Funnies

The boys were sad to see Tony go off to work one day. They said, "Don't go daddy." Tony said, "I have to go to earn you money for toys and candy." This is something his dad said to him growing up. Ben gets an excited look on his face and says, "Oh Yeah!! Thank you daddy!"

One Saturday, Tony was making dinner with Ryan and I was in the next room listening to their conversation. Ryan asked if Bratwursts are hot dogs. I heard Tony tell Ryan that Bratwursts are the celestial kingdom of hot dogs, and regular hot dogs are the telestial kingdom. Bratwursts is Ryan's new favorite food.

One of our friends told us a joke. It goes like this. What is the difference between an extroverted Finn and an introverted Finn? The introverted Finn will only look at his own toes, but the extroverted Finn has the courage to look at the other person's toes!" The Finns are known for keeping to themselves.

When Tony was cutting Ryan's hair recently, Tony said that he couldn't get Ryan's hair to stand up. Ryan told Tony to "just use the J-ello." Tony had recently explained to Ryan the properties of hair gel as he was getting ready for work one day.

I was at the grocery store one day with my friend and we were just chatting. All of a sudden she said, "Don't be surprised if children come to your door next Sunday dressed as witches waving sticks with feathers glued to them. This is our easter tradition" (See a future post on easter for the explanation) I thought that was pretty funny! I think I cannot help but be surprised by that!

Last week...This week

Leah is ready for church

Last week at church we decided to come home via the train station to show Ben his favorite moving vehicle...the choo choo train. At the train station, I pointed out to Ben about 20 bicycles in a row lined up. I asked him how many bikes there were and he replied "Fives." That's his way of saying alot. I guess to emphasize that there were really a lot of bikes this time, he repeated "Fives" but this time he said it as loud as he could. To him I guess raising the voice increases the quantity of the items he is counting!

Ben thought the trains were even better up front and after a quick tour of the station, we went on to catch the bus from a nearby bus station. As soon as we got off the bus on what we thought was a better than usual trip home from church we realized that one of our bags was missing!

Earlier that day the bag had contained Tony's wallet, but thank goodness he had taken that out of the bag. The bag did have both of our scriptures in it and a set of keys to our house. When we got home Tony called his friend who drove him back to the train station where we thought we left the bag. We had taken the bag out there to give the boys some "mints." Really these are Altoids that we brought with us from the US and often use as a last ditch effort to buy some good behavior from the boys.

Anyways, they asked around the train station and someone had found the bag and already taken it to the police station. They drove over there where Tony safely recovered his bag and all his belongings. To get his bag back however, he had to pay a finder's fee. He had to state the value of the belongings in the bag and pay 10%, which goes to the person who turned in the bag. Isn't that interesting?

This week when we were walking to church, we were stopped by a man who asked if we were from the US. We said we were, and then he asked if we were going to the Mormon church. We said we were. He then came over to us and started confronting us about our doctrine and how we needed to stay away from that church, that nobody there could help us. Tony was eager to talk to him and invite him to church. I was more worried he wanted to hurt us or steal something from us due to his strong tone of voice. Anyways, I was pretty shocked.

I threw in a couple of pictures of Leah in her church dresses.

Building Forts

Recently my sister-in-law posted on her blog how she spent the afternoon under the kitchen table with her little one year old and that they had so much fun reading books and playing. She said she remembered how much fun it was to build forts and have secret hiding places growing up.

That made me remember all the forts I would build in the living room growing up too. The laundry room at my grandparent's house was our elevator when we closed the doors, and all the cupboards in the house were great hiding places for hide and seek. Since the afternoon was going very slow and there almost never seems to be anything to do between 3-5 PM besides fight and whine, I decided we would build a fort!

We gathered blankets, pillows, and clothes pins. Ryan really got interested in putting the fort together with me. Ben crawled around under it and was excited for the "tunnels." It took us about 3o minutes to build and the boys were quite proud of their creation. However, as soon as I walked away to take care of Leah, the fort lost it's interest. They spent the rest of the day playing around OUTSIDE the tent and by the end of the day it had collapsed. Oh, well, maybe they'll like hide and seek better.

Haircuts

The boy's hair has not been cut since December so they were looking pretty shaggy. The haircuts here cost a small fortune though! Tony got his haircut and it cost him $31. We decided to take matters into our own hands and cut their hair ourselves.

We borrowed some clippers from some ward members and went to work. Tony did the clipper work, and I did the scissor work. It started out alright. We had the kids watching a movie while we cut, but things quickly went downhill.

Ryan started freaking out when the hair started sticking to him. I had to hold Ben down while Tony used the clippers. After that, he screamed as loud as he could in short ear piercing burst while I finished cutting his hair. Meanwhile, Tony was trying to give Ryan a bath to get all the hair off, but Ryan considers getting a bath equivalent to living death so he was screaming his head off.

Poor Leah was feeling neglected laying on the floor by herself as was probably scared to death with all the loud crying noise so she was screaming as loud as she could. Well, Ryan finally got his bath, Ben's hair was finally cut and with a sigh he let out one more screaming request.... Gigi's (grandma's) house. He had had enough and I guess he thought his parents were torturing him so he wanted the grandparents!

We weren't able to get any pictures of the boys after their haircuts due to grumpy behavior, so the after pictures are from the next day. Looking at the before and after pictures, I can't tell much difference, but in person they look much better. However, we are hoping that these haircuts will last another three months until we go back home, so that we can put away amateur haircutting days behind us.

The before pictures.

This is how much Ben liked his haircut!

The after pictures.

Going to Church in Finland

We've been to church quite a few times now. It is amazing how different it is. Everything is on a much smaller scale. The building is really small, and the ward only has maybe 100 people in it, but the spirit is so strong here in Oulu.

Everyone looks out for one another and there is a big focus on missionary work. There is a sweet older lady at church who hands the boys a candy each week. Ryan has a person who translates Primary for him. Leah has an older man who loves to old her each week. His name is Brother Hainnen. He was in the circle when Leah was blessed and he informed us afterwards that he was watching her and that she was smiling and laughing the whole time. He told me today that he has figured it out and that he has been alive for 24,000 days!

As soon as we walk in the door with our strollers, there are always people there to take our kids and start undressing them from their snow clothes.

Ben is exhausted by the time he hits nursery at 12PM. One day he was crying and my friend suggested that he take a nap. So he laid down on the mat and squeezed his little eyes shut and went to sleep. He slept for the rest of church and then some. This week we thought we would do the same thing, but alas, we had forgot his teddy bear. Luckily, there was a nice stuffed rat in the nursery cupboard. Ben didn't think much of him however.

The moms with younger kids buckle their kids up and coax them to sleep in their strollers, and then they can go to class. The hallway is lined with strollers with little kids snoozing away. All in all church is a good experience, even if it takes 3 extra hours to make the journey switching buses and walking.

Finns Having Fun

We recently discovered that we live by the beach! It's actually the Baltic Sea, but it is only a 15-20 minute walk from our house. It was such a beautiful day this past Saturday. We could actually see the blue sky, which is a rare occasion in the winter. We decided to walk to the beach and see what was happening. When we got there we discovered a whole other dimension of winter life. Wind-skiing! The ocean is totally frozen right now... a couple of feet thick or so I am told. That didn't stop me from thinking I was sinking every time my foot sunk down in the snow. You could here my little yelps of fear as I walked around. Anyways, there were so many paragliding/skiing people out on the ice. It was so amazing to watch. One guy had an intertube hooked up to him and would pull his kid behind him as he sailed. There were cross-country skiers, moms walking with strollers, and snowmobilers all having a fun day. We enjoyed ourselves. Ryan on the other hand was screaming to go home, while Ben was screaming because he didn't want to leave. It was not a win-win situation. We went shopping at the store on the way home and all in all had a great Saturday.

Is it time to potty train?

Ben has been picking more and more interesting places to take a pit stop. He actually hasn't responded to potty training very well, but hiding in the closet doesn't seem like the best alternative. What do you think???

Dressing Leah

I was in the middle of dressing Leah for the day, when I decided to stop and take some pictures because she was being so cute.

Leah loves to hold her toes!

She's practicing crawling.

Ryan loves to take pictures of Leah and artistically captured her drooling side.

Ryan set up the camera and poses for this picture and asked me to take it for him.

All Dressed!

Snow Castle

At the snow castle we went to visit this weekend there was an area to slide down the racing lanes on tubes. Ryan was quite calm on his descent, whereas I was lets say, a bit more verbal!

The snow castle is located right next to the ocean in a town about an hour and a half north of Oulu. We borrowed two cars and made the drive. We also drove into Sweden and visited a real Swedish Ikea that was just across the Sweden/Finland border. There was a maze inside of the snow castle that ended in a ball pit for the kids to play in. After we toured around the castle for awhile we warmed up over a big cup of hot chocolate in the cafe.

Making Pizza with Friends

My friend Mia is helping me learn new recipes to cook. In these pictures, we were making pizzas when our kids Ben and Sophia decided to join in on the fun. Our little chefs in training!

Sledding at the Park

One of our favorite activities to do here in Oulu is to go sledding. Grandpa Vance was quick to get on the sled and tame the giant hill. These hills are actually all manmade because Oulu is as flat as a pancake. It's almost unreal how flat it is. As far as the eye can see the ground varies by little more than a few inches in height in most places. Oulu and it's surrounding areas was once the bottom of the ocean and is very old which is what causes it's flat terrain. Anywas, back to the sledding... Tony and Ryan preferred a more daring downhill course.

Once there was a snowman...

We have tried in vain to build a snowman since we arrived in Finland. My friend told me that when it is really cold outside that the snow is too dry to mold. Now that the temperature is hovering around the freezing point, we have been able to build our very first snowman! Ryan was excited to roll the snowball around in the snow and watch it grow bigger and bigger. Ben was only concerned that the snowman have eyes. Instead of leaving the snowman at the park for others to enjoy, we shoved it over in a mighty push and the boys stood on the conquered snow. As you can see by the picture, Leah also had a full day at the park.

Leah's Blessing

Leah was blessed in church this Sunday. We planned on blessing her in January before we moved to Oulu, but Tony was too sick to go to church that day. We then were going to bless her in February, but we missed the bus, and weren't able to make it to church in time. We then decided it would be great to bless her when Grandpa Vance was in town, and to make a long story short, that is how our sweet baby was blessed at four months of age. The people in the ward really found it quite unusual that she had not been given a name yet in her baby blessing. The Lutheran church is the predominant religion here and their tradition is to not speak the child's name in public until she has been given a blessing. Many members keep with the tradition. Leah's name is also pronounced as Leia in Finnish, as in Princess Leia from Star WArs, much to the delight of Tony and Ryan. Ryan secretly tells people her middle name is Padme. My friend from church, Mia, surprised us with a cake to celebrate the occassion.

Visit from Grandpa Vance

Grandpa Vance got here late Thursday night. The boys were excited to find him in their house Friday morning, especially when he started handing out the presents which included a loud squeaking duck and a crocodile whose eyeballs start floating when you blow into it's tail! The boys put Grandpa right to work in their favorite activity....wrestling.