Luosto - day three - BEST DAY EVER!!!!

Us all with a Husky pupply - awww

We had the best day for a VERY long time!!! We had so much fun. After lunch Nikki, Steve, Jacqui & I took turns driving snowmobiles to a Husky Centre, where we all (including Hannah) got to drive a team of Huskies for about 4km - it was SO MUCH FUN (although we now know that when the huskies run they can also relieve themselves of both solid and liquid waste that then freezes and hits you in the face if you are sitting in the sled). It was amazing fun - the huskies REALLY love to run, and get upset when you ask them to stop.

Hannah driving the dogsled team

Jacqui dogsledding

Jacqui with a Husky puppy

Hannah driving the snowmobile

Hannah then had a go driving part of the way back to the hotel on the snowmobile - it seems her perfect temperature is between -12 and -19. Inside the hotel it is 20c and Hannah needs her wheelchair, but outside in the snow she is able to do things we never thought possible (although she can't walk very far).

Jacqui driving the snowmobile

Today we also discovered that Jacqui is not only a really good car driver but really great on the snowmobile (way better than Nikki), and really great at driving the dog sled team :-) Well Done Jacqui.

Nikki driving the snowmobile

Aurora Hunting

WE SAW THE AURORA!!!! It was really looking like it wasn't going to happen, as it's been cloudy and snowing since we arrived in Finland (we were resigned to not seeing it and had decided this was an artic adventure rather than a aurora hunt), but it cleared at about 10pm tonight, and Hannah got Steve up at 1.30am (what a great Dad) to go out into the snow and check it out. He came back saying he thought he could see something - 20 mins later (it takes a while to put on all that snow gear - it is -19c tonight) we walked/sleigh pushed 400m away from the hotel, and THERE IT WAS. It was pretty faint (not bright enough to take photo's), but it is Tiffany's blue/green (much to Hannah's delight). Jacqui then spotted a few brighter aurora's for us to see in a different part of the sky (they only lasted for 3-4 seconds, but were beautiful). It was AMAZING!!!!

we couldn't take a photo of the Aurora because it was too faint (and too cold), so here is a photo from someone else, that kind of looks like what we saw - we wanted to share it with you!!

Hyped up after seeing the Aurora we wanted to see what the temperature was at 3am.

The temperature was -19c (pretty cold!!)

All the events of today & tonight made the trip all this way so worthwhile. We are so incredibly grateful to the lovely people at Make-a-wish - this has been a true adventure and they have been so incredibly lovely and helpful - we could never had done this without their help (there is no way we could have gotten travel insurance for Hannah for a start!!).