As good as it gets

Our search for winter wonderland

2012-01-04T04:35:00.000-08:00

This fall/ winter has been exceptionally warm in Finland. Warmest for the last 50 years, or something like that. We haven't seen a lot of snow in southern Finland. Just rain, rain, rain and more rain. Enough to cause some floods, even. Some people have liked this "balmy" weather. I, however, have not. For me, the only thing that'll make the darkest season just a little bit more bearable is the snow. Without it it's just horrible. Very short gray days and long black nights. And constant rain. Who could ever like that, is beyond me. I don't like it too cold either. The perfect winter weather for me would be just a couple of degrees below zero (celsius) and enough snow to make it white and enable skiing and sledding. That is in Finland, of course. I liked Sydney winters much better. I don't really need to have the snow if the days are sunny and bright, like they are in Sydney.

The kids have not liked this "warmer" climate either. They've really missed snow a lot. They said that Christmas is ruined if there is no snow. Some people travel south, for the sun, in the mid-winter. We decided to travel north, for the snow. And for Santa Claus. So on Christmas day we packed our bags and got on a night train to take us 840 km north, to Rovaniemi. When we got out of the train in the morning, we were not disappointed. It was -5C and there was snow. The kids climbed the first pile of snow they laid their eyes on at the train station.

It was the 26th of December at 8 am. The 26th is a national holiday in Finland so not many places are open then. However, we were sure there'd still be some place open to get breakfast. We walked around the downtown (which is not very big) but couldn't find anything open. Finally I decided to go ask a taxi driver where is the nearest cafeteria that would be open, they'd be sure to know. He instructed us to go to a petrol station, which wasn't very far from the train station. Dang. We should have maybe done some research beforehand to save us a few steps. Anyway, we got breakkie and decided to head for a local skiing center. We had to take a taxi to get there. We booked some snowboarding lessons for the boys and also did some sledding.

This was our kids very first time to try snowboarding. Teemu and I have never tried it ourselves so we could not be of much help with that. I offered to teach them downhill skiing, but they did not want to ski. They wanted to snowboard. So we better find someone who actually knows something about it.

Going up

And coming down

The kids enjoyed it so much that after their lessons they kept going for 2 more hours. After that it was time to go find something to eat. We asked the staff at the skiing center if there was a bus we could take back downtown: The answer was: "we're at Rovaniemi and it's a national holiday, so no chance". So the taxi was our only option.

We went to a McDonald's restaurant. I should say that Rovaniemi is packed with foreign tourists around this time of year. I knew it was popular, but never realized just how popular it is. I had never thought of Rovaniemi as one of our bilingual cities before. Now I learned that it is bilingual. The other language being English instead of Swedish. We saw some Asian tourists taking their pictures in Mc Donald's. I found this a bit odd at first, since I was pretty sure it wasn't the first McDonald's restaurant they had ever seen, and at first I didn't see what was so special about this one. Then we saw the sign they were taking their picture next to:

I see. So now I've been to the northernmost golden arches too. I wonder if I've also been to the southernmost one. I remember there weren't many golden arches to be found in Tasmania. That might have changed, though.

The next day we headed to Santa Park. Luckily the buses were running then. It was very easy to forget that we were still in Finland in Santa Park. Even the staff would first speak English to you and some of the staff were clearly foreign, although they did speak some Finnish too. I have to admit that I was a tad disappointed with Santa Park. I had imagined it'd be a lot bigger place than what it turned out to be. The kids loved it, though, especially Erno. And we did get to see the Santa. I mean the real Santa.

The things our kids liked the very best about Santa Park was this place with ice sculptures

An this ball

Rovaniemi and Lapland are also famous for their Reindeer and husky rides. Those are pretty pricy, though. However, in downtown we found a guy who would give us a sled ride, pulled by this beautiful horse and that price was more reasonable so we went for it. The kids had the time of their life!

The following day we weren't sure what to do. Our tickets to Santa Park were for two days, but since it was so small, I didn't think it'd hold our interest for another day. So we decided to go and have a look at the Santa Village, which is just a couple of km north of Santa Park.

We found a giang snowman

And a baby reindeer

There was also this place called "Arctice" that was supposed to have all kinds of winter fun too, but we didn't go there, since it was already arctic enough for me (i.e. freezing) and we didn't know if there'd be any place there to keep warm. I suppose it takes a while to acclimatize even though it wasn't really that cold.

By the arctic circle:

So after seeing enough of the Santa Village we headed to the Rovaniemi library to play a board game. Then we dined at an Indian restaurant which was really good! Then it was time to head back to the train station to take a night train back home after hour short visit to the snow.

The trip to the Baltics

2011-07-23T23:59:00.000-07:00

Teemu and I have wanted to make this trip for a very long time. Now we finally did it. We packed everything (or at least anything we could find, we had just moved houses few days earlier) in our car and took the ferry over the Gulf of Finland to Tallinn, Estonia.

Day 1

The thing we love most about Tallinn is their restaurants. Not only do they have a great diversity in the international as well as estonian kitchens but they really make the effort with the decoration as well as the waiters' uniforms to the smallest detail and make it all so...splendid! Of course the food is great too. The best restaurants I've ever been to are definitely in Estonia. Also the prices are a tad lower than in Finland. They had a fairly new restaurant that we were eager to try: the African Kitchen. It was no disappointment. The food was mouth watering. And we enjoyed the little terrace they had on the roof. Getting back to our car we had our very first estonian parking ticket waiting for us.

After that we located a Prisma where we did some shopping. We had forgotten to take our camera with us so we bought a new one. After that we started heading towards Pärnu. This was the first time for us to see Estonia outside of Tallinn. We found a camping place and pitched our tent.

The boys loved the playground they had.

The owner had told us that they might be playing some music later in the evening so we had decided to pitch the tent a bit further away. We thought it might just be some acoustic guitar playing and some singing, no harm with that. Oh well, we were wrong. They played the electric guitar and had microphones so we had no trouble hearing them. The boys slept all through it. I didn't. The music was actually not bad at all and they sang pretty well too. I would have preferred sleeping though. Luckily they didn't play the whole night so I did get some sleep.

Day 2
In the morning we asked them politely if there was gonna be more singing the following night as well. They said they'd have a band playing. We thanked them and decided to move on...and I made a mental note to myself to get some earplugs.

We went to the city of Pärnu to have a look around. I know we should be used to the hilarity of estonian language but it still cracks as up. We can't help it.

Yes, Allah is great, no doubt.

Oh, is that what it was.

No, we did not have the meat testicles in Hesburger no matter how tempting it sounds.

Yes, very mature, I know. Yet funny.

There was an italian restaurant Steffani that was very highly spoken of so we decided to go check it out.

It was lovely. See what I mean about estonian restaurants being very pleasant? They even provide blankets for you in case it gets chilly.

Erno said it was the best lasagna he's ever had.

The next camping ground was by the sea and next to the Adventure Park we were planning to go to the next day.

The boys had a swim and I enjoyed the sun at the beach. We had a finnish family camping next to us and they were on their way home from Lithuania, where we were heading so we had a chat with them and got some recommendations as well. The night was quite stormy. I slept really well, thanks to my earplugs, but our "neighbours" told us in the morning that it was really hammering in the night.

Day 3
The morning was a bit cloudy and windy with the chance of rain so we thought the Adventure Park might not be such a good idea after all.

Packing the tent:

Yes, there was somewhat a nice little breeze in the air...

So we decided to try the water park they had in Pärnu that was all indoors. It was quite small and their slides weren't very fast but otherwise it was fine. And the boys enjoyed themselves. When we got out of the water park the sky was clear and the sun was shining so we thought we'd go to the Adventure Park as well, after having a quick lunch in Hesburger. We decided to camp at the same camping place as the night before because it had been nice and quiet and cheap. It was only 6 euros a night. We pitched the tent and headed to the Adventure Park.

It was awesome. They had five different trails where they had built different kinds of "paths" between the trees where you'd be trying to get through them wearing a harness. Erno was able to take the first three trails, but was too small for the last two.

My littl..ahem...BIG monkey:

Focus...

After we all finnished the first three trails Erno went for the second round with Teemu and me and Adiel continued on for number four. It was quite tricky one and much higher than the third one.

At one point Adiel was too afraid to move any further or go back so he just stayed at one of the resting places hugging the tree with tears in his eyes. I saw someone who might be staff so I shouted them that we need help. Pretty soon a guy came up carrying a rope with him and took Adiel down with the rope. I continued the trail and made it. I have to say that I am afraid of hights and this was quite challenging to me, and yet I just had to do it anyway.

After finishing the trail number four I watched Teemu finish it too. By that time he had caught us up. We then moved on to trail five. It was reeally high! I was hesitating a lot, but Teemu went on. I saw there was a shortcut so I wouldn't have to do the whole trail if I didn't want to. There was just one obsticle that I didn't think I'd manage. It was the monkey bars. I've tried those in parks before and never have been able to do it. I didn't think I'd be able to do it this time either, since I didn't think my arms were strong enough especially now that I was already tired after all the climbing and balancing. Teemu said the harness was not taking any of the weight, you'd have to take it all on your arms. I decided to try it anyway. So I did and I made it! I was sure I'd fall, but I suppose having nothing but 10 meters of air below gives you motivation. And the looooong ride down on a monkey rail after that was very rewarding. The rails were the best part of it all!

You won't believe how high up the last trail really was!! These pictures don't show it to the real extent. See the two little dots down there? That's Adiel and Erno watching me hold my breath.

If you're living in (southern) Finland or anywhere else close to Estonia I definitely recommend the Valgerand Adventure Park. You could do it as a weekend trip since Pärnu is less than 200 km away from Tallinn and the road is pretty good. You will not be disappointed!

After a fun and adrenalin filled afternoon we headed back to the city to get dinner. This time we chose a little austrian style restaurant, Edelweis. Our dinner there cost only 2 euros more than our lunch in Hesburger and was substantially better in everyway. Not to mention the cosy surroundings.

After the dinner we came back to the camping place to find this:

Someone had pithed their "tent" or whatever it was very, very close to ours. Way too close. They were also playing music, shooting fireworks etc. (I failed to see the point with the fireworks since it wasn't dark enough to see them anyway). We didn't say anything at that point. We should have. Had we known what they were up to we would've left the place and asked for a refund of our 6 euros. We thought they'd stop and go to sleep eventually. This time the boys were having trouble getting sleep. It was too loud and too close. Teemu went and talked to them, but it was no good. They said they had booked their "party" a long time ago.

Eventually Erno did fall asleep, but Adiel and I didn't. After 1 am I'd had it. The earplugs were of no help. I went and yelled at them. When I'm deprived of my sleep I am not a charming person at all (if ever, but much less so in this incident). They didn't really care, though, and said they'd be going on all night. I tried to find the phone number to the manager, but didn't find it. I even called the police, but they were too busy or too uninterested. Probably both. Finally Adiel and I decided to try and sleep in the car since it wasn't quite as loud there. Adiel was able to sleep a little in the car. I wasn't. I was up all night reading. There was a really beautiful moonlight too, but I would have preferred sleeping to watching the moon. Live and learn, eh? Live and learn. Obviously the estonians don't go to camping places to sleep. They go there to have a party.

Day 4
I was not in a very good mood in the morning. We packed our stuff and only then did I notice something I hadn't seen before. I saw where our noisy neighbours were getting their electricity from. They were still going same as before at 8 am and hadn't stopped all night. They had a long cord going to one of the electric supplies the caravans usually use. After we had packed everything I decided to have my little revenge and went and unplugged them. I wish I had seen it at night, so I could have done it then, when it could have been of more use to us, but it did give me a small consolation, though.

We continued driving to Riga, Latvia. Of all the capitals I've ever been to I'd have to say that Riga has, by far, the best architecture. This is where I wished we had our good camera with us, since our little camera just would not do justice to the amazing buildings they had. Not only was their art nouveau amazing, they had some pretty cool modern architecture as well. The World Heritage status is definitely well earned.

The latvians have a love affair with potatoes and sour cream. No complaints there. We had a nice dinner in the downtown of Riga. Their potato pancakes definitely went down well. Adiel had a tasty pizza, which probably had sour cream in it. Worked! The only nuisance came in the form of wasps since we were dining out in the terrace. After our terrible night we were in need of some luxury so we checked in the Radisson Blu hotel for the next night. They had a really nice family room and Teemu even got some work done, since they had wireless internet connection. I don't know why it is that he always seems to get work when we are on our family holidays. Well luckily it didn't take too much time now. The boys were happy watching the Yogi Bear and I was happy taking a nap.

Day 5

We managed to locate LDS church in Riga. They had latvian and russian meetings and since we don't know latvian any better than russian we decided to go to russian meetings in the afternoon. Luckily they had english translation. We even met a guy who had been on mission in Finland. After the sacrament meeting we continued our journey to Lithuania and arrived in Klaipeda later that evening.

We found a camping place and politely asked them if lithuanians were in a habit of throwing parties at camping areas. They said that there was a train passing near-by that would cause some noise two or three times during the night but other than that it should be quiet. Trains I don't mind, so we stayed. My earplugs worked fine again and the trains did not bother my sleep. Teemu said they did wake him up, though.

Day 6

In the morning we got up, had breakfast and headed to the ferry that would take us to The Curonian Spit. This is why the trip was made in the first place. This is what we came to see. We had noticed that not many people spoke english in Lithuania. If someone had asked me before our trip to make a list of all the countries where german was spoken, I doubt that Lithuania would have made the list. However, some people seemed to know german quite well. So I was able to make some good of the german lessons I'd had in school. We looked around at first for a bit and then rented bicycles. It's funny that I could not remember the word for bicycle in german even though I studied german for five years. On the other hand I do know the word for a bicycle in italian and yet I've never studied italian.

We were in luck and were able to rent the bicycles in english. We had planned to bike along the Curonian Spit to have a better look at it. It was beatiful! Right after we had payed for the bikes the weather changed very rapidly and it started pouring rain. Not very promising. We went to our car to wait for the rain to stop and get some dry clothes. We didn't have to wait long and the journey continued. Along the way there were some great dunes. I just loved this view. The sky, the sea, the shrubbery and the sand. Perfect. Although I'm not much of an artist, I felt like I wanted to paint it.

Well, the whole Curonian Spit is practically just one big sand dune, but sometimes it was hard to believe. In the evening we found an inn in the village of Preila. We had some dinner and they even had a room available so we stayed there for the night.

Day 7

In the morning we started heading back, but stopped in the nearby village of Pervalka for breakfast first. They had some very yummy pancakes.

This is also where Adiel fell in love with 7Up. He thought it was much better than Sprite. So we decided to stock pile on 7Up before leaving Lithuania, because they don't sell 7Up that much in Finland for some reason.

How cool would it be to live in a place like this? In houses like these?

The Pervalka village:

On our way we even saw a caterpillar being attacked by ants. I tried to help the caterpillar, but I think the ants still managed to get him for dinner.

This day was hot and sunny so we decided to stop at the beach and go swimming. The boys enjoyed the waves. They were not quite as big as the ones in Sydney, but still something you'll never see in Finland.

After the beach we pedaled back to the Juodkrante village and returned the bicycles. We then drove to the village of Smiltyne where the Lithuanian Sea museum was. We were not sure what the museum would be like, but Erno was very eager to visit it. It turned out to be really good one. They had aquariums and even seals and sea lions. They also had a show with californian sea lions.

This little fellow was not part of the show and did not seem to have a clue of what was going on.

These were so adorable!

This one was just HUGE!

After the sea museum we took the ferry back to Klaipeda and ate in a really nice local restaurant. The lithuanians seem to share their latvian neighbours' love for potatos and sour cream. The menu had a whole section for potato dishes. The finnish family we had met earlier in Pärnu had recommended for us to try the deep fried potato dumplings filled with minced meat. We did and it was tasty. They had four different sauces to go with it. All included sour cream.

We spent the night at the same camping place close to the train track as before.

Day 8

Having breakfast

The day was cloudy and rainy. The perfect weather for a long(ish) drive back to Estonia. At least we hoped to get back to Estonia on that day. Somewhere around Latvia we heard the car making a sound that sounded like a flat tire. We stopped the car and checked the tires. They were all fine. Or so we thought. We continued and there it was again. We stopped again and tried to see what was making the sound. We couldn't figure it out.

We saw a petrol station close and drove there so we could further inspect the situation. There were two truck drivers and we asked them to help. Together with them we found out that one of the back tires was very wiggly. The way it should not be. The truck drivers said they had to go back to work and left us wondering how we'd get a tow truck. The lady at the petrol station did not speak any english. Teemu drew her a picture of a tow truck and she gave us a phone number. That was all the assist she was gonna give us. I called the number and asked if they spoke english. Clearly they didn't, since they hung up. I saw a car come to the petrol station and two young men came out. I asked them if they spoke english and they did! I asked them if they'd kindly call the number and get a tow truck for us. They did and after a twenty minutes or so, a tow truck came.

He drove us to a garage in Saldus. There was a guy who spoke very little english and very good german. After the job was done we faced another minor problem. They'd not accept credit cards and we did not have enough cash in any currency. However, we were finally able to pay them in three different currencies. That way we were able to get rid of our last litas that we still had.

By the time we were able to continue the journey it was clear that we would not make it to Estonia that night. So another night in the Radisson Blu in Riga it was. Just not the same Radisson Blu than last time, but it was still a good hotel. For dinner we just got some kebab. It was too late to get anything that would take too long. Mc Donald's restaurants are refreshingly few in Latvia and Lithuania so Teemu and I were saved from eating there almost the entire trip.

Day 9

After breakfast we continued the journey on towards Tallinn. As much I would've loved to stay in Riga and admire the buildings a bit longer I knew it was best to move on. It was a very hot day so we made a short stop for swimming close to the border on the estonian side. The break was cut very short by the nasty horseflies that bit me even through my swimsuit! Now how is that possible?!

We reached Tallinn and were eager to try another one of their great restaurants. We tried the Maharaja, an indian place. We were a tad disappointed with it, since the food was okay, but not the best indian food I've ever had. Adiel didn't like it at all and Erno didn't finish his either. It was also very pricy so not very good value for the money. Well, I suppose I had to find a restaurant that I didn't like in Estonia sooner or later. We stayed in a very cheap hostel in Maardu, close to Tallinn. Only 26 euros. The hostel was surprisingly good and clean and even quiet.

Day 10

In the morning I had a fish pedicure that I'd longed to have ever since I heard of such a thing. It was an interesting experience. Especially in the beginning when the fish fiercly attacked my foot as soon as it touched the water so I quickly pulled it out. I recovered from the shock soon enough and did put both of my feet in the water. The fishes nibbling my foot were quite ticklish, but I did get used to it after few minutes.

After the pedicure Teemu and the kids came to pick me up with some lunch from the maccas (so we were not spared from it entirely) and it was time to get to the ferry that would take us back to Helsinki.

At home there was a pleasant surprise for me in the form of George R.R. Martins latest book and even for the kids in the form of two issues of Donald Duck.

Im Memoriam

2011-06-01T09:35:00.000-07:00

Kerttu-mummi.

She died this morning. My mother called me pretty soon after it. I was at work. All this day I've had to put the thought of it aside. I've held back the tears. Not now. Later. Now that I'm writing this, I'll let them come.

Two years ago she had a stroke. You can read about it hear She did not speak after that. However, she did hear and understood everything we said to her so she was still her sweet self that she had always been.

I can't even begin to describe how awesome this lady was. Her gardening skills were increadible and she had the most beatiful garden. Always. Growing up I spent hours and hours playing in her garden. She was also the best cook in the world. I know everyone says that of their grandmas but when it comes to her cooking, it's no exaggeration. I wish I had spent more time with her in the kitchen so maybe she would have passed on some of her secrets. Her house was also always very neat. Always. And yet I can't remember seeing her ever cleaning. Maybe she had a house that cleaned itself.

At family dinners I don't remember seeing her eat much herself. She made sure everyone else were fed and satisfied. She loved dolls and she had lots of dolls from many countries in her house that she had bought for suvenirs when she travelled. She always gave me my favourite Christmas presents. The happiest memories from my childhood are spending Christmases in her house. She always made them very special. How I've missed those Christmases!

I have been truly blessed to have her in my life and I will miss her dearly.

Mother's Day

2011-05-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

I woke up with kids and Teemu singing for me and bringing me cards/presents. They had cooked breakfast for me. Hash browns upon my request. After that we played "ticket to ride" with Teemu and Adiel.

There's a tradition in Finland to visit the graves on Christmas Eve. We've made it a tradition in our family to also visit the boys' grandmother's grave on Mother's Day

There's also a Mother's Day tradition in Finland created by the nature. It's called Valkovuokko in finnish. Anemone nemorosa in latin. Not sure what it is in English. They always, always bloom on Mother's Day so a lot of children pick up valkovuokkos for their mothers on Mother's Day. It's one of my favourite flowers.

This year I put some on my hair

Unfortunately they wither very fast, so in the end of the day, they didn't look very nice.

At church the brethren all (and I really mean ALL of them) sang "Home Can Be a Heaven on Earth". It was great. I thought it was fantastic that they got everyone to get up and sing. Loved it!

I also had a great conversation over the phone with my mum. The weather has been amazing and warm all day.

I don't know how my day could have been any better!

Life is great!

Lunch

2011-05-04T03:44:00.000-07:00

Erno cooked lunch for me and him today. All by himself, using his secret recipe. I think the recipe was secret even for him and he discovered it as he went. He did it almost all by himself. All I did to help was boil the eggs.

Mum, did you know...

2011-05-04T00:12:00.000-07:00

..That Rovaniemi wasn't a city until 1960?
...That Nokia became a city in 1977 so it's as old as you are, mum?
...That Turku is the oldest city in Finland and that Porvoo is the second oldest? (Yes, that I did know, honey.)

There are many days when I think I'm not smarter than a 3rd grader.

Newest Leppänen

2011-05-03T23:49:00.000-07:00

Adiel and I went to see the day old baby yesterday. Erno stayed in the car. He didn't want to see his new baby cousin, because "babies are boring", said he. Adiel, however was very infatuated by the little one.

CONGRATULATIONS!

For SALE!

2011-03-15T23:57:00.001-07:00

Yes, we have decided to sell our apartment. To move where, one might ask. Good question. We're not sure yet. We've been househunting for a while now and it's a bit frustrating. The perfect home just isn't out there. At least not within our means. It's so hard to go through all the pros and cons and decide which things matter more than the others.

Yes, even moving abroad again has been discussed. Talk about pros and cons there! It's such a big decision to make. We really do miss Australia a lot and if was just us and not the kids we probably would not even think twice about moving back there. However, the kids are so settled here now. They have a good school and their friends etc and one does have to think about wheather taking them away from their friends and relatives would be fair. I wouldn't worry about Erno that much. I think he'll be fine no matter where he is. Adiel on the other hand is another story. He's quite shy and doesn't always express himself very well. He's also somewhat of a perfectionist and he would find it very difficult at first if he couldn't manage in shcool with his English as well as the other kids.

I'm sure that whatever problems there might be at first they would overcome them sooner or later. Also all the things going on in Japan, New Zealand and Australia lately kinda makes you wonder too. So far Finland is kinda safe place to live in many ways although the lack of sunshine somewhat increases the chances of mental health problems. So we're in bit of a limbo here. Whatever you decide, will you live to regret it? Or is it really not that big of a deal?

Oh well, I suppose we haven't really considered moving abroad too seriously since there hasn't really been much of job searching done in that field. Of course, I can always work where ever, but Teemu's job hunting might be more challenging. We do, however want to go back to Oz sometime and since it's so far away it couldn't be a short trip. And I would have to quit my job to get more than 4 weeks off in a row.

Thoughts/comments on this, anyone?

All chessed out

2011-02-05T01:37:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday Adiel attended his very first chess tournament. He's been going to a chess club in his school this school year. He's still very excited about the game. And I'm still so clueless when it comes to chess. I've actually started to make an effort to learn the rules, but they are so complicated!

Anyway, I went with him to this tournament, simply out of curiosity. I've never been to one before, suprise, suprise. It was great to see so many kids focusing so intensily for 6 games of chess. Adiel won 3/6. Not bad for a first timer. This morning I found him solving chess problems. He also wants to go to a chess camp on his winter break from school and he wants to attend the finnish champion games.

What I like about that game is that luck has nothing whatsoever to do with it. It's all about strategy and cleverness. And also that it doesn't matter how old or big your opponent is. You can still kick his butt. In that tournament there were kids who were better than some grown-ups who have also been playing for years.

After spending the intire day at the tournament I asked Adiel if he'd had enough of chess for one day and he said "No". What a strange kid.

The things we do for love...

2011-01-08T01:52:00.001-08:00

We spent last night in Takalan laavu and this is what it looks like:

Picture from patikka.net

Add a foot or two snow and you get what it looks like now. Also add -5C temperature. Why would you sleep in "laavu" in the middle of the winter, one might ask. Yes, why indeed? I'll tell you why.

It all begins with Erno and Adiel building a snow cave close to near-by ice-skating rink. Erno kept telling us that he wants to spend a night in that snow-cave because his cousins have done it in their snow cave. However, we were quite reluctant letting him sleep in a cave which is not located at our own yard like his cousins' snow cave is. Also snow caves freak me out a bit. I'm always worried that it'll collapse while I'm inside.

So, Erno realised he will not be sleeping in the snow cave. However he kept on insisting that he wants to sleep outside in winter. I thought Teemu might take him one night, but then I thought that why not join them. After all, I've never slept outside in the winter either so why not try it and see what it's like. It was cold. But other than that it was OK. Although walking in deep snow part wasn't my favourite thing either. We even got lost a lttle on our way there since it was really dark. We had headlamps but it was still really dark. We got up a really big hill only to discover that it was the wrong hill.

We managed to find the place anyway and cooked some makkara (sausages) by the fire. We kept the fire on the wholw night but it didn't do much keeping me warm. I had my socks and my woolly socks on and my toes were still freezing. I wrapped my toes around my woolly cardigan and they were okay for a while but in the morning they were freezing again. Thank heaven for my norwegian sweater, though. It was a lifesaver! I probably would have died of hypothermia without it. The boys were snoring as soon as they laid down and Teemu quickly followed, but I didn't get much sleep. I loved the food we had, though. In the morning Teemu made some pancakes for breakfast and they were delicious.

If I'm ever gonna do this again, I'll definitely need a sleeping bag stuffed with feathers. The kids' sleeping bags weren't any better than mine but they say they didn't freeze. Boys!

New Title

2011-01-06T01:07:00.000-08:00

When I started this blog I had to come up with some title. I just picked up something random that came to mind I thought I'd change it later since it wasn't a very good one. Now three years later I finally come up with something else. I know, I'm not very good at titles.

The most wonderful season of all

2010-12-20T04:29:00.000-08:00

and yet all my friends' blogs seem to be about how busy and worn out they are. Isn't this the season to be jolly, falalala lala la? I've been busy and worn out myself too, but I still love this fifth season! With all the hassle too! The preparations is an important and fun part of it all! And then when the big day comes you can just relax and put the hassle behind you and just have a great time!

During this season we also tend to always have things on our to-do list that just won't get done. With me it was the Christmas cards this year. We had a FHE activity where we made Christmas cards. I thought maybe that way I wouldn't have to do most of them by myself. Oh well, little did I know. I got two cards done and then mostly I was just trying to minimize the damage the kids were doing with the scissors and glue and stuff. Teemu didn't make any cards...wait a minute...come to think of it...what exactly was he doing the whole time?? So the kids gave all the cards they made to their friends and three lucky people got a Christmas card from us. Sure, I could have just gone to the store and buy some and I almost did just that, but then I remembered the Christmas letter I had been planning to write for many years now. That finally did get done. So family and friends got Christmas letters instead of cards this year. I wrote that letter in finnish though, so I couldn't send it to my foreign friends and I did not have the time and energy to translate it. Wanna know what it said? Well, you can just read all my blog posts from this year and that was pretty much it :D I wish I could be a better friend and do more for my friends far and near.

This winter in Finland has been exceptionally snowy. We're about to break the previous snow record from 1915 and by judging from the day it has probably been broken since yesterday they said that we were only 5 cm short of that record at it's just kept on snowing today so the record will be broken if hasn't already. So we'll definitely have white Christmas this year.

We went on a skiing trip on Saturday and I though Erno would ski for maybe half a kilometre and then be done but no! He was so thrilled and completed 3 km track! And he was a lot faster than I expected. He was even such a good sport and got up the uphills by himself (with just little help from Teemu). And of course he loves the downhills!

I haven't been taking that many pictures lately, but here's a few

The Young Women's presentation at the ward Christmas party.

Adiel at the same party in Primary's presentation of Nativity. He is so uncomfortable wearing his costume. He's not as keen on costumes as Erno. He's in the back row.

And then a close up to make is embarrasment complete:

Erno at his kindergarten's Christmas party. He's in the back row in checked shirt wearing a big star on his forehead.

And finally,

The reason for the season:

This was my Christmas card to you, so

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

I've been a bit under the weather lately

2010-10-27T11:04:00.000-07:00

quite literally, actually. The dark season of Finland has really been exceptionally hard for me to bear this year. I'm not sure why. But now I wanna share some of the brighter things that's been going on in our family.

In the late September I had some annual leave and I took the kids from school and pre-school for couple of days to travel to Oulu (about 600km from where we live, not a long distance in Australia, but a very long distance in Finland). I still have
quite a few relatives that live there and my grandma haven't been too well, so I wanted to see her too

On our way we stopped in the beautiful city of Jyväskylä to spend some time with a family who lives there on a farm. The boys were so thrilled about that. Adiel was very excited to feed the cattle.

Erno on the other hand loved this cat who would stay on his lap a long time.

The boys also loved this St Bernard who was almost as big as them.

There were also kittens and no, we did not bring one of them home with us.

This horse was ignoring me at first but suddenly tried to get very friendly with me.

After we left the farm I had a makeover done by a friend. I think she did a great job!

So from Jyväskylä we drove on to Oulu where we met some relatives and had a good time.

I saw both of my grandmas.

One of them doesn't remember me anymore but I'm sure she enjoyed our visit anyway. And I'll still have all the good memories of her with me forever. I'd like to share one of them. It was when me and my older sister were quite young, under school age, and we had a terrible nanny looking after us and we just hated her. So we decided to run away from her. We took our doll and a doll carriage with us and went outside. We lived about a 1 km from our grandmas house and started heading there. I remember a passer by stopped us and asked where we were heading. We replied: to grandma's house! And so we did. She welcomed us, as she always did, and we never had anyone else babysitting us again :)

This grandma remembers us and is always happy to see us and I'm sure she'd had a lot of things to say but unfortunately she can't talk. So we talk to her and she enjoys it. I can't imagine what it would be like not being able to express yourself to your loved ones. However, I've been so blessed to be able to spend my childhood and youth surrounded with such great grandparents. Not everybody has that. I only wish my kids could have known these awesome ladies when they were younger.

I also had my butt kicked in weight lifting by my 85 yo grandpa. He rocks!

Last week we celebrated Adiel's 9th birthday. It's hard to believe that my journey to motherhood has taken that long already. What a great journey it's been thus far.He liked the nintendo party he had last year so he wanted to have that again. This year we borrowed a data projector from a friend so the kids were able play on really big screen. They loved it!

Adiel also wanted to have another Super Mario bros cake for his birthday. This year it looked better but tasted worse than last year.

One more thing before I call it a day:

It was only matter of time before he got to the next level of nerdism:

Can you figure out what it is? More points if you can also figure what will be the next level ;)

My Kids

2010-07-20T17:27:00.000-07:00

What would I do without them? They bring so much joy into my life by just existing. They also crack me up all the time :)

A conversations last sunday with Erno:

S: Erno, hurry, get dressed!
E: I can't find my clothes
S: They're on your bed like I told you!
E: I didn't hear you say anything.
S: That's because you didn't listen. You should listen to me!
E: No, I only listen to the Holy Ghost.

One of the things I like about babies is

2010-06-01T05:56:00.001-07:00

this:

I love carrying babies in the sling. I'll probably never be able to sell my slings. Hopefully I'll be carrying my grandkids in them too! Oh and the baby in the pic isn't mine. He's my brother...I mean my nephew. It's easy to get confused, since he looks EXACTLY like my brother did in that age.

12th anniversary coming up

2010-05-14T06:03:00.000-07:00

I know I'm early. It's actually not our anniversary for another couple of weeks. A friends blog post inspired a lot of thoughts about it and I decided to come and post it at once before I forget it. I was actually gonna copy&paste it from her comment page, but then I messed it up and the comment disappeared before I even posted it.

Another friend posted a status update on her FB profile a few days ago about how life really does get better when you get older and isn't over at 23 like you once thought :) Yes, it brought a smile on my face, but also got me thinking that my life had barely begun at 23 and did I even have a life before Teemu? Now, of course I did and I don't want to offend anyone who was already in my life back then. I wasn't miserable before or anything like that, I just wasn't yet aware what would come down my way and how truly amazing and wonderful my life would soon get. It's like before him it was the prelude music of my life and getting married and having my kids has added so many nuances and turned my life into a beautiful symphony. It's even hard to think back at your life before Teemu. I was thinking the other day how I don't even remember how the other guys kissed before and how it felt. It feels like I've been kissing and loving Teemu forever.

So is this what it's come down to? Only couple of years ago I thought: "10 years, wow, that was quick" and now it feels like I've been married forever. After only 12 years. How amazing years they've been so far and I have a feeling that it's only gonna get better. I used to feel a bit sorry that I didn't get to do more before I got married. That I didn't travel and see the world more etc and now I don't feel sorry about it at all. I'd so much rather see the world with Teemu by my side. Seeing it with him just makes it so much more worth seeing.

I'm not gonna even apologize for getting all so gooey and sentimental. There's nothing to apologize about how I feel about my marriage. It's awesome! And like one of the finnish songs say it: I wouldn't change a day!

The great outdoors

2010-04-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

ATTENTIOOON!

All set and ready for the canoing trip with the young men. We had so much snow during the winter and now it's almost gone and the rivers are flooding so it's the perfect time for canoing.

Paddling on a golf course and on a football (soccer) field is so amusing!

So a canoing trip, hot bath at home and a supper makes out for a very tired boy! No trouble putting him to bed that night!

HE DID IT!!

2010-04-07T01:59:00.000-07:00

My darling Teemu finally did it! He finished his master's thesis and he's really gonna graduate!

I'm so proud of him! I love you, Teemu! mwah!
That means, I have a party to plan!

Räkäretki 2010 - Winter outdoor adventure with Young Men

2010-03-14T00:03:00.000-08:00

On early Janurary 2010 Teemu had a wacky outdoor adventure with Young Men. Plenty of snow, lot of jumping off the cliffs, little skiing and also jumping in to icy water. Luckily we had a sauna. I have been organizing these trips with my brother since 2006 and this was fourth event.

Click on the video to watch it larger. It is available also as High Defination.

It's about time

2010-03-05T04:53:00.000-08:00

I update my blog! I've been neglecting it lately. I realised that my last post was about our white Christmas. Well, it didn't end there. The snowing, that is. No, we got more snow. And more. And even more. And just a little bit more...until nearly everyone were wishing that it would stop! I personally prefer snow for rain in the finnish winter so I didn't mind, but then again, I live in a unit so I won't have to shovel it.

Well, the downside to all the snowing was that the public transportation was in chaos. The trains weren't running and the buses were always late and that was driving me mad. In fact so mad, that we finally decided to go for car shopping.

It's a Ford Focus 1999.

Apart from the public transportation giving us headaches, whe've enjoyed this winter very much. Have a look:

For winter holiday this year we went to my dad's place. He lives about 150 km away from us. Actually it was just me and the kids traveling there. Teemu stayed home to work on his thesis. It turns out that my dad had bought a rottweiler puppy and the kids were over excited!

Our new camera has failed us, so these pics are with the old one.

One Saturday afternoon we decided to go ice-skating on the sea. They've made this route there for tour skating, but you can also go there just for some quality time with the family. We invited also my brother-in-law and his family (or part of it).

No more dreaming

2009-12-28T06:41:00.000-08:00

...of white christmas. This year it actually happened! We were all very excited. And the snow is even still here! I can't remember the last time we had white christmas and it's been even longer than that since I last went skiing on christmas holidays.

This year I got two weeks of annual leave over christmas and new year. I was so lucky. And so happy too! At first I was planning to take the family to lapland to have white christmas and to go skiing. However I ditched that idea and I'm so glad we did since we got what we wanted anyway. We got snow and we got to ski without losing the little daylight we have down here in south. If anyone didn't know it's dark 24/7 around this time of year in lapland.

Santa was very generous this year to the whole family. Not only did I get my new stove/oven as a pre-christmas present we also got a new camera after christmas. A good one. So the chances are you'll be seeing a lot better pictures on this blog in the future. That is if I get to update it. Actually I will have more time for that too since as from January 1st I'll be working part time again. Woohoo! I'm so looking forward to that. And I'll get a 1,8% raise in the salary.

Here are some pictures with the old camera:

After we got our Christmas tree we simply could not stop Erno from decorating it. I had planned it to be a FHE activity in the evening, but when we got up in the morning Erno was already decorating the tree. There wasn't really much for us left to do.

Instead of decorating the Christmas tree I decided we should go out and have fun in the snow for FHE activity. So we built a big snow man and a snow lantern. The boys also made some snow angels.

In Finland the Santa Claus comes on Christmas eve. It's only logical since he lives in Finland so that's a place to start his big trip from, so he'll make it to other parts of the world for the 25th. Also in Finland he comes inside the house to give the presents and usually we sing to him. You should have seen the excitement when there was a knock on the door and the boys saw Santa from the window. Too bad we didn't get a shot of the looks on their faces. They were priceless. We spent the Christmas eve at my BIL's house, so there was a quite of few presents to give. Luckily the kids were very eager to help Santa.

Erno really, really loves costumes. He was so happy to get Darth Vader outfit for Christmas. For every birthday party he's been invited to he's got dressed up in a costume. He sure loves them. Sometimes he wears them at home too just for fun.

Adiel is baptized

2009-11-05T00:01:00.000-08:00

October 31st 2009 was a special day for Adiel. Not because it was Halloween, but because that's when he got baptized. It was a great day! A girl from his primary class was baptized too on the same day since their birthdays are only 11 days apart. Isla is actually a cousin to Adiel's cousin so they're almost related :) I still remember when Isla's mum and I were pregnant and had due dates only 2 days apart and hers was before mine. However Adiel saw the light of day sooner. Just look how big they are now!

Isla's dress is actually my old dress. I didn't get baptized in it, but I wore when my mum got married. I was 9 then. Two of Adiel's cousins have worn that dress on their baptism day and now Isla wore it too.

I was happy that so many of our relatives and friends were there. I spent my vacation week on planning and baking and was pretty happy with how everything turned out.

All and all, it was a great day!

Adiel turns 8

2009-10-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

For a few years now Adiel's top 3 favourite things to do have been these:

1. Playing computer/videogames
2. Watching TV/DVD
3. Eating

And when you turn 8 what would be more fun to have than a

So that's what we did. Teemu made a really cool 1up mushroom piñata. Here, take a look:

I made the super Mario cake. I got in a hurry decorating it (as I usually do, I wonder why?) so it could have been prettier, but the kids were OK with it.

Too many kids to get in one picture:

All we needed for entertainment was a big screen (which we borrowed from a friend of ours) for the kids to play Wii and the piñata. And the food of course, although I've noticed that in the kids' party the food doesn't seem to be as important as in the adults' parties.

We had one happy little fella to put to bed tonight!

Out with the old and in with the new

2009-09-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

Last year we renovated our bathroom. It was a pretty big project. This year we renovated the kids' bedroom. Nothing too big this time, but it also took surprisingly long time just to repaint the walls and to take down the old wall border and put up new. We moved in this apartment over 5 years ago and painted the walls then. The green I chose for the boys' bedroom was a bit different shade that I had thought it would be. I never really liked that shade although I got used to it during time. And when Adiel saw his room back then the first thing he did was start tearing the wall border. So we had half torn wall border for all these years.

Here's a picture of the green wall after we finished with it.

This time I wanted something completely different and definitely something less pastel. The boys got to choose the border out of several options. It was a bit hard for them to agree on it, since Erno wanted girly things that he thought his best friend (Senja) might appreciate. I told him we were decorating for them and not their friends. Besides Adiel would never agree on something too girly. Finally they did agree on the border. I chose the "spidy red"wall colour which they approved.

Here's the room now:

Couple of close-ups of the border and the wall:

I also promised to put up pictures of the new bathroom some time ago. It's actually hard to get a good picture of it, but here's one angle of it. And unfortunately I don't have a good "before" picture of it.

Our favourite part of it is this wall:

And I really love having a bath tub which we didn't before:

Reitti 2000 - Route 2000

2009-09-08T03:59:00.000-07:00

On friday evening 4.9.2009 Ripa (my brother) and me (Teemu) decided to get into adventure. We packed on our bicycles and head to Pirttimäki. We decided to take a circular part of Route 2000.

We started biking at 6 pm. Route is mostly on various kind of unpaved road. There is however parts on paved roads, trails, tracks and mud. Route travels through Nuuksio national park and recreational areas with quite a few lakes. It think following video will show it the best.

Sunset was 8.20 pm. So we traveled mostly in darkness with headlamps. We had a BBQ and swimming break around 10-11 pm. We finished our travel on 1 am.

Perjantai-iltana 4.9.2009 veljeni Ripa ja minä (Teemu) päätimme lähteä seikkailuun. Pakkasimme pyörät mukaan ja lähdimme Pirttimäkeen. Päätimme fillaroida Reitti 2000 -retkeilyreitin silmukkaosan.

Aloitimme fillaroinnin kuudelta illalla. Reitti kulkee pääasiassa erilaisilla päällystämättömällä tiellä. Osa matkasta on asfaltilla, poluilla ja mudassa. Reitti kulkee Nuuksion kansallispuiston ja virkistysalueiden lävitse. Alueella on paljon järviä. Video varmaankin kuvaa reittiä parhaiten.

Aurinko laski 20.20. Sen vuoksi matkasimme suurimman osan matkasta pimeässä otsalamppujen turvin. Pidimme grillaus- ja uintitauon kymmenen ja yhdentoista tienoilla Vähä-Parikaksella. Matkan päätimme yhdeltä yöllä.

Our Kantele Hero

2009-09-03T07:58:00.001-07:00

This is something Erno has waited for a looong time! We've been going to "muskari" (= a musical play school sort of thingy) with him ever since he was a baby (apart from the year we spent in Oz) and he's always loved it. This year was especially special since it meant that he'll start his kantele lessons. That is something he's been looking forward to. Kantele is a traditional finnish instrument. I remember when Erno was a baby he was always going after his muskari teacher's kantele. That was his favourite instrument even though there were quite a few to choose from. Now he has his very own kantele. It arrived yesterday and this is shortly after he'd opened the package. It looks like he might be switching instruments in the future, though ;)

Swine flu song - Koko kansan possujuhlat

2009-08-28T02:23:00.000-07:00

Here is a little silly song about swine flu. Background is made from sine waves and white noise.

Koko kansan possujuhlat , mp3, 2 MB

Bicycling with Ripa from Espoo to Kouvola (171 km)

2009-07-17T14:03:00.000-07:00

On monday 13.7.2009 5 am I (Teemu) met my brother (Risto aka Ripa) by LDS temple, which is located about 8 km from me and 2 km from my brother. We decided to start our journey early since Ripa had plans to spend some time with his family at Tykkimäki amusement park on evening.

Our first task was to navigate to other side of Greater Helsinki. We didn't make the shortest route and we ended up to check out Vanhankaupunginlahti Rapids and Viikki Arboretum. Here is a picture of a bridge that goes over the bay, Vanhankaupunginlahti.

Weather was rainy, which made drafting rather unpleasant and wet experience. We had a one breakdown on our way to Porvoo. Ripa's chain fell off the cogs. It took us a while to get it back.

Around 8.30 am we stopped for a breakfast at McDonald's Porvoo. We had some cheeseburgers (4 for me and 3 for Ripa) and hot chocolade. At this point my meter had 83 km with average speed 22 km/h.

After our break I felt quite cold since soaking wet clothes is a bad combination with powerful air-conditioner. It took me a while to warm up again. Close to Liljendal we met Ripa's wife and the kids, who were driving to Kouvola. We got tomatoes, yogurt and cereals from them. At Liljendal (35km from Porvoo) we stopped for a lunch at Shell service station.

After lunch rains started to slow down. After about 10 km rain stopped and headwind started. Due to headwind we switched place after each couple km. I was getting a bit tired and we had short breaks after each 5 km.

There were some wild strawberries ripe for a pick.

After about 50 km we reached to Kymijoki River. At this point there was only a few kilometers left.

Around 5 pm we reached our destination - Kouvola Railway Station. I booked tickets to Helsinki for me and two bikes.

I had an half an hour before train departed. So we got some donuts and chocolate milk as a reward for ourselves. After a long bike ride donuts are just super.

Rough skecth about our route.

Näytä suurempi kartta

Ripa's GPS-tracker reading on Google Maps.

Näytä suurempi kartta

Sharp Razor (Leppy's spicy dub)

2009-07-17T13:41:00.000-07:00

Original song is for this project was The Upsetters: Sharp Razor. So what I did was cutting, pasting, streching and adding loads of effects. It took me about 6 hours (11pm-5am) to get it done. Some of the stuff is quite unrefined, but my purpose was just to have fun and learn how to manipulate samples. Sometimes they are working quite nicely. I was so excited about results that I decided to share it. Software for this project was free Open Source audio program Audacity.

Download MP3:

Sharp Razor (Leppy's spicy dub), 4MB

A Father Indeed

2009-07-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

I found this very touching.

It's too wide, but couldn't fix it. Looks funny, but it's still very touching!

Legoland

2009-06-28T06:59:00.000-07:00

Man, this post took a looong time to finish. Those photos take so long time to photshop and upload. I had a lot more than I could post. The kids we're saying when we were in legoland: "Mum, why do take pictures all the time". I was just taking pics of everything I laid my eyes on. It was fantastic!

This is the trip that I always wanted to make as a kid, but never had the chance. I never had much lego bricks either so I suppose it was an intrigueing idea to go see a place with 58 million lego bricks.

We started our trip by taking the ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm. It's an overnight trip and the kids had a blast. We don't have much pics from that trip, since we thought we had left our camera home.

This is the ferry:

Kinda looks like this one, doesn't it?:

Maybe it's because they were both made in the same country: FINLAND!

Anyway, so when we got to Stockholm we rented a car and hit the road. The weather wasn't that good. It was mostly raining, so it was the perfect day for driving. We didn't want to spend that much time around Stockholm anyway since we've been there quite a few times, but southern Sweden I've never seen much of.

I have to tell you, that we had a funny lesson of democracy with Adiel. In the Stockholm harbour he saw the sign to the King's castle and asked if there was a king in Stockholm and I said yes, there is.. He then said that the King rules the Sweden and makes all the rules. I said, no, since Sweden is also a democratic country like Finland, they too have a parliament and the parliament makes the rules. He then asked me what "democratic" means. I started to explain and then remembered an incident on the ferry. I asked him if he remembers how we went to buy soda and realised that the six packs were much cheaper than the single cans. He wanted to have sprite and the rest of us wanted fanta so we bought a six pack of fanta. And that, my dear, is called democracy :) Later on there was another similar incident when Adiel wanted something else than the rest of us and there was an other lesson of democracy. Teemu was wondering if Adiel would grow up thinking that democracy sucks.

Day one in Sweden we drove all the way to Söderåsen. We drove along the second largest lake in Sweden, Vättern It was very pretty. We picked Söderåsen, because we saw that there was a national park and decided to spend the night there. Sweden as well as Finland has freedom to roam as I explained in the Åland post In that nationalpark there was even a designated camping site which was very good, so we camped there for the night. Erno was especially exited to sleep in the tent since he had been looking forward to that for months! There was even a little walking trail to the camp site so we had some pretty amazing views. By this time we had also found out that we did have our camera with us, after all. It had also stopped raining.

We started Day two by driving to Lund. They had an aquatic center there so we did some washing up and swimming. In Lund we also found out that there's something Sweden has and Finland hasn't besides a good neighbour and burger king: good and reasonably priced Thai food! From Lund we drove on to Malmö and Copenhagen. There's a really big bridge between Sweden and Denmark

Usually when we travel, we don't do a lot of planning beforehand, because we never know what we'll end up doing. Like with this trip we only booked the ferry and the rental car beforehand, but no accomodation. Unfortunately Denmark doesn't have the same fantastic rules of freedom to roam as Sweden and Finland do, so in Copenhagen we visited the turist info to see the camping options and if there was something cool we absolutely wanted to see the next day. We knew that the weather would be fine, so we decided to go to an amusement park. Not the famous one in the downtown, but another one, only about 30km away from Copenhagen. We stayed the night in a camping place in Naerum and next day headed for Bakken, the amusement park. They say it's the oldest theme park in the world.

Day three was a lot of fun and the weather was great. Not too warm, but at least sunny.

Water fights are so much fun, aren't they?

They had a lot of rollercoasts.

The funny thing was that only few of the rides had any height or age restrictons at all! So Erno could do almost all the rides with us. Even a really big and scary roller coaster that looks a lot like the one in Linnanmäki, Helsinki. Interestingly enough, he's supposed to be too short to ride the one in Linnanmäki, but not the one in Bakken. And in my opinion the one in Bakken was the scarier one. Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it? They also had one exactly same ride than Linnanmäki does. That one Erno also could ride in Bakken, but not in Linnanmäki. In Finland they say that the restrictions are from the manufacturer, but after this trip I find that hard to believe. That night we continued our trip by driving to a little village called Gorslev where we camped for the night.

Day four was Sunday. We had the list of all the wards and branches of Denmark and their addresses but unfortunately the internet sites didn't give us the meeting times so we knew that there was a ward in Slagelse but didn't know when the meetings were on. So we drove to Slagelse, found the chapel and got there just in time for Sunday school and sacrament meeting. There was even a finnish lady there who translated to us. How nice.

After church, we shopped for some lunch and continued our trip. There was another bridge crossing to another island and in Odense we found Burger King and indulged ourselves with some whoppers. It's a shame we don't have BK in Finland. I'd give up McDonald's anytime if we could have Burger King! That night we got to Billund, where the Legoland is! The kids were so excited and so were we.

We camped at the Billund camping which was very nice camping area. There were even some guinea pigs and bunnies in the camping site which the kids loved to feed! Adiel was so worried that the animals wouldn't get any food the next day since everyone would be at legoland.

Day five and six

They had lots of different kinds of rides

And even more models that were so amazing! All made of thousand and thousands of lego bricks. That must have been someone's dream job to spend months just building with legos!

They had animals

And famous locations around the world.

When we saw this one, Erno said:

"Hey look! It's lego Jesus!"

With this one they used 40 000 lego windows!

Kennedy space center, Florida

The White house

Bergen, Norway

The Sitting Bull

Mt. Rushmore

The second day in legoland wasn't as sunny as the previous day so we mostly just stuck to the indoors attractions that day. The same night we started heading back to Sweden. We drove to Århus and decided to camp there for the night. When we reached the camping place we had spotted on the map the reception was already closed. That had never been a problem before but apparently it was for these guys, since they wouldn't take us. Fair enough, if you can afford losing customers during the low season, we'll just take our money elsewhere then. On our way to the camping we had spotted "det lille hotel" ( a little hotel) so we went to see if they were open. They weren't but we called the number on the window and they let us in.

Day seven we headed to the library in Århus to see the ferry timetables and to see if we would take the one in Grenaa or the one in Fredrikshavn. We picked the one in Grenaa and drove there. We were there well before the ferry took off but they had this little floor hockey field where the kids spent time while waiting.

So the ferry took us to Varberg and we started heading north and looking for a place to camp for the night. After all, we were back in freedom to roam country so we could camp for free :) We found a spot and pitched the tent. That night it rained pretty heavily. But that was okay. In the morning we just stayed in the tent as long as it stopped raining and took off.

Day eight we realised that we need to do some laundry since Erno had had an accident on couple of nights and we were running out of clean clothes anyway. We drove to Borås to find a self service laundry place of some kind. They didn't have one, but the tourist info person called the camping place and asked if we could do our laundry there even if we're not staying for the night. They said it was okay.

This is Teemu spin drying Erno's sleeping bag after hand washing it

After doing the laundry we all were also in a need of a bath and looked for an aquatic center. There was one in Borås but it was closed. We realised there was also one in Jönköping so that's where we headed. Of course we arrived so late that there wasn't much time to go swimming so we looked for a place to stay in stead. We happened to find a formula 1 hotel. We had stayed in one of those when we in Dubbo and had found their pricing very agreeable. That hotel also happened to be close to the swimming pool where we intended to go the next day. So we checked in. Teemu also managed to negotiate a free breakkie for us! Gotta love him! :)

Day nine we spent in the Jönköping aquatic center, which was very good! They had water slides and spas and the best waves I've ever seen anywere else! We had a great time there. If you're ever in Jönköping that's definitely a place to go. After swimming it was time to start heading back to stockholm. We had a ferry to catch the next morning. This time we decided to drive the other side of lake Vättern. It was very pretty on that side too :) That day was also very rainy so we didn't mind spending the whole day driving. We stopped for the night in Södertälje and had another delicious and affordable thai meal for dinner. We decided to stay in a cabin this night since we had an early wake up in the morning and it would take time to take the tent down etc.

Day ten we drove back to Stockholm and got on the ferry to Turku. We stayed with our friends in Turku. We hadn't seen these friends of ours since we came back from Oz so we had a great time catching up with them.

Day eleven we attended church in Turku and then went to my dad's in the evening. We stayed with my dad for few days and then he was kind enough to drive us back home. So that was our trip in a nutshell. Here's our journey on the map. For some reason it didn't show the last ferry trip from Stockholm to Turku, but you get the idea anyway.

Näytä Legoland holiday suuremmalla kartalla

If I had one wish then it would be...

2009-05-24T09:33:00.000-07:00

...a happy happy birthday to you times three! And that's what we had! Three parties for our 5 year old boy and three cakes!

The first party was for all of Erno's friends. I felt inspired by Mason's snake party And started wondering where can you get a "reptile man" for your birthday in Finland? Well, the zoo maybe? But I was doubtful weather they'd do such thing here so if the reptile man won't come to your party, then why not take the party to the reptile man? So I called the zoo in Helsinki and asked if they did birthday parties and they did. So That's where I decided to take the party to. It turned out to be a big success! The kids loved it! And I loved having 10 kids running around somewhere else than my home :) We didn't see the reptiles though, but we did see a lion and a bunch of other animals. However, what the kids said they liked most, was the HUGE piles of poo in the wisents' cage.

There was a "throw a frog" game. Not with live frogs, though.

These two were up to no good! They kept us very busy so we didn't have much time to take pics.

Erno wanted to have Lighting McQueen cake for his b-day, but I wasn't up to it. Not yet. For the zoo party it was just plain chocolate cake which the kids loved so much that there was none left to take home! You can't really see it from the pic, but it tasted better than it looked.

The next day we had grandpa and grandma over. This was the first time ever I tried a Charlotte cake. I made it with ice cream filling so it wasn't too much trouble.

Last but not least we had 4 cousins two aunts and an uncle over for the final party. This time I felt more inspired about the Lightning McQueen cake. There's very limited supplies of cake decorations in Finland so you have to be creative. This is not the best looking cake I've ever made, but the look on Erno's face when he saw it was definitely worth the trouble!

The weird angles of sun

2009-04-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

I wonder how long it takes for the kids to get used to the amount of daylight in Finland during different seasons. We seem to go through this every year. I'm writing this at 9 pm and the sun is just about to set. 90 minutes ago I was in an argument with Erno weather it's bedtime or not. He thought that it has to be morning/day due all the light and could not be bedtime already. I tried to remind him that in Finland we tell the bedtime by the clock and not by the amount of light. And it's only gonna get lighter and lighter when we reach the summer. And that they're too young to stay up as long as the sun does. Although when they're older they'll just have to stay up and watch the midnight sun. I think it's the one of the coolest things in here. Even though it'll meen travelling further up in the north.

And every fall/winter it's the other way round. Kids will look out the window at 3 pm when it's completely dark and say something like: "Wow, this was a short day. I didn't get to do anything" or "It's bedtime already and I don't feel tired". And then I'll explain that in our country, this is a very dark season, but I'm not expecting you to go to bed at 3 pm :-)

Biking season is on!

2009-04-14T22:57:00.000-07:00

About a week ago I gave to our six bicycles a spring maintanance. Since then we have been on wheels almost everyday. Erno rides his bike to daycare and swimming about 1 km. Last monday Sirpa, me and Adiel rode 20 km (10 km one way) to my brother. Yesterday Sirpa rode total 40 km to shops and meetings. Now I am about to take Erno to Music playgroup (10km one way). I just love to bike. It feels nice to be back on wheels. ;-D

-Teemu

Virvon varvon

2009-04-06T03:44:00.000-07:00

I love easter time! And I very strongly associate it with the spring. Of course I love Christmas too, but I don't really care what time of the year it is. When we were in Australia, Christmas in the summer didn't feel at all as strange as the Easter in the Autumn. That just didn't feel right at all. The Easter is so full of symbolism associated with the spring and new life etc. Althoug at this time of the year it's not yet that pretty. The ground is brown insted of green and the melting snow reveals all the rubbish that people have thrown out and the snow has so conveniently hidden thus far. The trees are bare with no leaves in. And although the sun is shining it's not very warm just yet. Nevertheless, it's still time to rejoice! The message of the Easter is the miracle of an empty tomb. The resurrection of the Lord and the miraculous resurrection of all mankind as a free gift from him.

The past weekend was a good one. Although I was working, I was still able to listen to the general conference and the kids participated in some easter traditions and the daffodils were blooming.

I'm lazy in sending easter cards so let this be my easter season's greeting for you!

If I had heaps of money....

2009-03-27T01:52:00.000-07:00

There's a few things you're supposed to have if you're a finn and loyal to your country. One is, of course, a Nokia phone. That I have. Another is something from Iittala. That I have too. I've got four glasses (in a colour that they don't make anymore) and a really, really, really good pan that I'm so happy with, although I'm not particularly a big Iittala fan. Then you're supposed to have something from Marimekko . That I don't have and I've never really understood the Marimekko enthusiasm since I've never seen a single product of theirs that I've liked. And a part of me thinks that most people who buy their stuff just do it to be able to say that they've got it from Marimekko.

However, there's this finnish ceramics company that I can support whole heartedly that I really do like. So if I had a lot of money I would definitely spend a lot of it on Pentik. I went there yesterday and saw this vase that I could not buy even though it was on sale.

Maybe one day...So if anyone's ever wanting to buy me something, but can't think of anything just go to a Pentik store and get just about anything you can afford :-) Especially these plates would be welcome. Personally I think Teemu is a lot more difficult to shop for than I am :-)

Of course if I was a millionare, I'd also buy a house from Australia, but that goes without saying, right?

Edit: OK, these strawberry mugs from Marimakko are pretty neat, but in general I think their products are hideous.

Spring picnic at Hynkeberget

2009-03-22T07:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny saturday. Sirpa was working and I decided to make a little hike with boys. So we packed some sandwiches, grapes, bananas, hot chocolade, hammock and some basic outdoor stuff. I didn't select a place before hand. We just walked down to bus stop and took whatever bus that is heading north.

First bus that came was 85, which we took. When scenery started to look enough remote, we jumped of the bus. Here is a picture of boys heading off the bus stop.

We walked over a small hill. Then we walked on a small road that went by a stable. There were some beautiful horses. Then we entered park area. There was a hill called Hynkeberget and boys wanted to explore that one. There wasn't any tracks so it was quite challenging for Erno because rough terrain and snow, but we made to the top.

After a tough climb it was a moment to recover a bit and enjoy the scenery.

Spring time is really bright in Finland since we are having a lot of snow and sun. Sun is quite intense, but snow can reflect most of the energy away. Usually melting starts around darker objects that can absorb the heat energy.

I though that around this time bears are coming out from their nests since water starts to come into nests. Later that day I noticed that they have had a bear sighting around 7 km from us. --> Bears Startle Hikers in Park Near Helsinki

We walked to the other end of the hill and Erno wanted to have a sandwich break with hammock. Adiel though that I put hammock too close to the edge of the cliff and he refused to get into hammock.

After a while Adiel realized that it wasn't a cliff - it was only a steep hill side. After that it was all fun. I made a video about it. Life is good!

Last evening I watched inspiring video from YouTube: Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams . It was funny and moving. So have a look when you have an extra hour.

Erno is such a funny kid

2009-03-07T23:27:00.000-08:00

Erno's now convinced that he wants to marry me when he grows up. I told him that I'm already married. He said that then I could marry him and daddy. I said you can only be married to one person at a time (in our culture anyway). Erno then says, that's okay, we'll just take turns being married to you with daddy. Thatts so typical of Erno. Nothing's impossible to him. But then again, that's what being a superhero is all about isn't it? Oh, haven't I told you? Yes, he is also a superhero with real superpowers. Just try to doubt it! :-D

Our winter holiday

2009-02-22T07:19:00.000-08:00

Last week was the winter holiday for the schools in southern Finland. I was lucky enough to get that week off from work too so we decided to go on a holiday. A friend of ours even insisted on lending his car for us so we decided to do a little round around the country and see some relatives on the way.

We left on Friday afternoon and started driving towards eastern Finland. We stopped for night in a small village of Hirvensalmi to see my uncle who lives there and stayed the night there. My uncle has golden retrievers and he goes hunting with them. The boys just loved the dogs. They were very entertaining for the boys. It was really nice to see my uncle for a veery long time. I hadn't seen him since we came back from Australia. He lives by a beautiful lake, which was frozen, of course, and we took a little walk on the lake.

On Saturday we thanked my uncle and his lovely wife for their hospitality and continued our trip. Teemu's sister-in-law's father has a cabin close to Kuopio and he agreed to let us use the cabin for couple of nights. On our way to this cabin we visited one of Teemu's aunts. It was a lot of fun. To say the boys were thrilled to be there is an understatement. This it what it looks like:

In other words: Perfect! We did have electricity but no running water. The temperature was -18C. When we arrived the brother to Teemu's SIL was already there and had started to heat up the cabin for us and shovel some snow. How nice of him. So we settled in and started heating the sauna. But how do you go to sauna with no water? During the summer it's no problem of course, since there's plenty of water in the lake (this cabin was also sited close to a lake). But what do you do when the lake is frozen? You can drill a hole in the ice or you can melt the snow. We chose the latter. It was actually very educational. I had had no idea how long it would take to melt snow. And how small amount of water you get from a bucket full of snow. So we just used the unmelted snow to wash ourselves and Mr. T. heated some water enough for me to be able to wash my hair. Of course we also did the traditional "rolling-on-the-snow naked" ritual and the boys were laughing so hard when I was screaming :-D Adiel said mummy screaming in the snow was one of the highlights of his weekend. So the sauna experience was a lot of fun for us.

On Moday my BIL joined us with his family and his wife's brother also joined us with his family. Monday also happened to be my 20th birthday so we did a little celebration too. This is what I got for my birthday:

My very own snowmobile!!

Ummm...no, not really. What would I do with one of those where we live? But I did get to drive it. It wasn't the first time though, but the first time in a very long time.

The day was so beautiful. It was sunny and cold.

Just made for having fun with the snow. Mr. T. had done some serious snow shovelling to get a little ice skating field on the lake. We also made a small skiing route for the kids.

And here's Adiel trying a less common winter sport:

Mr. T. had also been very busy chopping wood.

In the end he also made the hole in the ice with his ax, when the water was no longer needed :-)

The ice was 40cm thick.

Unfortunately we left our own camera home and here is where the pictures end, but the story continues. These amazing photos were thanks to my BIL. So thank you again, Ripa! Nice pics! I'll put more of tehm up on facebook.

So on Moday we continued our trip to Oulu. The city where I grew up. I still have all four of my grandparents living there. We stayed with my grandpa who is still left alone in a big house with my granny still in the hospital. My granny is doing a lot better. She can now walk and eat a little (althoug she still has the NG tube), and even say a few single words. It's too bad she can't really talk that much. But she understands everything we say and she reacts to that and laughs a lot with us. You could tell that she was absolutely thrilled to see the boys! Seeing her in that hospital bed has been difficult for me. She's such a strong woman and I love her dearly. I'd hate to not have her in my life, but I am very grateful to have been able to have her in my life thus far. I have so many sweet memories of her.

During our stay in Oulu we also visited my other grandparents. They're doing pretty well, but this granny unfortunately has alzheimer's disease. She doesn't remember me or my dad or any other of her kids anymore and she feels like a total stranger. This too is very heartbreaking for me to see her like that. This is a woman who looked after us when we were kids. She always welcomed us in her house and in her heart. I still remember when my sister and I gathered our dolls in a small carriage and ran away from an unwanted nanny and went to grandma's instead and she didn't send us back home but welcomed us and said to our mum that she'd be delighted to look after us anytime she needed her to. I don't remember having any other nannies after that. I have countless sweet memories of this person too who doesn't share those memories anymore and who looks at me like I was a stranger and wonders why I call her granny and refuse to use her first name. Oh what a cruel disease Alzheimer's is!

We left Oulu on Friday after visiting another uncle and started our 600km trip back to Espoo. The trip went a lot better than I expected. We met my sister halfway. They were on their way to Oulu since their school holidays are a week later than ours. We had a dinner and a quick catch-up with them before they started heading to north and we started heading to south.

All and all, it was lovely trip and I was glad we were able to make it. We owe so many people for making our trip possible and such a memorable one! Thanks!

Long time no blog

2009-02-05T08:25:00.000-08:00

Yeah, it's been a while. I've been busy, but don't really have much to report. We're all doing great still and missing Oz. Or the boys actually have started to like living hear a bit more after having so many days of snow. Last winter was really dreadful. Seriously. Probably the worst one Finland's seen in ages. And of course that was the one we chose to fly back to...

I had the funniest little girl in ED the other night. She was so cute and she totally cracked me up. She was about 14 months old and I needed to swab her throat with a cotton ball stick but she thought "heck no!". But she wouldn't cry, the smart girl she was. Oh no...that would be no good, why make it easier for the nurses? She just kept her mouth shut very tightly with the cutest face of determination. I just laughed. I tickeld her and tried to make her open her mouth and finally she did just enough for me to slip the stick in and do the swab. After I did it she just said: "Nam Nam!" (which means yummy). How cute is that! It just totally made my day!

Adiel's making such a big progress in school. He's reading quite fluently now in finnish and getting better and better in reading in english. He goes to a bilingual school so they're teaching everything apart from finnish in english. And Erno is still attending the english kindergarten to keep up his english. Sometimes he even wants us to speak in english to him at home and then I do, although it feels really weird to me. I think it's just really strange to use something other than my native language with my kids. That means Teemu and I won't have our own secret language anymore when we need to say something to each other without the kids knowing what we're saying. We tried switching to swedish, but that didn't go too well :-) Teemu doesn't really know swedish that well ( although in Finland we're forced to study it) and mine is actually really really rusty after not using or hearing it at all for a year. I still understand most of it, but I'm just not fluent in speaking anymore. Sometimes I try at work, but it's pretty pathetic and I switch back to finnish pretty quick.

Since I don't really like blogging without photos and we haven't been taking a lot of photos lately I'll just post one of Teemu and Erno taken a few months ago. I think it's just cute.

Happy Australia Day!

2009-01-25T07:58:00.000-08:00

I noticed that Australia Day is coming tomorrow. Australia is really a fabulous place and I wish you all nice day down under. We are probably going to celebrate Australia Day here in Finland with a cross-country skiing.

I remember when we arrived to Australia we were really anxious to get to beach. One day we got to beach, but we were not prepared with proper beach clothes. We decided to play with the water anyway. In Finland we don't have big waves and one of them got Adiel by suprise. Luckily we got that on camera.

Australia is really a country with nice wildlife. Our boys really like this clip.

Happy Australia Day!

Sad News

2009-01-06T09:02:00.000-08:00

This new year didn't start all that well for me. Last Saturday I called my older sister to wish her happy new year and she told me that she was gonna call me. She said she was on the train with our mum on her way to Oulu because our grandma had a stroke and was in the hospital. I said I'd start packing too and caught the next train to the north. Luckily I had four days off so I could spend some time up there. We visited grandma in the hospital for few times. She's not well at all. Her right side is completely paralyzed and she's unable to speak. She did recognize us and it was clear that she was trying hard to say something, but was unable to do so. We also talked to a doctor and found out that granny's also had a pancreatic cancer for the last two years that she hasn't told anyone about (apart from her husband). That was big blow to us all. I really, really hope that this wasn't the last time I saw her.

She's such a wonderful, wonderful lady and it's a miracle she's been able to cope with that cancer so far. She's a tough cookie. On the next school holiday in February we'll all travel to Oulu and hopefully the kids will she her too. The last time we saw her was two and half years ago, before our trip to Australia. Such happy memories:

I'm just really lucky to have had such wonderful grandparents on both sides in my life. And as a kid I've spent a lot of time with them with memories to last a lifetime.

Tour skating at Nuuksio National Park

2009-01-05T07:58:00.000-08:00

Today I (Teemu) went with the boys to check out, if ice on lakes was thick enough for skating. I will take a group of young men for a hike tomorrow. Skating was a blast.

Oh No!

2008-12-29T11:32:00.000-08:00

What have we done! We opened the Pandora's box! We've done so much skating now over the holidays that it's made Erno want to play ice hockey! Today we went skating and Erno saw a little girl dressed in the ice hockey gear. He asked me why she was dressed like that and I said that she probably plays ice hockey. Then Erno said: No she can't be a hockey player mum, she's not in school yet. I then said you don't need to be in school to start playing ice hockey (blimey, I should have bit my tongue and said that maybe the girl was just small for her age or something!). Then Erno starts beaming and says: Mum I wanna start playing ice-hockey too. I didn't say anything to that.

I told Teemu my conversation with Erno and he said that yeah, he would probably like the game since he was trying to kick another ice-skater lying on the ground earlier. All the more reason not to let him play hockey. He's enough violent as he is, I don't need him to learn any new ways to hurt other people. If there was ever a hobby I didn't want my kids to take it would be hockey.

You might wonder about my loathing of the game. I actually used to like it, but it was before the game got ruined by excessive violence and turned into free wrestling on ice skates. The most violent NHL players are the best paid ones as well and I think it's repulsive. The game used to be fun and if you started punching people in the face you would be banned to play! But not today, nooo! The olympic and the World Championship games luckily still have some of the old spirit left which is why the NHL players don't do so well in those games and cop penalties all the time. (Serves them right, althoug I think they should be banned from the whole game). Hopefully they won't go changing the rules more to the NHL way.

Well, I'm being hopeful that Erno will forget about his desire to play hockey. If he brings it up again I might show him some figure skating and say that there's other (and probably more challenging) things you can do involving skating than play hockey.

Our Christmas

2008-12-28T11:13:00.000-08:00

We had a really, really, really nice Christmas. Or at least I did. And I got SOCKS for Christmas! So that just means that the presents aren't everything. In Finland the Christmas is mostly celebrated on the Christmas eve. Most finns start their Christmas celebrations with no other than going to sauna, of course! So did we. We don't have our own sauna in our unit, but there's one in the apartment building and you can use the common sauna free of charge on Christmas.

A little while after the sauna my dad and my stepmum came over and a while after them Teemu's dad joined us. Since none of them were in our ward's Christmas party where we did the traditional finnish version of the Christmas play called the "Star boys" There's a lot of songs in it and a lot of parts especially for the King Herod (played by Erno) that we thought it would be impossible for the kids to memorize it all so we did it as a play back. We used the music from the heavy metal version of the Star boys which I think is the best version ever (maybe after the one we did). We then recorded the speaking parts and Erno was just adorable. He's probably the best King Herod ever!

After our play it was time for the Christmas dinner. All made from scratch! Oh well...hmm...actually we did not raise and slaughter the pig ourselves as they used to back in the old days. In Finland we traditionally eat ham and not Turkey on the Christmas dinner. That's actually one of Teemu's Childhood memories of Christmas. They would sometimes go to his uncle's farm for Christmas and watch their uncle slaughter the pig. They would then eat the blood pancakes. I know how it sounds but they're actually not that bad at all! Even our kids like them!

Anyway, we ate the dinner with the ham we bought from the supermarket but cooked ourselves. Usually it's done in the oven, but this year we took a part of the ham to try out Nigella Lawson's recipe of ham in the coca-cola (or pepsi in our case, since we prefer that) and that turned out to be very good. We'll definitely will be eating cola ham in the future too!

After the dinner the boys were getting really really excited and started running from one window to another to see if Santa was coming already and were bugging me constantly with their "when is Santa coming" questions. They're waiting was rewarded and Santa did finally come with a big box full of presents. I think watching the kids' excitement is one the best parts of the Christmas! I remember when we moved to Australia that Adiel was really worried if Santa would find us there. I was actually a bit worried of that my self since I wasn't sure if the Santa visits the aussie homes or not. Well, obviously the Santa knows that the finns need him to visit them no matter where they are and he did pay us a visit even down under!

He looks a bit scary, doesn't he? Well, our kids were just too excited to be afraid. The kids were so excited of their presents. The rest of the evening they were playing with their new stuff and the grown ups were playing the Mexican train game that grandpa and grandma got from Santa. It's a great game. Erno had put himself to bed a some point but Adiel couldn't get enough of his new Wii Mariokart game and once our Mexican train was finnished Adiel was still playing and it was about 1 o'clock am! So we all decided to go to bed.

On the Christmas Day we all slept in and just had a nice and quiet day with playing Wii and eating. Later on we had a visit from Teemu's brother and his family. After they left it was time for me to head to work for the night duty. On the boxing day we went ice skating since Adiel had ice skates for Christmas and of course we had to try them out. I just loved going ice skating after a couple of year's break. For some reason we didn't do it last year at all. We were probably devastated by the weather and the fact that there wasn't a lot of snow or ice to go skating on and forgot all about the indoor skating.

Tomorrow we're heading for some more ice skating since we all liked it so much and on Tuesday we're going to the movies to see Wall-E since Santa also brought us some movie tickets. I'm just really really happy and I have enjoyed our Christmas this year a lot (not that it's been crap before, but this year I thought was extremely special).

Happy New Year everyone, since I probably won't be posting again this year.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

2008-12-23T11:53:00.001-08:00

Our home and family is finally ready for Christmas. Today we went to the graveyard to light a candle on grandma Riitta's grave. It's a finnish Christmas tradition to remember those members of our family who are no longer with us. I thought the cemetery looked really really nice with lots and lots of candles lit all around. There's going to be even more tomorrow since most people visit the graveyard on Christmas eve.

Our bathroom is nearly finnished and we're really happy with it. I'll post some pictures after it's completely finnished. Last Saturday we brought the Christmas tree in. In my childhood we always celebrated Christmas at my grandma's and one of the highlights of the Christmas was goint with my grandpa and my uncle to their backyard to chop down the Christmas tree. Their backyard was full of spruces back then. There's really good plastic ones these days too, but I think there's nothing like the real tree. It smells so nice so who cares if it's a bit messy. That's what the vacuum cleaners are for, right? I remember my grandma even never ever used the electric candles. Always the real ones and I liked them too! Maybe I'll do that too when the boys grow up a bit.

Anyway, Christmas is such a lovely time of year wheather it's in the north or down under and wheather it's white or not. (looks like not this year). So Merry Christmas to all who hasn't received a post card or email card from me and to everyone who did! Hugs and kisses to all of you from our family!

Weariness

2008-12-16T06:22:00.000-08:00

We've been renovating our bathroom for ages now and it's still not ready! I thought it would be by now. Hopefully before Christmas though. It's not so easy to prepare for Christmas with so much junk lying around that you just don't seem to get rid of.

I've probably never been happier to be able to work part time than now. I had the whole week off last week and now after two days I'm really worn out. The down side to working in ED is that if there's a big accident somewhere they will most likely to call you to work, because they'll need a lot of staff in ED. So last night there was a bus with 67 passengers that caught fire so I was called to work at 8:30 pm. Luckily most of the patients had only mild injuries if anything at all and I was allowed to leave at 11pm since I had to work in the morning. The funny thing is that not long before I was called to work I had told my husband that it feels like I'm doing a night shift today and I have to keep reminding myself that I 'm not. The gift of prophecy?

Here's something that I'm proud of:

It's a ginger bread cookie house resembling the moomin house. Unfortunately we I coulnd't find blue lollies to use on the wall so I used purple instead. I'm sure the moomins are delighted to have a different colour of paint for change. The house was rather difficult to assemble. Much more difficult than the ordinary ginger bread house, but I think I did a good job. The kids love it too! I think edible Christmas decoration is cool.

Happy Birthday Finland!

2008-12-06T10:58:00.000-08:00

Today's the independece Day of Finland. There are a lot of holidays (too many, actually) during the year when the finns' alcohol consumption is out of control, but unlike in a lot of other countries this one isn't one of them. There's actually not that much celebration at all, which might strike some people as odd. The only traditions I recall that my family ever had on indepence Day was candles. We have special white and blue candles for indepence Day and you are supposed to light two of them at your window at 6pm. That I've pretty much tried to do every independence Day that I've spent in Finland. Taking a quick look around the neighborhood looks like only few people besides me are holding on to this tradition. I don't know, I just like candles no matter what the day, but the idea of having two candles at each window at the same time is kinda nice.

In Australia the anzac day kinda reminded me of our Indepence Day. This is a day to remember our veterans and remember the sacrifices that were made for us to be able to have a free country. I'm not a big fan of war or glorifying wars, but I am happy to be able to live in a free country. I'm sad that it had to take another war to get there, and I'm sad that a lot of people on both sides had to die for it and quite honestly I can't say how things would have turned out if weren't for the war or if I'd be miserable now or what, but I'm proud of my country for what it is today. I think Finland has come a long way and we have a lot to be proud of.

Other than candles I remember going to a concert and a movie (about the war) on indepence Day. A lot of times I've also worked, which I don't mind at all. Sunday penalty rates without working on a Sunday works great for me :-) Today I also worked, but had the evening off to light my candles and bake with the kids. Oh, another tradition wich I try to hold on to also is to listen to patriotic songs and that I've done today too! I've got a CD called "The songs of the Fatherland". That's exactly how they've translated it into english. I wonder if whoever translated it knew what the word "fatherland" usually refers to. In the CD there's also all the lyrics to the songs and the english translations. The translations are so funny. I would put one here, but can't find the cover now.

Anyway, happy 91st birthday Finland! You're a grand old Lady, not a maiden anymore! (We often call Finland "The maiden Finland" because of the shape of the country).

Christmas Parties

2008-12-04T01:28:00.001-08:00

Tuesday was the RS Christmas Party in our ward. It was probably the best one ever! I had a really good time! There are some really fantastic and funny sisters in the Espoo 2nd ward (the party was for both wards). They put on a great show. They were dressed up as women from the 50's and they were hosting a radio show and giving us very good and useful ideas on how to be prepared when the hubby comes home from work. I've read that thing before, it's the real thing. It was picked up from some women's magazine in the 50's but it's soooo funny. I couldn't find it, otherwise I would have posted it for you all to read and learn.

Then we had a sister dressed up as an old lady and she read us Luke 2:1-20 in various finnish dialects and we were all laughing so hysterically. It was so, so funny! Of course there was singing too and most importantly eating! We had the traditional finnish Christmas feast. Oh and of course we all gave and received Christmas presents. I got a candle.

Then there's also been Erno's dance schools presentation for the parents. That was so cute! Look at Erno with all those pink ballerinas :-)

Then there was his music schools Christmas presentation for parents. That was very good too! All the kids sang and played really well.

Last Sunday was the primary program sunday. The kids were incredible. When they sang "Called to serve" I'm sure there was not a single person who couldn't hear them. On Sunday evening there was also an event at the temple by the Christmas stall (or whatever they're called in english). Of course that's nothing compared to the one in Sydney. Heck I couln't even fit the one in Sydney in one photo :-) But then again the weather conditions are also slightly different. We really should buy a better camera since our pictures haven't really turned out that great lately.

I thought this might be fun

2008-12-01T07:56:00.000-08:00

1. Put your iTunes, Windows Media Player, MP3 Player or whatever on shuffle.

2. For each question press the next button to get your answer.

3. You must write down the name of the song no matter how silly it sounds!

4. Put any comments in brackets after the song name.

Start here:

If someone says "Is this okay?", you say:
Ahccai

How would you describe yourself?
You don't miss your water

What do you think about in the bathroom?
Papa was a rollin' stone

What do you like in a guy?
What if

How do you feel today?
Lust

What is your life's purpose?
Spring

What is your motto?
A Day in the Life

What do your friends think of you?
Laulu rakkaudelle
(a song for love)

What do you think of your parents?
Somewhere around Nothing

What do you think of very often?
It's OK to phone the island that is a mirage

What is 2+2?
Kun kuolen
(when I die)

What do you think of your best friend?
The Scythe

What do you think of the person you like?
Maailmanpyörä palaa
(The Ferris wheel is burning)

What is your life story?
Mercy street

What do you want to be when you grow up?
Ikävöi, ihminen
(Yearn, O man)

What do you think of when you see the person you like?
Andante ur Holbergsvit

What will you dance to at your wedding?
Kuuntele mua
(Listen to me)

What will they play at your funeral?
Tylsää, tylsää
(boring, boring)

What is your hobby/interest?
Brain damage

What is your biggest fear?
Satakunnan laulu
(The song of Satakunta)

What is your biggest secret?
The Runaway Cart

What do you think of your friends?
Kirjoituksia
(Writings)

What will you put as the subject of this post?
China

Winter wonderland!

2008-11-27T10:30:00.000-08:00

I love Ikea!

2008-11-16T05:35:00.000-08:00

We are renovating our bathroom and have needed to do some reorganising. Our cleaning cupboard used to be in the bathroom, but won't be in the new one so we turned another cupboard into cleaning closet. I was in ikea and saw something and thought "that's exactly what I need". Ever had that happen to you in ikea? ;-)

Well, this is just brilliant way to organise your cleaning cupboard isn't it?

I couln't believe how much stuff it will hold

Amazing, isn't it?

Tribute to John Williams

2008-11-13T23:09:00.000-08:00

This was just so awesome!

Fathers' Day edition a bit late

2008-11-12T03:51:00.000-08:00

But better late than never, right? Anyway in Finland the Fathers' Day is the second Sunday in November so that was last Sunday. I was working the whole weekend so didn't find the energy to do any blogging. The kids had made awesome presents at school and kindergarten. Erno's framed portrait of dad was so cool and Adiel's decorated hanger was nice and cheerful.

The boys wanted to know what I was gonna give my dad. I said that we'll send him of video clip with all of us singing a song for him and if they thought grandpa would like that? They said okay. So we did a short video clip of us singing "When Grandpa comes" in finnish, of course.

I should not have left my shopping for last minute since I never found the time to do it, so Teemu didn't get anything from me and had to buy the flowers himself too. However I was up early on the Sunday morning to cook a very special breakfast for him although I worked late the night before.

And of course the Fathers' Day edition would not be complete without some "daddy pics" of Teemu.

Teemu is the kind of Dad who.....

...helps them climb mountains, big and small (Mt. Beerburrum, QLD in this one)

....takes them on bicycle rides

...takes them swimming

...plays drums with them

....plays Nintendo with them

And finally,

and most importantly,

Loves their mum (ME!)

Thanks for everything you do for our family, Teemu!

Happy, happy birthday to you all year!

2008-10-29T04:03:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we celebrated Adiel's 7th birthday. His actual birtday was on Monday and althoug I had explained him that the party would not be on the actual birthday he was still dissapointed when he was reminded on the Monday that there would be no party on that day. He still seems to think that the growing older part doesn't happen unless you have a party. So on Friday he announced that NOW I'm seven!

We started planning the party well in advance. He wanted to invite so many people that it would have been impossible to fit them all in our apartment. Luckily there's a "residents' park" nearby and you can rent it for parties etc for a decent price. So that's what we did. The kids all had a blast!

Adiel wanted to have exactly the same kind of cake than he did last year. I told him that it would be impossible, since I don't remember everything I put on the cake plus we can't get jelly in finland and the cake had jelly on top. So we surfed the internet for ideas and finally he said, he wants a monkey cake. It was actually a lot easier to make than I thought. I took a picture of "Curoius George" and used that as a model. I'm actually really happy with the result. Adiel didn't think the cake tasted as good as last year and I'm kicking myself for not saving the recipe. My cakes always seem to turn out a bit different.

Opening presents was a lot of fun!

On Saturday we had a party for the relatives. The kids had a blast playing the Wii and we had a blast watching. This is Sini showing her boxing skills.

MY BIRTHDAY BOY works hard for his living

2008-10-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

I loved this poem I found in Carli's blog so I'll borrow it, if you don't mind, Carli.

Mondays child is fair of face,
Tuesdays child is full of grace,
Wednesdays child is full of woe,
Thursdays child has far to go,
Fridays child is loving and giving,
Saturdays child works hard for his living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

At least he works hard to open the package grandpa sent him earlier this year when he heard that Adiel's soccer team had won a lot of games. In the package was a brand new soccer ball. Today it's Adiel's birthday and he's so excited. The party will be on friday, but he's still really excited.

My thursday child has far to go. Seems to run in the family. Two of my siblings and one of my nieces were also thursday children. Erno sure is one busy child with the most fascinating imagination. He'll always come up with new things to cover himself in or to experiment. Or to hide in.

My darling Teemu then, well isn't it obvious

He's bonny and blithe and good and gay. We'll, in the old meaning of the word, at least.

What about myself then? Oh well, I'm destined to be full of woe!

Well, I guess the woe part hasn't really kicked in yet. Maybe I'll turn out to be a crumpy old lady. Who knows!

School Holidays

2008-10-16T07:35:00.000-07:00

I feel like the school just started and now it's already holidays. I've got time off from work too so I get to spend a little more time with the kids. We decided to stay home since Teemu is quite busy with his election campaigning stuff. I, too, have been delivering pamphlets whenever I could. It's good exercise!

Yesterday I decided to go to the Linnamaki amusement park with the boys. They're usually open only during the summer, but this time they decided to open their doors during schoolholidays for a carnival of light which I thought was a fantastic idea! It's just what we need during this dark season. Unfortunally we left in such haste that I left my camera home. I could have snapped some awesome pics there! (Fortunately someone else did) Even before sundown the place was really beautiful with all the trees red and orange. I've ment to take pictures of our autumn colours before, but I always do forget the camera and soon the leaves will be there no more. But the light carnival was fun. It was pretty with all the lights in dark. And of course the kids enjoyed the rides! Adiel was tad disappointed that he couldn't ride the "bigger kids' rides" because he would have needed an adult to ride with him and I couldn't leave Erno unsupervised. There was also some show things going on, but the boys were to busy with the rides to watch them. I did persuade them to watch one show and it was pretty good. Three girls dancing with fire.

Today it's raining so we decided to rent some DVDs. Hopefully the weather will improve so we won't have to stay inside the whole shcool holiday. Although a lot finns do go outside even in poor weather and I used to too, but Australia cured me of that habit :-) I've ceased to see the point of standing in the rain while the kids play. Plenty of places to go indoors too :-)

This is probably one of my favourite youtube videos

2008-10-11T06:56:00.000-07:00

Cracks me up every time. I noticed that there's also a one about mac, pc, and Linux, but I didn't find it as funny as this one.

What does a koala say?

2008-10-03T01:22:00.000-07:00

Other than zzzzzzzz?

Well have a look:

What a tragic day....

2008-09-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

Teemu came back from work today and told me about this news. What a sad day it is. And so soon after the massacre in Jokela. I can't help but wonder what is wrong with the world today. The downside to the media in our world is that the news travel faster than ever and they're right infront of our very eyes. So even in a country like Finland it's so easy for disturbed kids get stupid ideas from the big world.

I also have to say that this is even more touching for me now that my son is in school. Heaven forbid for anything like that ever happening in an elementary school, (or any other school for that matter) but I guess these days you can't be sure of anything. You want to believe that you're kids are safe when they're in school, but then again, are they ever really safe anywhere? After all you never know when you go shopping if somebody has come to the same mall with a bomb in their backpack like in 2002.

I just finnished reading this book:

And could not help but think about the Jokela school shooting. Little did I know that something like that would happen again so soon.

SOCCER AND READING

2008-09-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

I love books! I always have and I've loved reading ever since I learned how to do it when I was 5 years old. Adiel's learning how to read now and I never realised how exciting that would be for me too! I love being a part of this special time in his life when he's entering the magical world of books in a new and fascinating way! I can't wait to be able to share some of my favourite books with him and introduce him to that world. Of course his taste might be different from mine, but that's fine too! I hope he'll take into reading no matter what the genre (well...you know what I mean)

I've got some easy-read books for him from the library and he's been excited to read them. And I've been so excited when he's wanted to read to Erno for bedtime story. He's not only learning how to read in finnish but also in english so he's got a lot of work to do, but I have no doubt he'll be just fine!

Adiel has enjoyed playing soccer too. His Team's had quite a few games this season which has been really exciting for Adiel. Apparently rain isn't an excuse for not playing! Well...if it was, there wouldn't be much playing soccer around here :-) See for yourself:

Adiel was so proud to get a shirt with his name on it! I love the look of concentration on Adiel's face! It's one my favourite expressions that he has! He's so cute!

Raindrops Are Falling On My Head...

2008-09-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

What makes someone lie in the rain for two hours in front of a parliament building? No, not madness. The climate change. If we don't stop the climate change while we still have a chance then that's madness.

I was part of the Finland's Big Ask campaign and as part of that campaign we were lying on the stairs of the parliament building to form the words: ILMASTOLAKI NYT (The Climate Act, now). Today was the day when the MPs started their work again after their summer holidays and we wanted them to make a commitment to sign the climate act which would cut down the carbon dioxide emissions by 5% each year. And we need to do something about the climate change now and not wait for the next goverment to take care of it.

Yesterday when I saw the weather forecast I was laughing. I thought it made the whole thing even better. I did do my best to wear something warm (unfortunately I don't have anything that's 100% water proof) and I did manage to stay fairly comfortable for the most of it, but after the whole thing was over I was wet and cold and needed to use the toilet. I was on the fourth step. I think that's the closest I've ever been to the parliament building before.

Of course I know it takes more than just lying in the rain to make a difference. There were people talking about the enviromental issues there too and they mentioned three things that each individual can do about the climate change:

1. Living arrangements.
-it matters where you live and how you arrange your heating and if you live close to work and/or school etc so you don't have to travel that much.

2. Traveling
-use the bicycle and walk whenever you can. Use the public transportation and avoid the other forms of transportation.

3. Limit your meat consumption
-even one day of vegetarianism in the week will help.

ON POLITICS

2008-09-04T22:38:00.000-07:00

Yes it's true. Teemu is running for city council this year. His friend persuaded him to do it. Personally I've always thought he'd be good at it. Then again, I've always (i.e. as long as I've known him) thought he'd be good at anything.

He created an election blog for himself, but since the election is run in Finland, where most voters speak finnish, the blog is also in finnish. Good way to keep up your finnish, Elle! ;-D I've added to my link list anyway.

He's running for the green league in, which is the third biggest party in Espoo. As most of you might not be familiar with the finnish political system, I'll fill you in. We have a multiple party system, which means that...well...we have multiple parties :-) 14 registered parties to be exact. There's even a communist party which sometimes comes as a shock for people, but hey, this is a democratic country where even communist views have to be tolerated. Don't worry, it's not very big party and I don't think they have any seats in the parliament.

I have always voted in the elections, but I've never been this excited about them!

ON MOTHERHOOD

2008-09-02T04:12:00.000-07:00

We found a mother's day card Adiel had made in pre-school for last mother's day. Adiel wanted me to read what the card said. It said: "You're the best mum in the world!". I asked Adiel if he thought I was the best mum in the world. He said it was just something the teachers told them to write on the cards. I then said: so you don't think I'm the best mum in the world? And he said that he doesn't know if I am or not. And that maybe someone else is better than me, but how would he know? I then asked if he wanted to have someone else as his mum and he said it wouldn't make a difference who the mum is. I guess I could have been offended by that, but I couln't help but wonder how smart my boy is. But I have to admit that it warmed my heart to hear Erno say that he wouldn't want anyone else to be his mum but me.

I then started a conversation with him of the things he thought the best mum in the world might do. I asked wheather she would let kids have lollies and sweet treats everyday. He said: certainly not! I then suggested that maybe she'll let kids do whatever they wanted and never say no to them? He thought about that for a while and said that she would have to say "no" sometimes, but not too often. I then asked him what he thought the best mum in the world would do? He said she would play with her kids often.

I suppose I haven't been playing that much. It's nice to get feedback from you kids and know where you could be doing better. I guess I could play with them more. Often I'm just too tired, but hey, that's no excuse! A lot of times I prefer reading a book or just taking a nap rather than playing, but first things first, right?

Now what did they do to get us?

BEWARE THE PAPARAZZI IN THE HOUSE

2008-08-26T06:53:00.000-07:00

Adiel got his own mobile phone just couple of days before the school started. He was really anxious to get one and oh the joy when daddy finally took him to a mobile phone shop. His phone has also a camera in it and he's been taking heaps of pictures. Too bad I have no idea how to upload them on the computer. Otherwise I would definitely share them. Some of the pictures are really cute, but some of them aren't. Like the ones of me getting dressed. I've deleted those and told Adiel that I doubt that he wants to show pictures like that to his friends.

Erno's been taking some pictures too with our digital camera. Technology is really amazing isn't it? I was never allowed anywhere near a camera when I was four. I'm not even sure we had one in our home at that time and even if we did my mum didn't really take a lot of pictures. Adiel was also shocked to hear that when me and Teemu went to school we didn't have mobile phones. Heck, even our parents didn't have them! I guess that proves just how common the mobile phones are in Finland. There's really not that many school kids without a mobile phone.

I'll give an update on our biking trip once I figure out how to publsih the draft. It's almost done and needs some editing, but every time I try to edit it, I can't. Instead, I'll just post some pictures of our trip to moominworld.

If you have small kids and you're traveling to Finland this really is the place to visit. Few years ago it was ranked the third best themepark in the world! I don't remember by who, but not finns! Last year the moominworld won the golden pony award

Little My in the first pic and then Little My and Snufkin singing and playing on the porch of the moominhouse.

They played "who's afraid of Stinky?". A very popular game in my childhood. Only that it was called "who's afraid of the black man?" back then. Later that name for the game was banned as rasist (as was the card game called "Black Pete" and the lollies called "nigger's kiss"), but Adiel told me they had played "Who's afraid of the black man?" in school so I guess things have calmed down again. Or maybe our son is just attending a school that supports rasism, who knows...

I've still seen these lollies too, although some people consider them rasist too:

And this is the "Brunberg's kiss", (formerly "nigger's kiss")

Oh, I almos forgot to add the cutest picture of all! This is picture of Erno holding Sniff's hand when they're playing "The red light, green light" Or "The mirror" as we call it in Finland.

EDIT: so I finally managed to edit the Aland post and publish it, but I couln't change the date from when I started it so you have to go back a little in the posts to find it. Hope you do!

Yeah, I'm a nurse...

2008-08-17T04:20:00.000-07:00

This was just too funny so I picked the things that I actually do agree with completely! So I'm posting it even though I know that it'll take another nurse to understand it.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE A NURSE WHEN...

You believe that all bleeding stops ... eventually.

You have the bladder capacity of five people.

Your idea of a good time is a cardiac arrest at shift change.

You encourage an obnoxious patient to sign a self discharge form so you don't have to deal with them any longer.

You say to yourself "great veins" when looking at complete strangers at the grocery store.

You have ever wanted to hold a seminar entitled "Suicide ... Doing It Right".

You have ever had to leave a patient's room before you begin to laugh uncontrollably.

You have ever restrained someone and it was not a sexual experience.

You believe the waiting room should be equipped with a Valium fountain

You have been exposed to so many X-rays that you consider radiation a form of birth control.

Your most common assessment question is "what changed tonight to make it an emergency after 6 hours / days / weeks / months / years)?".

Your idea of gambling is an blood alcohol level pool instead of a football pool.

You will never name a daughter "Melena" or anything along those lines.. and laugh to yourself every time you hear someone by that name

Your immune system is so well developed that it has been known to attack squirrels in the backyard.

your friends call you for medical advice

when checking the level of orientation of a patient, you aren't sure of the correct answers

you are the only one at the dinner table NOT allowed to talk about your day at work.

your family members must have a fever of at least 105 or be missing a limb with active bleeding in order to receive your sympathy

You do the "only-27-more-minutes-of-t

he-shift-from-hell happy dance"

You believe the more equipment you see on a nurses belt, the newer they are

You believe If the child is quiet, be scared.

You believe there is no such thing as a "textbook case"

You want to throttle anyone that states: Night shift must be so boring, all the patients do is sleep.

You hope there's a special place in Hell for the inventor of the call light.

Everything only happens all at once

Most everything can seem humorous...eventually

You notice that you use more four-letter words now than before you became a nurse

and then my own addit:

You keep wondering what made you choose nursing in the first place

The first day in school!

2008-08-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

Can anyone remember their first day in school? I can't. And my mum didn't take any pictures to capture the moment either. I do have some memories of the first year though, but not the first day. I wonder how long Adiel will remember this day? I'm sure it will stay in my memories, since it was such an exciting day for me! I can't believe how fast the time flies!

In Finland they start school on the year they turn 7. I know that in a lot of countries they start a lot sooner. And the school day is also shorter in Finland. The first 2-3 years it's only about 4 hours long. However the definition of school also varies. Or at least from what I've heard. Even though in a lot of countries kids start "school" sooner, their school is not what we call school in Finland. Actually it sounds a lot like our kindergartens :-)

Funny thing about that is that some mums in Finland think that kindergarten is somehow bad for the kids and that kids should stay home with mummies or daddies until they're 7 and go to school. On the other hand in Australia mums seemed to be quite eager to put their kids to school as soon as possible (at the age when finnish kids would start kindergarten) and if you hold your kid back they would find it odd. At least that's my experience. Many people were wondering why Adiel didn't go to school in Oz.

But back to this day:

a little shy at first...

...but relaxing as soon as he found a familiar face from his pre-school.

Ahvenanmaa or Aland

2008-08-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

I think I'll use the swedish name of the island since it's shorter, even though I have to spell it incorrectly, because if I used the scandinavian alphabets my foreign friends' computers might get really confused and mess it all up or even tilt. :-) Plus the Aland islanders prefer their swedish name and probably don't even like the fact that there's also a finnish name for their island.

So we left the kids with my dad and his wife and prayed that the grandparents will survive it. We left on Sunday arvo from Parainen and pedaled towards Korppoo (60 km).

We biked on a lot of different kinds of roads. Paved and unpaved bikepaths and along the driveways.

The archipelago in Finland is so pretty. It's amazing, consisting of over 20 000 islands. If you ever travel to Finland, you'll have to see it. There were some bridges with nice views and some ferry crossings.

On the second ferry we were the only passangers. Ferry trips were good moments for recovering.

At end of the day we took advantage of so called "Every man's rights" and set our camp on a hill near the harbor. Every man's rights is definitely one of the best things in Finland. They don't have that in Aland however, so we had to pay for our camping there. Sometimes when foreigners come to Finland, it takes some time for them to get used to the system. You are allowed to pick berries or camp for free on somebody else's land, for example.

"In Finland, everyone may walk, ski or cycle freely in the countryside (i.e. on all private land, except in gardens in the immediate vicinity of people’s homes or in fields and plantations which could easily be damaged. This right is called in Finnish the "jokamiehenoikeus", literally translated "every man's rights", similar to other Nordic countries. During the winter, however, skiing is permitted on fields). They may stay or set up camp temporarily in the countryside, a reasonable distance from homes, pick mineral samples, wild berries, mushrooms and flowers (as long as they are not protected species). They may fish with a rod and line, row, sail or use a motorboat on waterways (with certain restrictions), and swim or wash in both inland waters and the sea. They can walk, ski and fish on frozen lakes, rivers and the sea.

The right is restricted. They may not disturb other people or damage property, disturb breeding birds (or their nests or young), or disturb reindeer or game animals. They may not cut down or damage living trees, or collect wood, moss or lichen on other people’s property, nor may they light open fires on other people’s property (except in an emergency). They cannot disturb the privacy of people’s homes, by camping too near to them or making too much noise, and neither can they leave litter, drive motor vehicles off road without the landowner’s permission, or fish or hunt without the relevant permits." Source: Wikipedia

Next morning we woke up early since our ferry was leaving on 6.30 am. Great thing about ferries were that traveling was free for cyclist. I never realized that there is actually such a thing as free travelling. Trip to Aland took five hours. Ferry had a few stops on some of the island along the route. Ferry had a cafeteria so we had some hot chocolate for our morning tea.

Around noon we arrived to Langnas, Aland. We started our 35 km way to Maarianhamina, which is the capital and the only city in that region. We saw a nice spot for swimming along the way. So we had to have a dip. Oh it feels so wonderful to have a dive in cool water on your biking journey!

After our visit in Maarianhamina we headed to Bomarsund (40km). Bomarsund had some ruins of russian fortress that was blasted on Crimean War 1854 by british and french.

We saw some historical monuments as well as some vegetation and farm animals. We spent our night on camping ground. Unfortunately the sauna was fully booked, but Teemu had another swim. I settled just for a warm sauna and the luxury of some shampoo.

Next day we took a ferry (5 min) and biked across Vardo island (14km). Then we took a ferry (3,5h) to Brando where we biked 12 km. We cauught a bus so that we could make it to Turku (100km) on the same day. From Turku we biked to Parainen (20km) to see the kids.

In following map you can see our route. Blue parts were by bike, red by ferry and green by bus. So we biked about 179km in three days. And I didn't even feel like I've had enough. Adiel was tad disappointed that he didn't get to come, but we promised that next time he could. I'm sure he could manage maybe about 30km/day. He loves riding his bike just as much as his mum and dad do!

Näytä suurempi kartta

I was tagged again...

2008-08-02T06:22:00.000-07:00

10 years ago...if I can remember that far

I had been married forever so for about two months. I got the best guy.I was in college starting my second year of nursing. Teemu and I were homeless so we lived with this lovely family from our ward.

5 years ago...man, that's even harder. I was the happy stay-at-home mother of 22month old Adiel. I was also getting ready for our holiday in Greece. I had no idea that this trip would be so memorable. What a lovely souvenir we brought home with us. This is what happened nine months later...

5 months ago... I had just started my new job in ED in Jorvi Hospital. And that's about it.

5 things on my to do list for tomorrow:
1. Go to church
2. Give a primary lesson
3. Take Erno to a birthday party
4.Take a nap
5. Go to work

5 bad habits

Can only come up with 3, but they count for at least 5.
1. Spending too much time on the internet and I mean way too much time on the internet
2. Procrastinating
3. Being indecisive

5 places I have lived in
1. Sydney, Australia!!!
2. Valldal, Norway
3. Oulu, Finland
4. Porvoo, Finland
5. Espoo, Finland

(And about three more places in Finland but they only asked for 5. Random order.)

5 things people may not know about me
hmmm....you already know about my cat freezing days from my previous post, but let's see what I can come up with. I'm sure most people know this stuff anyway, but here we go:

1. I have studied finnish, english, swedish, spanish, german, french, estonian. And 4 of those languages I've also studied in a foreign language (swedish).
2. I'm still not sure what I'm gonna do when I grow up.
3. My dream is to run a marathon some day
4. My grandma picked my name for me.
5. 7 months before my wedding day I wasn't dating and was definitely not gonna be married at the age of 21.

5 people I tag

1. Noemi (I found out that you're reading my blog. Or at least have visited it once).
2. Mari
3. Beatta
4. Carli
5. Suzi

Celeste Aida!

2008-07-25T23:47:00.000-07:00

As I told you before, we did our 10th anniversary celebration in parts this year. And one part was the opera festival. It was everything I had hoped for and more! We dropped the kids off to my sister's and they had a jolly good time there too. We then drove about 400km to Savonlinna. The next day we had a "pre opera" dinner where we enjoyed good food and a good show. Our waiter could have done a better job though, but that's fine. I guess they aren't always that perfect even in the fancier restaurants. He brought our desserts before the main course and when we mentioned it we had to wait for the main course a loooong time. Anyway, it couldn't ruin the night for us. The Opera was amazing!

Teemu tried to highlight the toilets of the castle, but you can't really see them that well. Anyway, we thought they were quite funny.

They had really amazing performers from all over the world. The role of Ramfis was played by Jaakko Ryhänen, a famous finnish bass and he did a great job. Here's a couple of scenes from Aida that I could find from youtube.

One picture speaks more than a thousand words!

2008-07-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

On our anniversary post I gave a little insight of things we were planning to do this summer. I know it isn't quite over yet, after all I haven't even had my official leave yet :-)

Here's some shots from Puuhamaa. I haven't been there since I was a kid and we all had such a good time! It was awesome. I'll post more stories and pictures of our summer later.

We were so lucky to have such a nice day for our day in Puuhamaa. Otherwise we would not have gone. That was the warmest day of the summer until then. Luckily we've had warm days after that too.

Camping

2008-07-03T06:13:00.001-07:00

We had so much fun last weekend. Erno's been wanting to sleep in a tent ever since our trip to Queensland in 04/07. So last weekend was the only weekend for a while that we could do it. There's a national park not very far from where we live and the ward was having a barbeque in there on Saturday so we decided to combine these two interests. We took the bus to the national park on Friday evening and then walked about 2 km's to the spot we had chosen for our camp. Erno surprised us how he had no trouble walking at all! He was so thrilled and we did not have to carry him at all.

When we were in Australia Teemu really missed the finnish forests and I don't really blame him. Although I love nature wherever I go then I can't help but to admit that the finnish forest is just so so beautiful. In the summer it's so green everewhere we go. It's a very green country during the summer and I just love the green.

As most people know, Finland is a country of thousands and thousands of lakes. The lakes are almost everywhere. In Espoo alone there are probably about a 100 lakes. Our camp was by a lake too.

In the lakes we have a lot of vegetation too. Nuphar lutea (yellow water-lily) is a very common one.

We made a fire and had some hot dogs. The boys were very excited about the fire. Bushfires aren't as big of a problem in Finland as they are in Australia.

The morning was so amazingly beautiful and peaceful that I just had to have a morning swim. It's something you just have to do, even though you know the water is cold. After all, the water is never very warm in Finland. there were no other people around so it was the perfect time for some skinnydipping. Teemu and Adiel followed me, but Erno passed.

and decided to enjoy the hammock instead. I know what you must be thinkin! The same thing people in Oz always said about our photos of Finland: looks cold! And you're right. It wasn't the warmest day of the summer, but that's okay.

After luch we headed for the ward activity which was about a three km walk and again Erno amazed us by not voicing a single complaint. He seemed to love the walk and the more difficult the track the better! Maybe next summer we have to take the boys to the lapland!

Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of the ward activity but it was a lot of fun too. Included a lot of sauna and swimming (in our bathing suits this time in case you were wondering...). And yes, the water was cold, even though it was a different lake this time. Someone measured the temperature after a guessing game and it was 17 degrees of celsius. So pretty cold, even thoug not the coldest water I've dipped in.

APOCALYPTICA

2008-06-23T06:04:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favourite bands. I think they're just amazing! I have a funny story about them too to share. A few years back there was an american family in our ward and the guy worked in the embassy doing visa interviews for people traveling to US. Well he interviewed the members of this band once, but of course did not know who they were. They went in one by one and he started asking the questions. Here's roughly how the interview went:
Q:why are you going to the states?
A: I'm playing in a band and we're going there for a tour.
Q: Oh really, what do you play?
A: The cello.

And each guy gave the same answer and then with the last guy he was like:
So there's five of you in the band and you all play the cello?
A: Right.
Q: What kind of music do you play?
A: Heavy metal.
Q: Heavy metal? On the cello?
A: That's right.

They were approved :-)

This one is for you Mari!

Midsummer Day's eve!

2008-06-20T09:20:00.000-07:00

This is the night that doesn't get dark. Or should be. That's how I grew up to believe until I moved to southern Finland. I grew up in the northern Finland (but not Lapland) where it didn't get dark in the midsummer night. That was just one of the things I learned to take as granted. Northern lights was another one. I remember my first night duty in a Hospital in Helsinki on the midsummer night was a shock. It got dark!! Well only for a couple of hours but still! There were also no more northern lights during the winter.

I'm an night duty this year too. That's ok, I've got used to the couple of hours of darkness :-) And the weather isn't so good, so it's good to be working on "Juhannus" (Midsummer Day in finnish). Good pay too!

Not many people stay in the city. Most people take off to their summer houses which are quite common in Finland. A lot of people drown too, since it's one those public holidays that give you a good excuse to get drunk. The finnish tendency of drinking too much doesn't really go well together with warm summers, light nights and thousands of lakes. There hasn't really been any photos to take of our Midsummer, but I'll share with you some photos of our trip to Linnanmaki (Castle Hill :-)) which is an amusement park in Helsinki. That was a rainy day too, but it was a good day to be there, since there were practically no queues.

They had this really funny labyrinth that had glass walls all over. The boys banged their heads on the walls a few times, because they didn't see the wall. That was so hillarious! And we all solved the labyrinth in the end.

OK, here we go, the story behind the dead kitten

2008-06-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

Maybe you'll find me less (or more) weird after the story. It was when I was living on my own in a student apartment. It's not really a dorm, but I shared the apartment with a roommate. I had a cat who got pregnant before I got her to the vet. She had 4 kittens and one of them was died or was born dead, I'm not sure which. Anyway, it's illeagal (at least in Finland) to bury a dead animal unless it's your own back yard and obviously I didn't have my own back yard. My dad did, but he lived 600 km's away. It's also illegal to throw a dead animal in the waste. So what do you do? Well there was this place that you could take them to, but that was pretty far away and I didn't have a car. So I wrapped the dead kitten in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer to wait for the time I could find out a way to get to the place to get rid of it. In Finland people are usually quite good in following rules and regulations. At least if you compare to Australia :-)

I did not mention anything about a dead kitten in the freezer to my roommate since we had our own boxes in the freezer and we usually did not touch each others' boxes. Or maybe she did, who knows, and she probably did, in fact. Or I haven't come up with any other explanation. I went away for a week and was gonna take care of the kitten problem after that. While I was gone my roommate had left for her summer holiday and since she was gonna be gone the whole summer she had rented her room of the flat for someone else during the summer. When I came back from my trip there was a new person to greet me in the flat. That was ok and we got a long great. However the kitten from the freezer had disappeared. I did not want to greet my new roommate with: "Now what have you done with my dead kitten in the freezer!?" So I waited a good while so we could get to know each other better before asking her. She said she had not seen any dead kittens in the freezer and that if she had she would not have stayed in the flat a minute longer. :-) So I suppose my previous roommate had done something with it (don't know what) and probably still considers me the weirdest roommate she ever had.

I WAS TAGGED

2008-06-14T09:21:00.000-07:00

Hmm...this one's a bit tricky. I'll see what I can do.

Random and/or weird facts about me:
1. From my previous post: I'm a cheese fan
2. I'm also a movie fan. I also like to combine these two (i.e. watch movies and eat cheese). Check out filmgator.com
3. I jumped from 10 meters when I was 10. Into a pool...
4. I sometimes consider myself a "bad girl in good girls outfit". That's all I'll reveal, you figure it out ;-)
5. I have the best husband and the best kids in the world.
6. I love to bicycle. A good way to burn the calories of all the cheese I eat....
7. I'm not quite sure how you'll take this one, but I've had a dead kitten in my freezer. Loooong story.

SO CHEESY!

2008-06-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

I love cheese. I try to keep my cheese consumption under control but I think this time I may have gone a bit overboard. I just realized that there is 10 different kinds of cheese in my fridge. And doesn't even include the pack of Brie that we just ate today.

So here we go:

Cottage cheese
Cream cheese
Grated mozzarella
Grated parmesan
Emmental (swiss cheese, the strong kind)
Blue cheese (finns make the best blue cheese in the world!)
Goat's cheese
Feta cheese
Polar cheese (light cheese, saved for cooking)
Cheese spread

I'm stuffed

HAPPY ANNIVERSERY TO US! Yesterday

2008-06-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

I know, can't believe it's been 10 years already! And we don't look a day older than in that picture, right? RIGHT! ;-) We weren't really gonna celebrate yesterday since Teemu was working and we've made plans to celebrate later this summer. However Teemu did manage to sneak out of work a bit early and we went to watch the Indiana Jones movie.

Then later this summer we're going to Savonlinna opera festival for the first time in our lives! I'm really looking forward to this and am really excited. The festival is held in the medieval Olavinlinna castle which I've never been to before either. I'd say it's the perfect place to see Aida. The Opera I've always wanted to see! I haven't actually seen a lot of opera before. I saw "La Traviata" when I was 10. I didn't really understand the plot, but I loved every second of it anyway.

And also we're planning to go to cycling trip together. Just the two of us. We're planning to go around the finnish archipelago and maybe even go to Åland (or "Ahvenanmaa" in finnish) it's an island between Finland and Sweden that belong to Finland, but has autonomy. I've never been there before either, but I've heard it's pretty. And they only speak swedish there, so it's like going abroad :-) But I don't know if we'll make it that far, depends on how much time we have. But it doesn't really matter how far we go. The cycling is the best thing! I'm also looking forward to that.

ERNO TURNS 4

2008-05-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

I'm sure every year with every mum there's two "I can't believes"
1) I can't believe how quickly the time has gone
2)I can't believe how big (s)he has gotten

Yes it's your "baby's" birthday. For the past few days that's how I've felt. Feels like we haven't stopped celebrating Erno's 4th birthday. Or actually fifth, since in my book the actual day of birth is the first birthday. Saturday we had lunch with my dad and stepmum+ my brother and his girlfriend. Sunday Teemu's brother came over with his family and Wednesday was the kids' party.

Erno wanted a moomin cake for his birthday. It must be one of the best cakes I've ever baked and it was actually quite simple. If you have no idea what the moomins are then this might help: http://www.moomin.fi/moomin.htm

And here's the cake. I think I did a splendid job!

Erno invited lots of friends. All girls except for Adiel. He did envite one of his cousins too, who's a boy, but he couldn't come so it was our boys and the girls. Adiel's a bit upset that Erno has more "girlfriends" than he does. They had a great time too! Erno is so adorable. It's hard to explain how, so you just have to see it for yourself:

We sang the song first in finnish and then in english while he did his funny little dance.

And he blew out all the four candles too!

Erno was dressep up as a bee and Adiel was the spiderman. Here's a picture of their costumes:

It takes one to know one, eh?

2008-05-12T00:14:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting experience a few nights ago. I was on the bus on my way home from work. I noticed a russian couple with a toddler on the bus, but didn't really pay much attention to them at first. When they were getting off the bus they showed me a little piece of paper with an address on it and tried to ask if they were getting off on the right stop. I nodded and they got off, looking a bit bewildered. Suddenly it hit me, that maybe they were coming from the temple and staying with a member that lived that way (I had heard someone talk about a russian couple with a toddler staying with sister Strömberg).

My stop was the next one and when I got off I was wondering if I should run back to the previous stop and show them the way. I couldn't see them though so I rang sister Strömberg and asked if it was indeed the couple that was staying with her that I had seen. And it was. I said they were on they're way and she thanked me for letting her know since she was quite worried about them.

We had some russian members stay with us a few months back. Luckily one of them was very fluent in english. Otherwise it might have been quite an interesting experience :-) We even learned some russian words, which is nice since I like learning new languages.

Speaking of which, we had a stake conference last Sunday. Our mission president gave his talk in english and it was interpreted in finnish. He said something very fancy that I have to ask him sometime what exactly was it that he said, but it was somehting that made the translater sweat and ask if he could repeat it please. Then the mission president explained that he just likes to see someone else struggle with the language, for change. What a naughty thing to do to the poor translator!

HAPPY VAPPU!

2008-05-01T08:57:00.000-07:00

The 1st of May is a public holiday in Finland. I worked this Vappu, so our family didn't do anything special. We do have some Vappu traditions though that we hold on to. Even when we were in Australia. I usually bake "munkki", except for this year, when we bought them from the supermarket. Here's a picture of one we bought. I don't know how to describe it. I guess it's kinda like a doughnut without the hole :-) Sometimes they have jam inside, but I have not yet learned how to insert the jam in the homemade ones.

We also drink "sima". That we buy from the supermarket since every year I decide to make my own Sima and then every year I realize that it's too late since it takes about a week to be ready. But I still have very good memories of the sima my grandma used to make. Mmmm...that was so good!

We also buy helium balloon for the kids. I never had them as a kid myself since my mum could not afford them, so it's something I wanna do for my kids, because helium balloons are so cool! Somehow Erno managed to get some of the helium out of the balloon already so his balloon doesn't stay up anymore. We used Adiel's balloon for the picture.

Here's some aspects of Vappu from Wikipedia:

Today in Finland, Walpurgis Night (Vapunaatto, Valborgsmässoafton) is, along with New Year's Eve and Juhannus, the biggest carnival-style festivity that takes place in the streets of Finland's towns and cities. The celebration is typically centered on plentiful use of sparkling wine and other alcoholic beverages. The student traditions are also one of the main characteristics of "Vappu". From the end of the 19th century, "Fin de Siècle", and onwards, this traditional upper class feast has been co-opted by students attending university, already having received their student cap. Many people who have graduated from lukio wear the cap. One tradition is drinking sima, whose alcohol content varies. Fixtures include the capping of the Havis Amanda, a nude female statue in Helsinki, and the biannually alternating publications of ribald matter called Äpy and Julkku. Both are sophomoric; but while Julkku is a standard magazine, Äpy is always a gimmick. Classic forms have included an Äpy printed on toilet paper and a bedsheet. Often the magazine has been stuffed inside standard industrial packages such as sardine-cans and milk cartons. The festivities also include a picnic on May 1st, which is sometimes prepared in a lavish manner.

The Finnish tradition is also a shadowing of the Socialist May Day parade. Expanding from the parties of the left, the whole of the Finnish political scene has adopted Vappu as the day to go out on stumps and agitate. This does not only include center and right-wing parties, but also other insititutions like the church have followed suit, marching and making speeches. In Sweden it is only the left-wing parties which use May 1 for political activities, while others observe the traditional festivities. Left-wing activists who were active in the 1970s still party on May Day. They arrange carnivals and the radio plays old leftist songs from the 1970s.

The First of May is also a day for everything fun and crazy: children and families gather in market places to celebrate the first day of the spring and the coming summer. There are balloons and joy, people drink their first beers outside, there are clowns and masks and a lot of fun. The first of May includes colourful streamers, funny and silly things and sun. The first of May means the beginning of the spring for many people in Finland. There is also an erotic frisson involved with Vappu's ribald side. The only semi-humorous adage is that one who doesn't have a romantic partner on Vappu will have to make do without one also on midsummer night.

Traditionally May 1st is celebrated by a picnic in a park (Kaivopuisto or Kaisaniemi in the case of Helsinki). For most, the picnic is enjoyed with friends on a blanket with good food and sparkling wine. Some people, however, arrange extremely lavish picnics with pavilions, white table cloths, silver candelabras, classical music and lavish food. The picnic usually starts early in the morning, and some hardcore party goers continue the celebrations of the previous evening without sleeping in between. Some Student organisations have traditional areas where they camp every year and they usually send someone to reserve the spot early on. As with other Vappu traditions, the picnic includes student caps, sima, streamers and balloons.

BICYCLE, BICYCLE...

2008-04-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of this, but Adiel rode about 10km on his bike today! He got a new and much bigger bike only about a week ago since he grew out of his old one while we were in Oz. He's been riding it heaps. My BIL invited us over today after church, but they only had room for 1 person in the car. Teemu had rode his bike with the boys to church since it's only about a 1,5 km from us (with Erno in the trailer) and I had walked. So I got the ride with my BIL's family and Teemu and the boys got on their bicycles. I wonder if Adiel's gonna be sore tomorrow. Here's some biking pictures.

Sirpa and Adiel (1 yr) ready for 120km/3 day bike trip on summer 2003. Espoo, Finland.

Our family on the overnight bike trip on the woods on summer 2003. We had a boxer girl called Wirna in those days. Espoo, Finland.

Henrik, Adiel's cousin, is giving a ride for Adiel and Erno at a park nearby our home. Summer 2005. Espoo, Finland.

Touring around Dubbo Zoo, NSW, Australia. August 2007.

Biking towards Capitol Hill in Canberra. September 2007.

2008-04-26T07:48:00.000-07:00

Today was the stake youth babtism day. They had babtisms from 9am until about 2:30 pm. I signed up for a laundry shift this arvo. It was my first time to do laundry in the temple and it was quite interesting, but I liked it! Everything went so smoothly. It's hard to believe that we've had the temple in Finland for less than two years. Seems like it's been here longer. I'm so used to being able to go to temple whenever without having to travel overnight on a boat full of smoke and drunken people.

Here's another picture from the open house in 2006:

And here's just one more temple picture, but not from Finland, although the granite looks very familiar. Can you guess where this one's from?

I'M A SOCCER MUM!

2008-04-17T06:19:00.000-07:00

Adiel's been so excited about soccer for some time now. So I bought him his first own soccer ball and enrolled him to a soccer team. His first time there was yesterday and he was so thrilled! The first thing he asked me when I picked him up from pre-school was: am I gonna go and play soccer now? He had a great time too. Teemu went with him since I had to take Erno to his...hmmm...I'm not sure what it's called in english, but Erno goes to this playschool kind of thing where they sing and play. It's called a "musical play school" in here.

The bicyckle season has started too and I've had a great time riding my bike to work (5km). The boys have enjoyed riding their bikes too. Adiel has grown out of his bike so we need to buy a new one for him. Riding our bikes and bike paths was definitely one of the things we missed in Sydney.

Sorry, no pictures this time...lazy.

2008-04-04T23:30:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUVI!

We finally made it to Tampere to my niece Suvi's 5th birthday party. This was the first time I saw my sister Sari and her family and my sister Satu-Maaria and my brother Seppo and my mum after being back. So it was so far the biggest reunion.

don't you think she's the cutest little princess!

My other niece, Sini

This was the first time we were able to get a picture of all my siblings together.

From left to right: Seppo, Sari, Satu-Maaria, Saija, Sirpa

We're not all from the same parents though. Me and Sari have the same mother and father. Seppo and Saija are my siblings from my dad's second marriage and Satu-Maaria is my sister from my mum's second marriage.

SO WE KNOW WE CAN DANCE!

2008-03-24T00:26:00.000-07:00

I love to dance. I'm not saying I'm very good at it, but I love it. My boys seem to like it too. We had a lot of fun.

We watched the film Madagaskar with the boys. They really enjoyed the song "I like to move it" and Erno started t0 demonstrate just how much he likes to move it. The clip isn't very good, but you'll get the idea :-)

Easter traditions

2008-03-21T08:03:00.000-07:00

I'm not working this Easter. I have 6 whole days off! So I thought I might write something about finnish Easter traditions, since it might be interesting for people who are not familiar with them. One of the most famous Easter decorations is the "Easter grass" that a lot of people plant before the Easter and when it's grown they put decorations on it: eggs, little yellow chickens, flowers, roosters and sometimes bunnies, even though Easter bunnies aren't really part of finnish traditions, but we've started to see them more ever since the american traditions have become more familiar through tv and lds missionaries. No kidding! Lds missionaries have brought american football with them among other things.

Another big Easter tradition in Finland is "virpominen" on the palm sunday. It was last Sunday so our boys too did it. What is it? Well, the kids go gather some branches of a willow tree with willow catkins in it which you can usually find this time of the year. Then the kids decorate those branches with bright coloured eggs and feathers and paper, dress up as witches and go from door to door to "virpomaan". Which means they say a little rhyme while waving those brances to bring good fortune to that house and in the rhyme they say that they will give that branch for a reward. The reward is usually sweets or few coins or a fruit (not a very desired reward, though). Our boys were so excited to do this. They've never done it before. Here's a video clip of them practising:

Wait a minute! You might ask. I thought Finland was a christian country, but what does this have to do with christianity, or Easter or even Palm Sunday!? Well, this is a christian country, but only for the last 800 years or so. Before that we were pagans with pagan traditions. It was easier to adopt the new religion if they were allowed to keep their pagan traditions, just with new (christian) meanings. The tradition is actually a mixture of eastern orthodox and western "witch" traditions. Some people consider it too pagan and want nothing to do with it, but we think it's just harmless fun.

Food is also a big part of Easter in Finland. We too have the chocolate eggs, but the easter egg hunt hasn't really been part of finnish Easter celebrations until just recently and only with some families. We'll probaply do it, since the boys got familiar with it in Australia last year. We do also eat lamb with the Easter dinner. The most common traditional Easter desserts are probably mämmi and pasha.

picture by wikipedia user strangnet

In my family mämmi has always been eaten with sugar and cream. No other ways have I ever even heard of before meeting Teemu and also learning from wikipedia rather peculiar ways of eating it (Bread spread, give me a break, WHO does that?). It's a dessert made of water, rye flour and powdered rye malt, seasoned with dark molasses, salt and dried, powdered Seville orange peel. The finns traditionally use a lot of grain in their cooking since it's one of the few things you could grow here before the greenhouses and imported goods. When it comes to mämmi (pronounced maemmi) there's usually no middle grounds. You either love it or hate it. I like it when served with cream and sugar (not as bread spread), but I can't eat too much of it at once. Our kids don't like it.

As much as I do like mämmi, I like pasha even more. Pasha is a desser made of curd, cream, eggs, sugar and butter and is finally decorated with fruits. I make it every year, except for the year we spent in Australia, since it's quite hard to get curd in Oz.

picture from koivunenraunoanneli.net

Happy Easter everyone!

Getting started

2008-03-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

I've had so much fun reading others' blogs so I thought that maybe I'll have fun writing one too. Yes, we do still have our website (www.kotona.net) which doesn't get updated very often. I don't even know how to update the website so it's Teemu's job. And our website is in finnish which means that there's only a limited number of people who can read it, since finnish isn't very universal language.

I might just start with posting pictures from our trip to New Zealand. The picture above is from that trip, just south from Christchurch on our way to Kepler track.

So we started from Christchurch, rented a car and headed south with some spectacular views on the way. We also picked up a hitch-hiker on the way down and learned a bit more about the country from him since he was a kiwi.

Teemu and I both love hiking/bushwalking/tramping (we're getting kinda confused with all these different terms) and it had been a while since we had done it without the kids. We did a little bit of tramping in Tasmania with them, but they get tired pretty soon for just walking and need constant entertaining (like playing tag) to keep it interesting. How blessed we were to have such wonderful friends to look after our kids to make this trip to NZ possible! We can't thank you enough, Mari!

We drove from Christchurch to Twizel, where we spent our first night. Boy did I sleep well that night! I can't remember the last time I slept so good! Later we learned that Twizel was one the filming locations for the Lord of the Rings movie. From Twizel we started heading to Queenstown, where we stopped only for a little while, since we were quite eager to get to Te Anau. However we stayed in Queenstown long enough to book ourselves for a rafting trip on our way back.

Our second night we spent in Te Anau, after updating our gear. We're so glad we did that! We only had one sleeping bag with us, since Teemu thought he could manage without one. He decided to find out just how cold the nights can get on the track and weather or not the huts are heated. Luckily he did that, since he found out that it can actually get quite cold and they might not even heat the huts in the summer. So he decided to rent a sleeping bag after all. We also bought a backpack for me, but it had to be small enough so we could use it as a handluggage on the plane on our way back to Finland.

In the morning we couldn't wait to get to the track so we left quite early after a good breakfast. After some 13km's of climbing we reached the Luxmore Hut ( 1,085 m (3,560 ft)) on Mt Luxmore. The Hut was pretty Full and some of the people were very noisy. It was quite strange for us since a wilderness hut like that in Finland would be anything but noisy. We met a nice american couple and played some skip-bo with them.

A view from the Luxmore Hut

In the morning we continued to climb. We even took the climb to the peak of Mt. Luxmore (1,472 metres (4,829 ft)) for a 360 degree view including Lake Te Anau. The next little series of pictures shows how much Teemu enjoys a little sight of snow. He had to jump in and do some skiing, without the skis, of course ;)

Ready.... Set,

GO!

The Alpine section of the track is pretty amazing. Let the pictures speak for themselves!

The second day was about 14,6km long walk. We had the perfect weather on that second day! After the alpine section it descended via a series of zigzags into a hanging valley. The track descends through forest, and provides a view of a large natural landslide. We then reached the Iris Burn Hut (497 metres (1,631 ft)) where we spent the next day. At this point my feet were hurting pretty bad. My boots were brand new and not very well broken in. For some reason I didn't even use my double socks strategy which has always worked so well for me before. I had blisters on my heals already after the first day and it was getting worse. But I'm not the one to complain so I kept going. Close to the Iris Burn Hut was a lake, but I'm not into swimming in freezing cold water if there's no sauna involved. Neither was Teemu...at least not this time.

The third day was a 16,2 km walk from Iris Burn hut to the Motorau hut. It was through a beautiful forest. That day we had lots and lots of rain, but I didn't mind. The forest was so, so beautiful. I felt like I was in a story book or something. Yes, bring on the elves and the hobbits and the ents, I'm ready! Unfortunately we didn't manage to see any of those, but we did see some curious kea birds.

We were quite happy to get to the Motorau Hut and away from the rain. Thanks to the rain we walked pretty fast and didn't take too many breaks. We had plenty of time for a well deserved afternoon nap and some more skip-bo in the hut. Our final day we walked a bit shorter way than we had originally thought, thanks to my very sore heels. We walked only 6km from the Motorau Hut to the Rainbow reach where we got a bus to Te Anau. From there we headed straight to Queenstown where we both had pedicures and the next day had some great, great fun rafting down the Shotover river.

Since Teemu really loves maps I'll have to post the map of the track here too: