winter holiday

It's been a wonderful winter holiday. Eventually the temperature dropped below zero (Celsius) and the frosty air brought the feeling of winter to us. We've also got some snow and it feels like heaven now after the long, dark and wet "winter". This all can be gone next week but while I'm on winter holidau I can enjoy this with all my heart.

So we've been out a lot as many others. It didn't take long for the fresh snow to get footprints all over - some smaller and some bigger. I just had to take picture of my foot beside this footprint. Someone's got a big foot...

Yesterday we visited Pitkäkoski. It's nature reserve area in Helsinki, about 20 minutes ride away from our home. I like that area a lot. There are nice paths and bridges there to walk. It's one thing I missed in Lappeenranta a lot: Nice walking paths in the middle of forests. There were some but not as big as the central park of Helsinki which has 4 nature reserve areas in it, a lot of jogging tracks, paths and even duckboards (planks). The central park starst from the downtown of Helsinki going all the way to Vantaa. Even tough we visit that park rather often I still would get lost in there without Juha. Here is Pitkäkoski:

Juha and Jonna enjoying the view.

Here some pictures from along the way we walked...



Another day we visited Haltiala which is another nature reserve area in the central park of Helsinki. It's even closer to our home. I love walking on the planks and there I can do that!

One thing I like on the nature reserves is the funny looking trees.

Viivi enjoying trees...
Now it's my turn...

At the end of the walk we enjoyed this scenery were sun painted the near by neighbourhood with gold.

One thing one just must do when there is enough snow is to go sliding. Very close to our home is a nice hill and that's where we headed today. It was worth it!

Well, we keep on enjoying our winter as long as it takes. I hope you'll enjoy yours!

Stockholm

We made a quick one-day-visit to Stockholm right before Christmas in the beginning of the Christmas brake. I enjoyed the ready made meals on board the ship and in Stockholm and the time to just relax in a cabin. I also like the city of Stockholm very much and walking around felt very good.
The old part of the city is my favourite with all the narrow alleys and old buildings. Fortunately we didn't need to buy anything so we were able to just wander around and enjoy the window dressings which brought the Christmas spirit to me after a hectic time at work.

In the old town we also visited the Stora Kyrkan (the big Church). It was a lovely moment to calm down. We lit some candles and I prayed alcohol free Christmas to children in Finland.

We also visited one mall quickly and watched all the people making last minute Christmas shopping. We ate in Burger King -thing we always do in Stockholm while we don't have it in Finland and we loved it in USA.

On our way back me and Viivi took part in competition and won these chocolate bars. It was a reaction game where you had to push the buttons that turned on in the right order. I got 164 in a row, the next one got 54 and Viivi who was third got 28. Am I good or what?!

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!

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!