We didn't get up until 11am this morning, not because we went to bed late or were partying. You just seem to sleep longer when there isn't much daylight. It is still night dark until about 10am and the light will be completely gone again by 3:30pm. Bearing in mind that during that time there is still dawn and dusk, it leaves very little time for actual daylight hours.

The temperatures were checked before we decided what to do today. It was -25c at cabin and down in the village, at the bottom of the hill, it was -30c. It was -15c on the slopes so collectively we decided against snowboarding, we would wait until it was a bit warmer.

After a filling breakfast of oat porridge and blueberry soup, we made our way over to Markus' house which was just over 4km away. We took a couple of kicksledges to make the trip down the hill quicker. Quicker definitely, but not without heart stopping moments. On one sledge, Katja took the seat with Nena, the dog, on her lap, Maria was steering and David was precariously balancing on the rails at the back. Whether it was the combined weight or the road conditions or a combination of both, we started to pick up speed alarmingly quickly. Then it got the speed wobbles, Joonas thought we'd tip over, but somehow we managed to just make it round the final bend onto the flat section. Our sigh of relief was short lived, we were then heading straight for an oncoming car. The efforts of braking only steered us into a wall of snow at the side of road and we all laughed as hard as our frozen faces would allow.

We left the roads behind for the relative safety of the lake. The lake is frozen solid over winter and solid enough for walkers, cross country skiers and even snow mobiles. The only part of the lake not frozen is a small hole next to the sauna where brave/crazy people will have a dip in the icy water to cool down during their sauna session. Out in the middle of the lake, we had a nice view of the seven fells surrounding the area, the ski centre and the moon that was beginning to rise into the sky.

Markus, Maria's uncle was away on holiday so we were just checking the house was warm enough. We made a fire and while it burned we ate all the nice biscuits in his pantry and washed them down with mugs of hot chocolate.

It was 3pm by the time we started walking back, the sun had gone and it was beginning to get quite dark. The sky becomes a beautiful colour at this time of day, on one side of the sky it is quite light blue whilst on the other it's inky black. It's not often you get to see such a variance in colour in the sky, at the same time.

Back in the cabin, we made homemade pizza for dinner and Ronja arrived just in time. After dinner, as seemed to be becoming the norm, we had more glögi and then we started to make a dent in the 1.5kg bucket of candy that we received at Christmas.