Viivi is ten

You realize how time flies when you look at your children and notice that they are getting bigger and bigger. Our baby is now ten! What a joy Viivi has been for us these ten years. She has an unique personality!
This is Viivi with her favourite teddy bear which she got from Santa. Viivi loves soft toys. She also makes certain that mommy and daddy have a sleeping toy every night. She picks tem up very carefully.

Viivi likes jokes and telling them. She likes to be funny in many ways as you can see.
But there is also a more serious and thinking part in Viivi. She can be very angry at the angent ruler of China for killing so many innocent people and she wonders many things in this life.
As you already know Viivi plays the violin but she also likes to play the piano at home. Mommy is trying to teach her but I'm a lazy teacher at home. This year Viivi has had maybe ten lessons all together. Bad me!
We read a lot in our family. So Viivi enjoys reading too. She likes fairy tales and I still read her bed time stories every ones in a while. I like those moments but unfortunately I'm many times too tired in the evening for reading or just busy.
This is what Viivi bought with her birthday money. Aren't the modern legos wonderful. I wish I would have had thosein my childhood. Both our girls like them a lot and they have lots and lots of these girly legos. I think they are good toys teaching creativity and they also last long. the only problem is that vacuuming is a nightmare because you always end up vacuuming at least one of the tiny diamonds or something like that which are very important and you end up opening the vacuum cleaner and you know what comesof that... Well, that's what mothers do for their children!

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...

My Grandmother's 85th birthday

My grandmother had her 85th birthday the 12th of August. We had a wonderful surprise party for her. All of her living children and most of the grandchildren and greatgrandchildren gathered at her home to celebrate her birthday from all over Finland. She didn't know that there would be a party for her! She was so happy to have us all there. I guess the life of a widow can be very lonely time to time.

My grandmother has given birth to 6 girls and one boy who passed away almost immidiately after birth. One daughter of hers has passed away about ten years ago. She has 18 granchildren and 10 greatgrandchildren.

My grandmother and grandfather get to know each other because of the war. My grandfather was a soldier and my grandmother was a nurse. One day my grandmother had to take care of my grandfather - her future husband. So, I guess I should be happy that Finland was in war with Russia (or actually Soviet union).

My grandmother is still living at home and in my opinion she's doing fine. Fortunately she doesn't have any problems with her brains or memory and discussions with her are very interesting. She is still travelling some.

My grandmother is originally from that area of Finland that now belongs to Russia. She has very dear memories from Terijoki. I have visited Terijoki too when I was 9 years old. At that trip we also visited Leningrad (now called Sant Petersburg). I got lost on a subway down at the main avenue. Somehow I managed to walk back to our bus in front of the Eremitash. My parents were of course almost losing their minds. My mom told that she went to a bathroom to pray and after that she walked right to me.

Anyway I love to have a big family. Most of my cousins are same aged and now there are many same-aged greatgrandchildren too. Our older daughter is the first greatgrandchildren to my grandparents and also first grandchildren for both my parents and my husband's parents.

In this picture you can see my parents before the birhtday party.

Here is our younger daughter Viivi in a North Karelian national costume. That's where I spent my childhood. With Viivi is my sister's older son Joonas. We went to Oulu where the birhtday party was in one car. My sister couldn't go and our older daughter Jonna also couldn't go. So in that car were my parents, Viivi and Joonas. Children enjoyed the trip a lot.