life." I melted and squeezed him a bit tighter. Today we decided to walk to Santa Park which was approximately 2.5km away. We could have taken a bus or taxi like most people, but that seemed such a shame when the scenery was so beautiful and the path was direct. We barely saw anyone on the walk except for a few locals walking their dogs etc. I say 'walked' but it was more like walk a few paces, stop, turn around, and wait for Olivia who was either doing snow angels, rolling around or burying herself in the snow, walk a few more paces, join in with a snow angel, shake a tree to make the snow fall on your head and so on. It took us a long time to get there as Olivia is just ridiculous when it comes to snow as she absolutely loves it!
Santa Park comprises of a network of underground caves built into a hillside. Once inside we attended Elf School, Mrs. Gingerbread's bakery,  the Angry Birds activity area (Dexter was in his element throwing and dodging angry birds for real!), the Magic Sleigh ride, the Princess Ice Gallery, the Elf workshop where we all made a face of Santa out of wood, cotton wool and paint (Daddy's was rubbish much to our amusement!). Then we all did some calligraphy writing with a real feather quill and ink pot (which Olivia loved and now wants her own feather quill to write with!). We then posted our calligraphy notes with our hopes and dreams for 2016 into the drum of dreams. We somehow managed to usher the kids past Santa's Office where people were queuing to meet him, without them realising. We didn't want to over-do the Santa thing as they met him yesterday which was magical. Before we left for our trip I was initially concerned that there would be lots of Santas walking around which would have taken a lot of explaining but we managed to avoid this predicament quite well. We also did an under crossing of the Arctic Circle which was quite cool I suppose.
The whole thing was quite pricy for what it was but the kids loved it which was the main thing. For myself and hubby the walk there and back was the most magical. 
One of the things that we've never experienced before is so little daylight in a day. The sun rises at approximately 11am and then sets just after 1pm which is quite unique. The kids didn't seem to notice as they thought it was great playing in the playground in the dark covered in snow, but I imagine if you live there it must get you down after a while.

Back at our village the kids attended a children's club at 5pm where they got to make gingerbread from scratch and then decorate it when it came out of the oven and play loads of cool games. It was perfect as it gave myself and hubby some time to visit the shops to do some sneaky Christmas shopping for their stockings!
After a lovely evening meal we did a bit more sledging. I swear the kids would have stayed outside playing all through the night if we'd let them!