When we last spoke, Faith and I had just decided to take our two young children on our first big holiday…
That was a week ago. We’ve now been back in the UK for 24 hours, and I can say with confidence that it was the right decision.
Finland. Have you ever been to Finland? It is literally one of the most beautiful, amazing places I’ve ever seen. I swam in fresh, clean lakes. I walked through forests. I cycled up mountains.
My boys loved every minute of it. Finland is a great place for kids. There are bike paths everywhere and kids ride buses for free as well as any parents pushing pushchairs.
Adlai was reunited with his best friend, and that was a pretty amazing thing to watch. There was a little shyness at the start of their reunion, but after five minutes, they were back to their old ways, playing Lego and chasing each other around the house, shouting “poo pants” and “fart bum”.
One thing that was different from their old days of playing in the UK was the sheer amount of space they had in Finland. Our friends have moved into a beautiful but modest house in a suburb of one of the country’s biggest cities, and their garden is the size of our local park. There’s a trampoline, and a hammock, and a mud kitchen, and a garage, and a variety of swings and slides and various other apparati. We figured out that in my back garden, we could literally fit the one fir tree at the end of their drive, and that’s it.
We miss our friends, but we can see why they moved. And if them living there means that every year, we get to go see one of the most beautiful countries in the world and play outside for a week, well…we’ll take it.
