How about a year in Italy?: Norway in November

By late October the kids have settled into school, we have a few nice friends, a routine (stumbling out of bed in the darkness of 6:45 to wake the boys up in time for school and trying to get Shane to have a shower before me so I can lie in for another 5 minutes - I'm absolutely not a morning person)
We have made enquiries at a few local gyms and become 'member's of one of the gyms, so despite no frequenting of said gym, progress in the fitness stakes has been made.

End of October is also when we head off for my much anticipated trip to Norway to visit our friends Cathy and Thormy and their great kids. Shane has been to Norway a couple of times and is excited to see them but I am beside myself, counting down days, emailing Cathy all the time telling her I'm so excited, bordering on annoying.

We pack our things and head out the door with what seems to be the luxury of time before our EasyJet flight. Then we run into traffic on the Milan autostrada and we don't clear it for a long time. Meanwhile I am frantically calling the car parking place begging them to have a van ready to take us to the airport as soon as we get there and trying to navigate with the iPad on my lap and help Shane pick the best lane. Absolutely stressful to the max. I really thought we had enough time! Why do I always find myself saying that whenever we go ANYWHERE?! Thanks to massive good luck, we make the flight and have Thormy there to pick us up at the airport. We then get a ferry over to the other side and drive about 3 hours to get to their home in Arendal in the south of Norway, Arendal is a beautiful little town, typically Norwegian, water, white houses, boats, beautiful blonde people...it's heaven.

Over the next 5 days I manage to master the art of downhill skiing on the Wii, we take the boys ice-skating, we have a picnic which gets abruptly ended by a downpour of hail (ouch), surprise Shane with his birthday present of a boat trip to an abandoned island followed by a lunch of prawns and champagne at the top of an empty lighthouse, and have the best kebabs ever in Oslo!
The only low-light of the trip....a 5am wakeup to get the bus to the airport on time, me getting the pickup point wrong, all of us walking around the streets of Oslo in -4 degrees, followed by an icy taxi trip to the tune of about $250 because that bus was the only bus going to the out of town budget airport....ahhh, memories!!