Isabella's 3rd Birthday

Yesterday we had Isabella's 3rd birthday party. Grandma and Stephanie came over from England for it and there were lots of other guests. All of Isabella's cousins came: Aletta, Aarne, Ellen, Lilian and Karin. And a couple of Bella's friends, Natu and Olivia, came. A lot of fun was had and there were lots of presents and cake!

Lovely photos by Irena

On a slightly chilly Saturday morning a week ago Bella and I headed over to my friend Irena's house to take Bella's annual photos. She does such a lovely job and I am truly thankful to have her in our lives (not only for the photos of course). She captures Isabella so well and she has the patience to wait until the moment is right (or to take enough so that the good ones are in them). The photos that were taken at her daycare this year were not good at all. It was hard to pick which ones we should buy! It shouldn't be hard to get a parent to like a photo of their child! So I was especially thankful that Irena could take these photos. I hope you like them as much as I do!

Happy Thankso'ween

Two Canadian holidays are quite close together- Thanksgiving and Halloween. So when the Finnish-Canadian Society that I am the Chair of here in Finland decided to celebrate the holidays we knew that we wouldn't be able to gather people for two separate occasions. So on October 24th we smooshed them together and celebrated Thankso'ween! It was great. A large turkey dinner with people dressed up in costumes. Great fun was had by all and we all left with big full bellies.

They also had some face painting at the mall...Bella chose the lovely purple horse. And our fellow Canadian friend Kristina and her son Max brought us a couple of pumpkins that she grew in her own garden here in Finland...this is what we did to them!

Word Cloud Crazy!

I had a little fun a few weeks back by making these word clouds out of Bella's blog. I fed in the blog years into the generator and what came out were these representations of the most used words in this blog year by year. They change a little but you can see who is featured the most. If you don't know how these things work, the more you use a word, the bigger it gets in the word cloud...seems that someone features pretty prominently in this blog...I wonder why?? :-)

Going to See Grandma Again!

Going to see Grandma usually means one thing...Fun! And this time was no different. This first photo is of their trip to Gulliver's World in Warrington and she was bound and determined to be a pirate!

Although I was sick...and getting sicker every day, everyone else was having a good time. I tried to keep Bella entertained as much as possible since I was the only one home with her most of the time.

Our flight over was quite late and it was with Heather of course, she had come to visit us for the weekend previous to us going over to the UK. That was great! She was a star at entertaining Isabella while she was here...not surprising since she has two kids of her own.






We did get out a little while we were there. We went to the park before Taneli headed off south to Wales where he was going to watch the Ryder Cup. At the park as usual, she didn't have the courage to walk across the ropes so he had to go up and get her. :-) Bella and I went on a double decker bus...she loved it. And we even went on a train to visit Heather at her house.


We went shopping where she went in the bus to drive it...although please note, it was never turned on. If you ever want to see her run fast and scream, then please, feel free, and use your money to turn one of these contraptions on...so far, our experience with these "treats" at the mall have been very economical! She also got a blow up Dora...she insists on calling it a Dora balloon...but it isn't. Which is good because it meant that we could just let the air out and bring it home with us. yippeee...









As usual, the weather wasn't anything to write home about (or in a blog really, so I really won't go on about it). But I had got her her own duck umbrella and she had a few opportunities to use it!











The last few photos here were taken by my mom when they went to Gulliver's world. Apparently she enjoyed herself! (and went on a few rides!) Well done Bella!!

Croatia September 5- 12 (or the time Bella had tonsillitis)

So the night before we left Bella had a fever of 39.5C...but I wasn't going to let that stop me! Oh no! I had waited too long and paid too much for it! So off we went. She did ok on the flight...I gave her some paracetamol and she took it like a trooper. When we arrived there was a bit of a wait to get through customs in Split but again, she had her pink trunkie to ride on so she was ok. My friend Vesna and her sister were coming down from Zagreb to meet us (just for the day) so I was excited to get to the apartment and get settled. When they arrived they too us grocery shopping and we picked up some yummy cakes. Now I new something was really wrong with Isabella when she refused to eat chocolate cake...very rich, yummy chocolate cake. She just wanted to lay down and sleep. While she slept and took it easy, us four girls: Vesna, her sister, Katriina and myself, went down to the beach. Now as lovely as the water is...it had started to cool off by the beginning of Sept. So it was a little chilly and very, very salty! The first photo here is the view from our balcony...lovely! And this photo with the flowers is a photo from the second balcony...there were three!



This is poor Bella stamping with her new paint stamps that I had bought especially for the trip- thank goodness for that! I don't think that we would have made it through a week of poor, sick Bella if we hadn't had the stampers!

Isabella was on a weird roller coaster of being full of energy and eating to then 5 mins later needing to lay down and unable to swallow even water...so I was stumped. So on Tuesday we took her to a doctor there with the help of the apartment owner and found out that she had tonsillitis! What a surprise...totally not expected. But we got her some antibiotics and by Thursday she had perked up a lot! So then she got the chance to go to the beach. The weather was still very nice about 26-28C, so being on the beach was great...it was just a little less great when you had to go into the water. Although once you were in, it wasn't too bad. We walked around the UNESCO Heritage site of Trogir...a city that is about 1000 years old. That was nice but Bella got pooped as you can see...










































Taneli rented a scooter and was zooming around for a day on that. Isabella, like me, was not in any hurry to be sat on that with him while it was in motion but she did pose for a picture. She also enjoyed wearing the helmet in the apartment when she was riding her trunkie suitcase. She would always say "so we can be safe" just like
Dora!







The rest of the time went just going to the beach (which was about 400 metres from the apartment) and playing in the small yard of the building where there were fig trees (Bella found out that she liked fresh figs), lemon trees, orange trees, and lime trees. Unfortunately, none of the other fruit (other than the figs) will be ready until December...