Frisbee Golf

What should we do this weekend....play frisbee golf. A couple of weekends ago, we went with our friends to the beach to play frisbee and enjoy the good weather.

Tony is showing you one of the different Frisbees available for playing. Who knew, but there are putter Frisbees, long range Frisbees, and others! The Finns take their Frisbee golf seriously. I saw guys carrying around duffel bags with over 20 Frisbees in them! I guess you can join teams and compete and everything.

The boys warming up.

One of my winning shots!

Another perfectly aimed shot on my part. That Frisbee was never found, and was basically the point when I let the guys play on and took the kids to the beach.

What a beautiful place to play Frisbee, right by the beach.

The boys went exploring after our game was done.

Leah is getting ready to crawl!

Warning! Leah is getting ready to crawl. I am not ready for this to happen yet. I really want her to wait until we get back to the U.S. in one month. I am not equipped to baby proof this house, but she is determined. For all who are interested, I included a video to show her attempts at crawling.

Leah gets up on her tip toes like she is doing pushups. Gathering strength for the big day when she becomes mobile.

Very proud of herself.

Houses and Trampolines

I've been looking for houses around Provo that I like for when we come back and want to buy a house. I found this one house that I like so I looked it up on Googlemaps to see the satellite view. I can already tell there are lots of kids in the neighborhood judging by the number of trampolines I can see from the aerial view! I guess were moving to Utah! I can't laugh to hard though, because the first Christmas after we get a house, we're getting a trampoline.

Bike Ride and Day at the Park

Ben has just discovered that he can ride his tricycle without any help. I have been pushing him on it while I call out, "Turn Ben.... we're going to crash... turn the other way... TURN!" At the same time I am also trying to push Leah in a stroller with my other hand. A couple of days ago though, when I went to push Ben on his bike, he told me that he could do it, and he took off. It was an overnight success story.

Ben goes as fast as he can and steers perfectly and follows Ryan on his bike for 10 minutes to the park and all the way back home. Sometimes twice in one day! Here are some pictures from our most recent trip to the park. We had already been once that day, but in the afternoon Ben watched a Calliou episode where Calliou was riding his bike. Ben looked over at me with an expression on his face like he just had a great idea. He said, "Ride my bike!" and he raced out the door throwing his boots on as he went.

Ryan the climber

The boys like to play soccer together.

Ben makes this face the whole time he rides his bike while making car sound effects.

Jumping in Puddles

It was raining the other night when we were going out so the boys got to try out their new rain gear. They had lots of fun running and jumping in the puddles.

Family Bike Ride

On one of the first beautiful days of spring we all decided to go for our first family bike ride. First the boys tried out the bike seat attached to the adult bike. Then we tried out the kids bikes. This house we rented is great. Who would have thought that there would have been bikes for the kids to ride just their size!

Everyone in Finland has bikes and toting their kids along behind them is the natural thing to do. A lot of the families only have one car, so the other parent goes by bike. Many parents drop their kids off at day care on their way to work by putting them in the bike seat and biking to daycare and then to work. During the day at the park you can also see moms and dads with bike seats on their bikes and a bike trailer for two hooked onto the back of the bike. I love the idea! It's great to put Ben on the bike and take off.

Leah is always up for an adventure.

On our bike ride we decided to all go down to the local grocery store so the boys could pick out some treats on our special day.

Ben enjoying his candy after we got home.

Super Mom

I took the kids to the indoor play group again. They have so much fun there that I'm willing to endure the tiring process of getting their and back. This is how you get around without a car when you have three kids. One double stroller and one 5 month old baby strapped to your body! I have to walk like this to and from the bus stop about 15 minutes away when your going like loaded down like this. And would you believe that this bus stop is up and over one of the ONLY hills in Oulu. I would have Ryan walk, but he apparently, so he tells me, only has enough energy to run around the stadium for 90 minutes and then all his energy is gone. Oh well, they do play hard.

Igloos and Ice Cream

These pictures are from a couple of weeks ago when it was a little colder still. Tony and the boys had been working on building a series of igloos on the side of our house. They literally spent hours out there with plastic shovels digging and hollowing out the snow mounds and connecting tunnels.

Ben was screaming for ice cream one day. I wasn't there, and Ryan and Tony didn't want to go inside yet, so Tony came up with an interesting solution.... let Ben eat ice cream in the snow! We had a bought a box of black licorice ice cream to "try." Nobody liked it but Ben so he just brought out what was left in the carton and plopped in up on top of the igloo. Just let me say no mommy was around to approve these events!

My Leah

I meant to post about something else, but I kept on coming across all these cute photos of Leah so I had to put a post together about her. I never get tired of looking at her pictures... and I hope you don't either! Besides it's her 6 month birthday today.

Ryan took this photo.

May Day Celebrations

May Day is a national holiday in Finland. We decided to go downtown and check it out. Apparently so did everyone else in Oulu. I've never seen such huge crowds. On the way down it was standing room only on the bus for the first time, and when we got downtown, there were 100's of people everywhere, dozens of ice cream stands, candy venues, merchants, and ballons everywhere for sale. Our kids loved calling out, " Look at the Batman balloon. "Look I see a racecar one." etc.

My friend Suoma had come over earlier in the week and asked if we were going to go downtown on May Day. She told Ryan that there would be cotton candy for sale. Ryan was so excited. Everyday after that he asked me if it was cotton candy day.

We walked down to the ocean and along the river and across the bridge, and just enjoyed watching the people of Oulu enjoy their holiday.

This is an interesting tradition in Oulu. Each department at the University is given a different jumpsuit color. These jumpsuits are like the ones you would use to do maintenance on your car, but in Oulu they are your party jumpsuits. The college kids wear their jumpsuits and then when they go to different parties they get a patch which they sew to their jumpsuit. You can see all sorts of different colored jumpsuit, but we shot a picture of a guy wearing a yellow one.