This Christmas & New Years I thought of giving my parents the best gift I could – myself. I hatched a plan, to buy tickets home and surprise them. However I needed to make sure that they wouldn’t be traveling somewhere, otherwise it would be a rather awkward situation. So I ended up collaborating with my dad to make sure that this plan would work and we would surprise mom.

So dad booked us a trip to Seefeld so we can all enjoy the Alps together and learn to ski, one catch: he didn’t tell mom about me coming. For about 5 months we managed to keep her in the dark, but then we ended up cracking. In November, about 4 weeks before my flights, we told mom about our secret plan. She was shocked that we would keep this from here, and that she never noticed the hints that we let slip.

Even though mom wasn’t too pleased with us keeping such a big secret from her, she was overjoyed to see me back home for the holidays and for us all to spend time together in the Alps.

This was the first real time I got to properly ski, and I think I did pretty ok. While I wasn’t brave enough to hit the slopes, I still managed to learn to cross country ski with a decent speed just after a few days of failing and falling. Surprisingly cross country skiing is a lot like ice skating, so I managed to pick it up quite quickly.

The whole time the weather was great, the food was amazing, and of course seeing my parents was a pleasure. After our mini holiday in Seefeld, we spent New Years at home in Riga eating traditional foods, watching our president(s) wish us a great new year and just have a good time together.

You can check out my adventures on my instagam: @jamiejakov (don’t forget to look at my stories).

Otherwise my DSLR photos are available on my Flickr