Happy New Year

We have strong family traditions for epiphany. This year we are not at home on Epiphany so instead of New years celebration we celebrated Epiphany today. That means we lit all the candles and chose the best christmas card of the year. Of course we will watch the fire works in the night.

Here are all the Christmas cards we rechieved this year. I LOVE CHRISTAS CARDS! Thank you all for sending one to us!





































This is the best!

I wish you all Happy and Blessed New Year 2007! May the peace of our lord be with you in everything that comes along on your way next year!

Time

One thing I love the most in holidays is time. Time to do many things you don't have time norally. I like dong crafts. Today we went to buy felting needles (I don't have a clue how you call them in English, help me if you can) and wool. You can see the pretty little mouse Jonna has done at school here. I decided to do easier stuff.


I made some flowers with the same cast I use for ginger bread cookies. First you fill the cast with wool and then you just stick it with that special needle and you get a felted flower (or whatever shaped cast you have)! Easy and quick and I think rather pretty too. You can add different colours on top of the basic as many as you want. Oh, how I enjoyed doing these. Tomorrow I need to go and buy more different coloured wool and casts. Maybe I'll even try some character. Jonna stated doing a horse - OF COURSE!

family Tykkyläinen on ice

We laso found a lot of carbage on the lake. That made me sad but it also looked like art.

Look how smooth the ice is! It was very alluring but we stayed close to the shore. From further you wouldn't realize it's ice because it looked like calm surface of the water. I love winter!

More Christmas

One new thing here in Lappeenranta for us is that we decided to be a friend family for foreign exchange students. For this 6 months we got to know two Chinese girls Ying and Lan. They will be going home soon. We've met them maybe once a month. It's been interesting! Why I'm telling you this is the Christmas balls. I found out that Ying loves them and here are some pictures of the balls in our tree for her!

On a Christmas day we were out alot. The sun was shining and it was frosty outside - so just perfect! We even found out that bay on the other side of our home had ice on it. Couldn't resist it!

I had my camera with me. The other day I had seen beautiful pictures of frozen roots etc. at Terry's blog and I wanted to have some of my own. Here are some of my catches:

The ice had so smooth surface that people were skating on it on the other side of the bay.

Christmas Eve in Lappeenranta

As you may know we celebrate Christmas in Christam Eve in Finland. The routines of the day go pretty similarly in every family. This Eve was a little different compared to ones we've used to have.

The morning starts with children's programs in TV. We watch the phone line to Santa Claus where children can call to Santa and maybe sing a song for him.

After that it's time for the traditional rice borridge with hidden almond in it. This year none of us got the almond! On top of the borridge we put little cinemon and sugar.


After the borridge time we've used to go to Christmas sauna but this year we skipped it. I remember only one other time in my life when I haven't been on sauna on Christmas and that was then when we were in Poland on Christmas. It was year 1989. We went to East Germany on that vacation too and get to witness the brake of the Berlin Wall. We got our own pieces. Well, I've already lost it but the memory still holds!

The reason we didn't go to sauna was simple. We didn't have time for it. First our daughters had to go to sing in the declaration of the Christmas peace in city hall. It was a short ceremony were a brass band played, children sang and town manager read the declaration. Right on the moment when children game out and the ceremony started it started to snow. In the morning it was totally black christmas here (and again is) because of the very strange weather of this fall. Even the lakes are still free from the ice. But on the momoent it snowed and look how it snowed! As if God wanted to let us know that I'm here. The snow stopped when the ceremony stopped.

After that we visited home shortly and headed to the church in downtown. There was a family devotional service in there. The string orchestra I lead was performing there. In that orchestra play 13 2-graders who started playing the violin this fall with me. It's been fun! Well, they don't know much of even how to hold the violin so our daughters were there as assistants. It was a very warm service and all the songs we sang and played went well and I got to be involved with music!!! Special blessing to me! There are some of our angels in here:

When we came home Santa had visited our home and left all the gifts under the Christmas tree. That normally happens after Christmas dinner later in the evening but while our routines had been broken we decided to brake them thoroughly.

Gift opening is always so much fun! We try to keep the amount reasonable and I think this year we even succeeded in it. I got a brand new bible with golden pages and foreign coins. I also enjoyed some jewerly from New Zealand from my cousin. Jonna's favourite was mp3 player, Juha's favourite was a hand made scarf from Peru and Viivi's favourite was a huge teddy bear. Girls also loved the new costumes they got. What the whole family loved was the Twister game. It was just too hard to play with your stomach so full...

After the gifts it was time to eat. Ham, of course, with potato, sweet and carrote cassaroles. Yam!

Thn we had to go out to walk and burn some calories. It was time to head to the cemetary. It was so beautiful there! It was like a candle ocean. We lit two candles on a statue for the loved ones who've been berried somewhere else. There were so many candles there that it was hot close to it!

All in all we had a very memorable Christmas Eve here on our new home town. I felt God's presence very strongly in the Christmas peace declaration, At the church and at the cemetary. I hope all of you got a peace of heaven as a gift this Christmas!

Christmas 2006

I love Christmas and you can see it in our home. I enjoy every little thing in Christmas: decorations, baking, gift shopping, songs etc. This year I've had more time to enjoy it because of my new job. As a special teacher I don't have a group to lead so I didn't have to make program to any christmas event of the school. Last year I was involved in three different Christmas celebrations plus our Christmas concert. What happened? Have I been able to enjoy all the extra time? No, I have missed making Christmas that way so much that I found myself crying in a closet one evening.

Anyway my Christmas spirit is very high at the moment. Angels have found their way into our new home. Many of them are warm memories of my ex-pupils whom I miss. You can smell Christmas in our home and hear it through cd-player. My heart is filled with gratitued. God has once again been faithful and helped us through this a big change in our lives. I'm also grateful that He gave us this adventure even tough it hasn't been easy to let go the past. My life is on a solid rock called Jesus and I love celebrating his birthday!

I wish Merry Christmas and blessed New Year to all of you!

chance to change the world...

... at least a little pit. Check this site. You'll find a link to fair trade products. Buying them helps the people who made them and makes a world a little better! :) You also get a touch of other culture!

Mauno's 70th birthday

Mauno is my aunt's husband and very dear to us. He had he's 70th birthday at the end of August in central Finland in a small village called Riiho. It was a lovely birthday! It was amazing that both of Mauno's parents were there too. The other thing that impressed me was that the birthday was held in Mauno's former school where even his father went to school. There are still people who not only know from which part of Finland they are but they also now the actual little village where their roots are. It's hard for someone like me who don't have any roots to understand. Here's the school:

It's not in school use anymore lik the most of the small schools in Finland because people move to the citites more and more. Pity! It really was beautiful place and specially the children enjoyed the place and the birthday party.

I enjoyed meeting the family the most. My father's side of the family don't meet very often and that's why it was such a special treet for me. All the cosins were there except of my brother and the one who lives in New Zealand. Many of the children of us cousins met each other for the first time there. O'boy they had fun! We tried to take a picture of them but as you can imagine... it wasn't easy to keep them still for the moment!

Well, at least they are all there (except of the two in New Zealand - pity again!). We also took a cousin picture:

Poor Mikko! The only man present! Well, maybe he enjoyed being surrounded by beautiful ladies...

Whenever my father's side gathers for party Esko, my father's brother, entertains us with songs. He's an actor and he knows how the make a good show!

In the evening the singing went on on the campfire. That's what I loved! Singing and the fire together!

All in all we had good time in Riiho! Wish we would have more of these family gatherings...