Norweigan Wood

We went to visit our Friend Debra and her daughter maya this week in Trondheim, Norway. She is always telling us how much snow she has there but it never meant much to me. Ela sometimes mistakenly called it 'The North Pole' before we went there as that was her association to a lot of snow. When we got there I realised how close that description was. Even though it was the middle of March, they were still deep in snow having had a fresh fall the day before we arrived.

Ela just loved the airplane journey much more so than when we came to England. She had a window seat and squeeled with delight when we took off and landed. I have never much enjoyed the landing part and had hold of her leg (quite tighly it appears). As we touched down, Ela yelled out really loudly 'leg go of my leg mummy' ...oops!

The first morning it was snowing when we got up and Ela was enthralled by it all. There had been a long night of giggling and talking followed by shouting (me) and a middle of the night bed wetting episode. However once togged up for the snow, great fun was had tobogganing to the shops. There was of course bickering over whose turn it was to sit at the front and plenty of pulling on the brakes to make poor Debra's job of pulling them along harder than it ought to have been.

We did lots of activities both in and outdoors to keep the girls occupied. A trip to the playground took on a whole new meaning when dressed like the michelin man (and wanting to go to the toiletonce we arrived!) We watched in amazement as the girls came across a snowman in the park, and proceeded to beat it to a pulp. With a stick and boots, they pushed off it's head and then laughed themselves silly as they trashed the body to the ground. Where on earth have they seen that???

It was a long but very enjoyable week and we can't thank Debra enough for looking after us so well. I'm sure she, like I, will be glad there are no more cries of 'she's not my friend anymore', 'it wasn't my fault', 'that's mine', 'it's my turn' and 'girl' (Ela's favourite whenever she forgot Maya's name!)