Holidays (and lots of school related ramblings...)

I had great plans about topics and themes we’d cover during the holidays with the kids. Well… My sister visited us for some three weeks over Christmas and New Year and my mum is still here with us until the end of January. So instead we’ve simply enjoyed holidays, which, I think hasn’t been that bad at all… We went to visit my sister-in-law in the countryside for a few days, went to a water park for a day and visited the state capital Porto Velho as my sister left. Above pictures from the water park and from Christmas.

December was spent pretty much at school for my part. I had seven students that didn’t pass English and had to take a week of extra classes and then another test. I actually quite enjoyed teaching only seven kids although they were from four different grades. We were able to play a few games and I was able to give lots of individual attention to each of them. It seems to have paid off: they all passed their test at the end of the week. In Brazilian schools teachers have an incredible amount of paperwork to do. There is a diary for each subject (in my case for each class) and you record what you taught and when as well as who was present that day. All grades go into the diary and at the end of the year you calculate the final notes and copy them to several different places inside that one diary. It’s not difficult but very time consuming and I must have spent hours completing all the diaries.

We did some homeschool work right in the beginning of December and just re-started today. I’m hoping to clarify some Finnish spelling to Luana as well as simple maths in Finnish. She’s simply out of practice with numbers in Finnish (although she does know them perfectly well) and she has only learned to write in Portuguese so now it’s time for Finnish. I’m also hoping we’d get back to the Outdoor Hour tasks especially now that the kids got a kids’ microscope for Christmas.

Luana will start English lessons at the same language school I teach in but that’ll be in the beginning of February. The kids have been asking for English lessons at home too so I might take a look into that as well.

The kids will change schools (from private to public) and will for the first time not be together in the same school. Luana will star first grade and Lucas still has two more years of pre-school left. The schools are right next to each other and they will take the same school bus there and back. I’m not worried about them being in different schools as they’re both very outgoing and definitely not shy. They’re both really excited about their new schools and new school uniforms. They will also get new backpacks this year and their old ones will go to kids that don’t have any. I think we might fill the bags with some stationary before passing them on to their new owners.

Today is a rainy day that will be spent indoors decluttering the house. I've already set aside clothes we don't use anymore and will tackle the kids' toys next...

Stockholm

The only real travelling this summer was our cruise to Stockholm (Wed-Fri). We travelled on board Silja Serenade.

Luana looking at Helsinki as we're leaving. It was bitterly cold on the deck but she was able to squeeze a smile on her face :)

First thing we did was to visit Junibacken, home to Astrid Lindgren's characters. It was a lovely place and the kids liked it a lot. We got to see two short theatre plays and although they were in Swedish the kids still found them interesting. This picture is of Pippi Longstocking.

Then we went to the Royal Palace and saw some of the fine rooms and halls inside. This picture is from the court yard.

Finally a walk in the old town. This is the old market square.

And one of the main shopping streets in the old town.

The cruise takes two nights and you get to spend the day in Stockholm. The boat is great with kids; ours loved the play area! We also had a really good buffet dinner and the kids surprised us by behaving really really well for almost two hours at dinner. They didn't even go crazy with the desserts and allowed us adults to carry on eating even when they had already finished their meals. I had some pencils and small notebooks for them to draw and that was enough to keep them busy until we all had finished our dinners.

The kids were very excited about the whole trip and that came out as tantrums and excessive whining for most of the time. We were trying to enjoy the trip but it was a bit hard at times with at least one of them strongly objecting to everything we suggested... Good memories all the same and the kids sure had a good time! :)

The building I work in

OK, I have to admit I don't actually work in this environment but part of the building I work in looks like this on the inside.
The building was built in two parts in 1815-1816 and in 1826-1827 by a Russian-born businessman Jegor Uschakoff and it represents the neo-classical style. It served as a shop and as a bookstore until it was bought by a bank.

They hired architect Lars Sonck to renovate the building and it was reopened as a bank in 1904.

The City of Helsinki bought the building in 1961 and renovated it. They maintained the old bank hall (pictures above) and the stairway (pictures below).

Art Noveau or Jugendstil just happens to be my favourite architectural style so I love how the the building looks from the inside!

Garden party

We went to a lovely garden party last Saturday. I had three days off and it was such a nice break. It seems I only ever go to work and come home tired when it's almost time for the kids to go to bed. I still enjoy my work a lot but being a full time working mama just isn't my thing :)

My father and my stepmum had both turned 70 earlier this year and now it was time to celebrate that in the garden.

Next to their summer cottage there's an old inn (by old I mean some 200 years old) and we were allowed to use their old stables and the garden, too. Birches decorate the entrance to the stable.

This is the stable door. You really have to watch your head!

One of the stable windows from the outside.

During this week we've finally seen some sun and felt the warmth. The kids have gone swimming after the pre school with my mum and I've worked... Yesterday Luana learned to ride her bike without the two small extra wheels (whatever you call them...). She was so proud of herself! She is also learning how to dive and swim and she's really excited about that too. Lucas recently learned to pronounce the letter r the way it's pronounced in Finnish (by rolling it) and he's now happy to repeat anything with an r after me... porkkana, parkki, riisi, Pirre...

P.S. You can see a few more pictures from the garden party in my other blog.

Drawing in the park

We're still here! Life gets somehow busy when you work full time and the kids are in the nursery. If I work in the morning shift I get to spend several hours with the kids in the evening after work but if I'm in the evening shift I only see them in the morning when I take them to the nursery. When I come home in the evening they're already asleep. So far this summer has been such a good experience for all of us but it has also shown me a different side of things. If I can choose I want to spend more time with the kids than what I do now. The way we've had it back in Brazil has worked really well in my opinion and I hope we can get back to that after we return. The kids go to preschool/nursery in the morning and come home for lunch. I have the morning to myself (read: household chores, grocery shopping etc.) and get to spend the entire afternoon and evening with them. We've got plenty of time for homeschool activities, for visiting grandparents etc. I do understand that I might have to work but I'm hoping I can get by with some private arts and crafts classes at home in the afternoons :) I've got lots of nice ideas in my head for next year and I'm hoping that Casa Criativa (Creative House) will be able to start working sometime in the end of February offering arts and crafts experiences to the kids in our little town.

In the meantime whenever we have some time together we usually head for one of the parks nearby. I'm not sure if I commented this in here already but when we first arrived here the kids we so impressed by all the great parks that they called them "amusement parks". That's how much they'd missed playing in a nice park and that's why we're planning some nice things in our backyard in Brazil.

This park is their favourite because of this toy. It spins around depending on how fast you walk on it. It's so simple but they laugh, jump on and off and have so much fun with it!

This time I also invited them to sit down and draw something. Luana came up with a picture of the park itself with the swings, the slide etc. Her Brazilian school activity book deals with the notion of space and awareness of one's whereabouts and I'm trying to work on those with her as well. I thought the drawing of the park was a good start. The next thing we'll do is draw a map of the area we live in featuring the places we usually go to.

Lucas didn't want to sit down and draw initially but after a while he too asked for a pen and a paper. He drew balloons and the round toy they like so much.

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 :)

Mandarin man

Lucas was busy organising his mandarin today. I took a few pictures from behind and then he asked me to take one with his face too :) He was proud of the way he organised the pieces before he ate them!

P.S. More recent pictures in my Finnish blog!

Picnic by the sea

The kids (and particularly Luana) were quite upset because everyone else from the preschool got to go on a walk in the forest and they didn't. It didn't help that I told them there'll be another walk in the forest next Monday when they'll start preschool. It seemed like such a big deal to them that I decided we'd go on a picnic by ourselves. Tuesday I only started work after lunch so we had the whole morning to ourselves. We set off with backpacks filled with picnic stuff.


We saw some lovely flowers and I even got pretty pictures of them thanks to the macro :) The children liked especially the white one, which in Finnish is called metsätähti, star of the forest.

We also collected plenty of all kinds of sticks for crafting purposes as well as some other things we found on the ground.

Despite the bitter wind we managed to find a nice place between some rocks close to the sea and had our picnic there. The kids just loved it and it was a wonderful and relaxing morning for me too. We're so lucky that my mum lives so close to the sea. Usually it's only the really wealthy people who live by the sea but where my mum lives it just happens that they have plenty of "normal" people's (as in regular income people) houses and flats quite close to the sea.

I'm planning to really enjoy the mornings when I'm on evening shift and do something with the kids. Tomorrow we'll bake something and go to the playground before lunch.

Old things

It's been wonderful to see old things again. Some of the things are just a few years old and I find them in the random boxes we left here when we moved. Some of the things are from my childhood and some of the things are from my mother's childhood. There's a real sense of continuity when I see my kids playing with old toys.

Wooden blocks from my mother's childhood (almost 70 years old).

A box of crayons from my childhood. I instantly recognised the box and knew what the crayons smelled like.

My dearest night gown from when I was roughly the age of my daughter now. My cousin had bought it for me from the US and I treasured it so.

With daddy

The kids eating oranges with daddy one afternoon.

There are certain things they only do with him and this is one of them. Sometimes he comes home with a big bag of oranges, gets a knife from the kitchen and sits with the kids in front of the house. They are capable of eating countless oranges!

Some more pictures from our walk

Laundry hanging on the fence. The white container is a part of an old washig machine and works now as a bin hanging from the fence.

The bridge we went to see. A horse with its owner returning home after a working day.

A pretty flower we found on the ground.

Sister and brother.

Us

I was supposed to post a pictures of me and my kids already some time last week but I didn't get it done. These were taken on Saturday.

Sunday afternoon at home

We spent a lovely Sunday afternoon in the front yard playing with the kids and the dogs (for doggie pictures check my other blog)
Daddy and Lucas.

Lucas climbing a tree with a little help from daddy.

Luana also climbed.

Luana, Lucas and me infront of our house.

Fab Saturday

I wasn't supposed to post during weekends but today was just so nice that I wanted to post something right away :)



In the morning I did some laundry and the kids helped. They washed some of the dolls' clothes as I washed our clothes. They then proceeded to doing the dishes with their plastic plates, saucepans, cups etc. Before lunch they had a splash around in their paddling pool and were very happy about that.

In the afternoon we went to see daddy play football with members of the extended family. I think it's such a nice way for them to get together every week (even if they regularly argue over football...).

This is the team that lost 7-2 but they don't seem too bothered about it :)

They played at one of the local schools. It was weird and also nice to be at a school when there was no one else around. The kids in the school's little garden.

We walked home in the most beautiful early evening sunshine. The streets were empty and the kids could just run back and forth.

It was such a good day. We didn't do anything big but the day was full of wonderful little moments. When we got home I told the kids how much I'd enjoyed the day with them and how proud they had made me with the way they behaved the whole day.