Finn Kids Having Fun

Last week I went with my friend Mia to an indoor sports arena. Once a week they let the kids run loose with tons of balls, gymnastic equipment, and a bounce house. The boys were so excited. I haven't seen them this excited since we moved to Finland. Who new that 5 euro could create such an exciting experience. Mostly, they just loved to run in the open space and kick the balls, but they also really enjoyed the gymnastic equipment.

Ryan wanted to come back the very next day. However, the excitement died down as we had to get dressed, walk to the bus stop, and wait. Smiles and hugs were replaced with frowns and struggles, and that is why we won't be going every day! With such a long winter, I was glad that the city thinks of fun ways for the kids to get out their energy.

Nap TIme

There's nothing like a nice long nap...

in a hard piece of plastic storage underneath the bed!

I actually couldn't find Ben for a minute or two. I looked all over the house and started to get a little panicked because I didn't know where he was. I actually had to pull the blanket off of his head. He had gone in there and covered himself up to hide from a diaper change which I guess I forgot about, and he feel asleep waiting for me.

Date Night

We have such great friends here in Finland. They recently became concerned that Tony and I had not gotten out by ourselves since we arrived. My friend Suoma graciously volunteered to babysit our kids and my friend Mia drove us downtown and picked us up later that night so we could experience an evening out in Oulu. We went out to an island that is just a short walk over a bridge from downtown. There was a cute little restaurant in an old log building that serves authentic Finnish food.

Tony ordered the elk meatballs and reindeer stew. I bravely tried one bite of each and went back to my steak. We sat and talked and walked around downtown Oulu and overall really enjoyed the night. The photos are from our phone so they're not the best.

Leah is Sitting

Leah has grown unsatisfied with living life only on her...

stomach...

and back...

and has started to sit by herself...

with some help...

or for a handful of seconds by herself.

The Last Big Snowfall!....I Hope!

These pictures are from a couple of weeks ago when we had another 4 inches of snow dump on us. My friend Mia and her daughter Sophia came over to play outside with us. The kids were excited to build a snowman. We started with one, and then we decided to build a whole family. What started as a project for the kids quickly turned into a mommy project. The snowballs got so big so fast that it took two of us to lift them. We were exhausted by the time we built so many snowman, but it was fun for everyone. Ryan suggested carrots for the noses, and Ben was concerned about getting the eyes on just right.

The Whole Family. From Left to Right: Tony, Sarah, Benjamin, Leah, and Ryan

Me and the kids and our friend Sophia

Fun with snow

Easter in Finland

We had a great Easter Saturday together. We had been saving some U.S. easter candy that Grandma Becky had packed for them when Grandpa Charlie came to visit. We hid baskets around the house and had the boys look for them. We tried to get some nice pictures of the kids, but nobody ever looked at the camera at the same time so here are our best shots.

At the end of this post you will see the way Finnish children celebrate easter. Children dressed as witches come to your door and recite a chant wishing you luck and good health. They give you willow sprigs with brightly colored feathers glued to them in exchange for candy and coins.

This is apparently a combination of traditions. The Karelian tradition (a group of people once part of Finland but now belonging to Russia) of giving willow sprigs to friends and neighbors on Palm Sunday is instead of the palm branches that the people in Jerusalem greeted Jesus with. The other part is a Finnish tradition of children walking around as witches and trolls between Good Friday and Easter Sunday signifying that with Jesus in the tomb, evil spirits were free to move around.

On Palm Sunday we had a group of children come to our door. They let me take their picture and make a short video clip of their chant for us. I gave them a few coins, and thus we participated in a Finnish easter celebration.

Ryan's 1st "Peeps"

The game is, "Guess how many candy Whoppers are in my mouth"

Ben lovingly cared for his "Peeps" as he ate them one by one.

This is the kid's on their easter egg hunt for any who are interested.

Leah is Five Months Old

I can't believe how old Leah is getting. She is five months old now! I also can't believe that she has spent most of her short life in Finland. Here is a look at how she's grown.

Mammia

Tony was at the store last week with his work colleague and he said to Tony, "Try this, it's very Finnish. I don't think they make this anywhere else." handing him a brightly colored yellow package with brown sludge in it.

Tony politely said, "What does it taste like? Is it a dessert or is it salty", and his colleague in turn replied, "I can't explain it." Tony then asked, "Aren't you going to buy one for yourself?" He said emphatically, "No, I don't like it, but you eat it."

I asked my friend about this easter Finnish food, and she replied with a smile, saying that she liked it and it's so Finnish that one little bite of it will have me magically speaking Finnish.

My visiting teacher at church said, "Mammia is really good with lots of cream and sugar." Her brother said, "The thing about Mammia is, the more cream and sugar you put on the better it tastes. And what's even better is when you eat the cream and sugar and leave out the Mammia!"

In light of these glowing endorsements we let the Mammia sit in the fridge for two weeks and on the eve of its expiration we reluctantly pulled it out in a half hearted effort to try it. You would think it looks like a nice plate of chocolate brownies, but one whiff of it tells you it's something much worse. Apparently it's main ingredient is fermented wheat. Tony tried it first and said, "it tastes pretty good, but let's throw it out now." I tried it next, and one tiny taste of it sent me running to the sink!

Some of the other Finnish delicacies are blood pancakes and liver casserole. To be fair, they also are known for making delicious cakes. Mammia was definitely a once in a lifetime experience!

Christmas in March

Tony has been wanting a Drobo for a couple of years. I really can't explain what it is so here is the definition via Tony:

A Drobo is a safe and expandable external hard disk device that makes two or more hard disks work together as a single disk. The Drobo provides safety (or "redundancy") for data because the same data is saved to at least two different hard drives at the same time. So if one hard disk breaks (which actually happens relatively frequently), you still have your data on the remaining working hard disk

Anyways, we've never come to agreement on spending that much money on a hard drive. However, after publishing a paper in a journal the University of Dauphine (France) gave Tony an award that had very specific ways that he could spend the money.

Tony ordered the Drobo and it arrived last week. Tony took Leah in the stroller down to the local post office and picked it up. When he came home, he walked in the door and said, "Merry Christmas!" Poor Ben picked up on this right away, thinking that Tony had brought a present that had a toy in it for him. I had to explain to him that this is a present for daddy and that it was not a toy. He still thought it was pretty cool.

Leah Laughing

Ryan loves to interact with Leah. He is a great big brother. He is always trying to get a reaction from her, some sort of noise, and then he will ask me what she said. On this particular day, he wanted to make Leah laugh, and lets just say he succeeded in a big way.

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.