First snow.

Last night I went to sleep in a gray world but this morning I woke up to a new, brighter one. As I moved my curtains aside I gasped to the view. It's finally here - the first snow. 

I so wish I had been awake and outside when it snowed for the first time. There's just something incredibly special about the feeling of the first snowflake landing on your nose. One of my favorite holiday memories is a certain Christmas Eve. It had been rainy for the whole winter and we still hadn't gotten our first snow. I was bummed because a Christmas without snow just doesn't feel like Christmas for me. Then I opened the curtains and it was snowing. These huge, beautiful snowflakes flew across the sky, landing on the ground and actually staying there. Everything was perfect.

So today we got our first snow this year. It's been 83 years since Finland gained its intependency. In the late 1930's we fought the Winter War. Well, Finland did, I personally obviously didn't. Overall there was no individual heroes, but our soldiers as a unity were heroes. We had 250,000 men on the field, 30 tanks and 130 aircraft, the Soviet Union had 1,500 000 men, somewhat 6,500 tanks and almost 4000 aircraft. Plain to see the superiority, huh.

We lost over 26,000 men, almost 40,000 men were wounded and 1,000 men were wounded. Soviet Union in the other hand... They lost over 226,000 men, 400,000 men went simply missing, almost 265,000 men were wounded, 5,600 men were captured and on top of that fairly over 2,000 tanks were destroyed. We won, and for that I am forever grateful. We're independent, we have our freedom.

For me the independence day got a new twist exactly five years ago when my father got in a car accident and passed on. From that day on Independence day has ment nothing to me, at least nothing else than than the day my daddy died. 

Today I somehow feel at peace. I still miss my dad and love him greatly, but today, with the white snow and everything... it just truly feels like an independence day.

XOXO

Joanna