Day #3.......

KEMI TO.....

SAMPO ICEBREAKER TO.....

OULU

What a FUN day this has been. Started the day off around Kemi. We visited where the chapel is.....current (below) and home where the first branch met for years.

Then we 'found' a cute little boutique downtown that was calling our names! A cute little guy was making this snowman out front of the store......eyes, buttons, mouth, nose and all! We added a bit to help him out.

Then it was off to the harbor where the SAMPO ICEBREAKER was docked!! And there she sat just a waitin for us!!

We, obviously, did a little exploring once on board. After all, isn't that what we do when we go on cruises!! Get the lay of the land!

Except....on this cruise they showed us those places where we don't normally get to go.....like the engine room!! Dad LOVED this part of the 'tour'!! It was sure LOUD down there!

Back up top.......folks, behind us is nothing but SNOW and ICE that you see!!! This is definitely NOT your typical cruise.

Could NOT believe this one.......we stopped out in the middle of the Gulf of Bothnia to pick these people up. They walked from where they left their skimobiles parked and came aboard! Simply amazing.......

AND.....for the BEST PART!!! WE WERE GOING SWIMMING IN THE GULF OF BOTHNIA! YES.....even your mother was going to go swimming.....and I don't swim!!! They helped us get into our warm and cozy wet suits and we were ready. They felt a little weird when we walked around.

I could NOT believe that Dad actually talked me into doing this....I don't swim....what on earth am I doing this for. The boat 'helper guy' was so sweet and patient with me. He helped me 'slid' into the Gulf!! Yipper.....that is ME!!

If you look carefully you can see me just there in the middle. And now the same guy is helping dad slid into the Gulf!!

And there we are together trying to hold hands as we swim!!! And how did we get these pictures you might ask!! Well, that is a good question. You see, they told us to hand our camera off to one of the ships helpers and they would take our pictures for us. And they actually did a pretty good job. It was really a lot of fun. It was hard to maneuver but we did it!

After the refreshing swim, it was back inside to get out of the wet suits.

We decided that we were going to go exploring out on the water....well, snow and ice. It was so incredibly THICK.......one of the ship guys said it was so thick we could build a 3 story building on it and it would not be a problem. I don't think I would want to do that but it was pretty thick!

Here is where it got just a bit interesting.....Dad decided he wanted to walk to the front of the ship and have his picture taken. There was another cruise person out there. He is the one who took dad's picture.....see dad ...... that little spot in front of the ship?

Well, as dad started walking away from the ship he stepped down in the ice and 'found' a crack and his foot went in the water!! SOPPING WET shoe and sick and leg!!

When we got back on the ship we borrowed a blow dryer so he could dry out his sock and shoe a little bit!! What a great cruise......kind of on the expensive side but so glad we did it. We would do it again in a heartbeat!! Highly recommend. And we even got a certificate proving that we DID IT as we were leaving the ship.

From the cruise we drove back down to Oulu where we would spend the night.

We wanted to drive by the church to see where it was before we checked into our hotel. There was activity night tonight. Scouts, Seminary, Ward Correlation and anything else that they could find to do as a ward. That is typical of what they do here........Friday night is activity night! It was fun to talk to people we knew from the temple.

Great day......tomorrow we will drive to Pietarsarri where we will spend 2 nights. We will go to District Conference on Sunday at the Pietarsarri chapel.