New coins

Look how wonderful coins I got from my brother! He visited India with a mission group this February. You can read more about his trip to india and Bangladesh at his blog. If you don't understand Finnish you are not able to read it but there are also nice pictures from there. I wish I could visit those beautiful mountains some day! W don't have mountains in Finland at all and I really enjoyed Rocky mountains when we lived in Colorado.

Here are the other sides of the coins. I also got coins from Bangladesh. I didn't have any coins from there yet so now I have coins from 108 countries all together. So my collection is getting bigger slowly but steadily. Still way to go. I encourage all of you to travel a lot and then donate the extra pocket money that you don't know what to do with them after the trip to me! :)

At Norvajärvi

Last weekend we had a nice long weekend in Rovaniemi in Norvajärvi about 15 kilometers away from downtown Rovaniemi. Juha had his final big exam at the university of lapland. That gave us a good excuse to go to Rovaniemi as a family for couple of days because there might not be any reason for doing that any more after Juha gets his law degree. He still have some studies left but big exams are over if he passes this one.

Juha belongs to PAM (Service Union United PAM is a union for employees working in the private service sectors) while he used to work as an safety guard. PAM has a little resort village for the people who belong to PAM. We have been there several times and we love the place. It's very small, having only 6 cottages, it's situated on a very beautiful and peaceful place and it's inexpensive. Well, there isn't running water or bathroom in cottages but in a main building you can find both of them. In a main building there is even a tv.

We had such a good time! It was so relaxing. Here you can see how we enjoyed it.

First of all the landscape was so beautiful! As you can see. The other thing was that there was lots and lots of snow which I personally miss having in southern Finland. I love playing in a snow piles! And that's what we did...

The snow inspired us in many ways.

Viivi enjoyed being outside the most. She would go out by herself even when we others decided to stay in and relax. Here she peeps us through the window:











We also had plenty of time read, play games, stare at the fire etc. Girls got new legos from Rovaniemi so those had to tested too. Legos are their favourites! In a main building was a corona-game too. It's kind of biljard but in stead of balls you have little discs that you try to get in to the bags in corners of the game board. I think the corona was invented in central Europe at the 15th century. I played it a lot as a child while a friend of mine had it at home. Juha had it his home so he is still very good in it after so many furious games with his brother in childhood. The other game we learned was rummy. We had it at my childhood home and I bought it now to our family. So we had several games of Rummy too at the cottage.

How I wish we could have a fireplace at home...

When we visit Rovaniemi we always go to the swimming hall. So we did this time too. We all love swimming but I also like aquajogging a lot. It's very efficent and you are able to talk to someone while aquajogging which you can't do while swimming. There are aquablets for everyone to borrow almost in every swimming hall in Finland. So we aquajogged some too. I wouldn't stop swimming in swimming halls for that but jogging is definately a good extra thing to do in swimming halls. Try it if you hav a chance!

Still few more pictures of Norvajärvi.

There was also an outside fireplace.

Isn't this a good picture to end this post? We have such a beautiful nature here in Finland. I'm thankful to God that I was able to enjoy it in Rovaniemi. We need these special moments in life in order to go on in our every day life.