My stepmum's art

My stepmum is great at quilting (and other arts and crafts too). I took some pictures of just some of her works last weekend.

She printed the kids' photos on fabric and then quilted the photo frames. What a great idea!

This landscape is my all time favourite!

Self portrait.

Kitchen decoration (I love the colours!)

And a tiny thing on the bathroom door.

Last weekend

We spent the weekend at my dad's and it was good fun. I've been meaning to post about it for a while already but I haven't been able to download the photos. Well, they're here now and I'm hoping to have a few more in my Finnish blog soon.

We were supposed to spend a day in the Moominworld but it just so happens that I got the worst sore throat ever and wasn't up for a whole day out with the kids and a picnic lunch. So we opted for something easier and went to a museum called Aboa Vetus Ars Nova (Old Turku New Art). It's a museum of contemporary art combined with medieval ruins that were discovered underneath the building when they were renovating it. It's such a delight! They had a special tour for kids that we took. Lucas was a bit too young for that but I went with him and it was ok.

Wild strawberries at my dad's summerhouse. Almost ready to be eaten!

Lucas mowing the lawn with his grandpa. He was so excited that he was allowed to participate in something that involved pushing a very noisy machine! :D

The kids in the museum. They got to wear "medieval" capes and play with a medieval dollhouse.

After the museum we went to a big park that offers lots of things for free. The kids just loved it. They had to control themselves in the museum and now they could just let go and run, climb and play as much as they liked. This park brings back good memories as we used to play there with my sister when we were small and visited my dad. There are so many things to do outdoors and then there are arts and crafts available indoors as well. We didn't even go inside with the kids that day, there was plenty to do outdoors!

One of my favourite things about the park: there's plenty of water all over the place. There are places where the kids can swim and then other places where they can simply play with the water. That day was absolutely too cold for swimming although I did see some kids running around in their swimming suits eating ice cream...

My sore throat finally got so bad that I had to go to the doctor's as soon as we got back home. And sure enough I had a nasty infection and needed antibiotics, which I'm now taking. Lucas had the same bacteria and same treatment. So far it seems Luana got away with it :)

No photos

I've tried to download photos during the week but I always get an error message so today I gave up and decided to post without photos.

The week's been good and it just flew by. On Monday I had a day off and we went to Helsinki with my mum and the kids. We did some window shopping (the kids are getting great at it, even with the toys!), went to an old fashioned cafe (they used 18th Century recipes for the pastries) and visited a big 18th Century ship replica Götheborg that actually sails (pictures here). It was in Helsinki just this week and will go around Scandinavia this summer stopping in different cities along the way (more information on the ship here).

I still love my job and it seems to be possible to make it a part of my studies in order to fill in the missing credits! Now I only need to complete a few more interviews and the actual writing of my dissertation... There's hope!

The kids have sort of had a cold the whole week and today I finally took them to see a doctor. After an overwhelming three-hour-wait (with two grumpy kids who weren't really feeling that well) we finally got to see the doctor, got some medicine and were done. Luana's got an ear infection and Lucas will get the lab results on Monday to see whether it's a bacteria or virus that's causing his sore throat.

Tomorrow I'll work again and then I've got three days off. We'll visit my dad and I'm planning to take the kids to the Moominworld. It's a lovely down-to-earth theme park very suitable for young kids. It's on an island with plenty of forests and even a small beach. There's not too much plastic, glitter and blinking lights around but rather wooden buildings and a calmer atmosphere. The kids really like the Moomins and Luana can still remember when we went there two years ago.