Another week in September

Another busy week. In between the week of the last post and this one (but not the posting dates) I spent 5 days in Madrid on a work trip....so we have all been a little busy. Isabella had her first try on the bottle return machines that they have here in Finland. She was very interested in seeing where the bottles went and enjoyed putting in every one of the about 20 bottles.

We then spent a long weekend in a cabin that is owned by my work. We were able to rent it for 4 days. It was wonderful. Lovely autumn days and very quiet. It is surprising because there are many cabins there so it isn't secluded or anything, it is just that time of year when everyone is staying in the city. It was about a one hour drive there. So that was good that we could leave work early on Friday to head out there.


Unfortunately, Saturday we had to leave early to head another 2.5 hours north to go to Taneli's grandma's funeral. A long drive followed by a solemn sit down event (especially when it is first thing in the morning after a nice long night's sleep) is not a good mix with a small child. She was so noisy in the chapel and, obviously, did not want to sit down. Poor girl!


After the funeral itself, there was a lunch at the same Manor house that she had her 90th birthday at this past summer. The kids entertained themselves by pulling the books off the shelves (because the men were supervising). But it looked like they had fun. Isabella and I also went outside for a little while even though it was a little chilly. She saw a cat and decided that she wanted to try to lay down on the ground like the cat... silly girl! She also took a liking to the ladder that was outside. She tried to climb it and when she couldn't she shouted "Daddy help!". hahaha














While back at the cabin, Bella got to watch her first fire. She was mesmerised. We also passed the time colouring with Bella. I covered the coffee table with paper and then she was free to colour whenever she wanted. It was a great distraction. And I had fun drawing as well.

On Monday, we seriously needed diesel...someone had neglected to get some after our long trip. It got desperate and we eventually had to pull over after we truned off the highway one exit too early. Then Taneli had to walk to get some diesel...it took a long time. Unfortunately, he didn't think to do this trip on his own. So what I thought would be an easy 10 min trip (I didn't know how far the gas station was) ended up taking an hour and a half! Not a good unexpected turn for a late afternoon when kids get hungry. What we ended up doing was walking along the path that runs parallel to the highway. Luckily I kept her sandbox toys in the car...and a bottle of bubbles. There was no sandbox but we improvised...

A week in September

During this week in September we went back up to Kuopio and Joroinen because both Taneli's grandmothers were in different hospital. Both had pneumonia- a terrible coincidence. Unfortunately, the grandma in Joroinen died before we had a chance to visit her. His other grandma seems to be recovering though. During this trip, Isabella learned to eat yoghurt (or as she seems to say- yaakob) a new way since we were out and didn't have access to a spoon! It is now her preferred way to eat yoghurt...and it is surprisingly less messy than in a bowl with a spoon!

Isabella also got invited to her first birthday party. It was Natu's 2nd birthday. So she got dressed up in her pretty purple party dress and a trendy little half cardigan and we headed next door. When we got there (a couple of hours after the start due to our trip to visit his grandmothers) chaos had ensued. There was food and melted ice cream and the like. But Natu was up for more fun and the kids were still enjoying playing with the balloons. Isabella really seemed to enjoy playing with his Duplo lego. Natu tried to take advantage of it being his birthday and tried to kiss Bella again! Cheeky boy! He is so funny...

New outfit and raspberries

For this entry I just wanted to show Bella's new outfit. My Mom and I picked it out when she was here but Bella didn't have a chance to wear it then. I also thought that I would add some photos of Bella making funny faces. She can be so silly sometimes! :-)

Day out with the neighbours

We spent this morning with the neighbours (including Bella's friend Natu) and we were able to go to a school close by where they had a police car, a fire truck and an ambulance. The kids could go inside and see them and they could touch things. For some reason Bella wasn't so interested in them. I couldn't convince her to go inside any of them at all! What she did like was to count the letters in the make of the cars and the police id on the hood of the car. Weird. I tried to put her in the fire truck cab but no luck crying and panicking ensued for some reason.
































After we went to this school in the morning, we headed over to the grocery store. We had fun! You can see this from the photos and from the one video here.

Grandma's Visit

My goodness this seems so long ago. I uploaded these photos with the intent of being able to write about them soon after but that hasn't happened. So here I am trying to get these things done before the end of September...good luck! My mom and Stephen were only here for about 6 days but we managed to fit lots in. I even managed to get a little (ans I mean a little) time to myself. That was the walk that they all took together.







We managed to go to the newest waterpark in the area. We hadn't been there before. Lots of fun was had and there was some screaming as well...good screaming. Bella was able to have a lot of fun in the kiddie section. There were 2 slides there that she could use. She liked splashing the most I think. Although, one time she did go down the one of the slides on her belly, that was funny. Luckily I was there to catch her and it was pretty short. After the trip to the waterpark we were all too hungry to wait until we got home to eat so we went to the adjoining fast food place where Bella and Grandma had some fun.

































We went to the park near our house. It used to be for a preschool near our house but one day when we walked home the preschool was in 8 pieces (obviously some kind of prefab building) that they were apparently moving to another location since there weren't enough kids in the area to keep it going. So then the playground got taken over by the elementary school next door. So they decided that they needed to upgrade the equipment to make it more suitable for older kids. But I am sure that when they thought "older kids" they weren't thinking about these two!!























Other things that we did included more playgrounds...of course. But we also went to the mini cabin place nearby for a walk.

























On the morning that my mom and Stephen went on a city bus and boat tour, it was a lovely sunny morning so Bella and I stopped and played in a park in the city centre. There were lots of kids and parents there and she had lots and lots of fun!