WELCOME!!

Blogger Boss needs to decide what this is going to say about how crazy her life is & how she loves coffee & walks with her hubby.


Saturday, September 28, 2013

Work for Hubby

First of all, thanks for all the kind words and well wishes after my last post.
I have enough symptoms too feel pregnant.  I usually need to crash on the couch for a while in the afternoon and smells and the thought of cooking makes me feel sick...
I take all the signs as good signs though.
Last time I had very few symptoms that quickly went away, and no baby ever came.
I really hope and pray for a different outcome this time around.

Well, what else?
Hubby has been job hunting and today (Saturday morning), he started working 2 1/2 hours from home.  7 days a week, 12 hour days.
SO..... All of a sudden I'm a single mom!!
It did not feel too cool for either of us that he has to be gone like that, but since nothing else was on the radar right now, we figured it's better to take a job that's inconvenient rather than not working at all.

Our house is slowly getting a bit more organized and kids are adjusting well to school.
Now when hubby's gone during the weeks and it's only little guy and I at home, we'll try to stay busy together.  Trips to the pumpkin patch, playground, library and friends house will be fun.
We are still enjoying temperatures in the low 20-ies (Celcius) and it's been sunny as well, so it's like summer! :)

Anyway, not too much else to report for now.  Have a good weekend!

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

A secret traveler...

When we left Finland we didn't know there was an unknown traveler on the plane.
Nobody else knew about this person either.
Well hidden, in a very nice and safe spot, this being got to come along for the ride.
Only God knew.

The first week and a half back in Canada was a blur of activity, and despite being jet-lagged I had a surprising amount of energy.
Then some afternoons I just crashed.
Like beyond tired, tired.
Could not keep my eyes open even with match sticks.
I figured the last few months activity finally caught up with me, and my body took the chance to relax.

I felt quite spaced out too.  It was very hard to focus on the stuff that needed to get done, but with such a long list to check off, I didn't pay too much attention to that either, who can always be 100% focused?

Well.  Then the signs became more obvious and I swung by the dollar store for some cheap tests.
Right away one showed positive, and also the next one.
Yes.  I am pregnant.
And if this time all goes well, we are looking forward to welcoming our little Finnish souvenir in early May.
Thankfully I have a lot of symptoms this time (which also is kind of tiring) so I take that as a good sign that this time the baby will be healthy!

We told the kids last week in a fun way.
I had written the words "Our mom is having a baby" on 6 pieces of paper, then put the folded pieces in to zip-lock bags that I marked with numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7.
I hid the bags in the living room and then the kids had to find "their" bag.
The oldest got bag #1 the 2nd bag #2 etc.
Daughter #5 didn't have a bag, so she got to read the announcement when they were all done finding their bags and had lined up in order of age of the couch.
They opened the bags and held up their word, facing away from them, so #5 was able to read the message.
She's 7, so it was very special for her to be the one reading it out.
They were so excited and I loved seeing their expressions when the message sank in :)

So, yet another thing happening in this household!
I'll keep you up to date with the progress and this time we are REALLY hoping things work out!
3rd time is a charm, right?

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Winds of change

Yes fine folks.
Lot's of changes in our lives indeed.

New house, we are renting an old house consisting of 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, (only one shower), kitchen, dining room and living room.  There's an old basement where I do laundry and where we keep stuff, but not anywhere where you'd want to hang out for fun!
Nothing fancy, but the yard is large with beautiful trees, so we are fine here for a while.
We also found a few vehicles, a big one that we all fit in and a mini-van for a second car.
Our stuff arrived from overseas 2 days ago, so now we finally have some furniture and LOTS of boxes all over the house.

The first 2 weeks were busy, busy here.
There were so many things to take care of.
New drivers licences.
Update banking stuff.
Looking at one rental, turning it down.
Finding another rental.
Driving for hours and hours trying to find vehicles.
Signing 7 kids up for school.
Getting cell phones.
Getting home phone and internet.
Arranging insurance for cars, house and medical (until our Canadian one kicks in)
Buying all sorts of stuff that you need right away, like food, vacuum cleaner, coffee maker, computer, back to school stuff, sneakers, garbage cans, cleaning products, washer and dryer, iron.... etc etc
Running all sorts of other errands and every once in a while trying to catch our breath.
Whew!!

We have had time to be gone one weekend to attend a special friend's beautiful wedding.
We've also had time to see lots of old friends, gone to church, visited friends, gone to the old park etc

Things are slowly falling in to place.
Our youngest guy (who'll be 4 in 5 weeks) started Jr Kindergarten, but we felt that he's simply not ready yet, so we'll be keeping him at home for another year.
He told me after trying for a week
"Mamma, school was too hard for me!"
They go every day, full day. (6 hours)
Quite the change from always being at home with me!
Pair that up with all the other changes in his life lately...
No thanks.  Stay home with me little guy, we'll never have this time back.

Dear Hubby has been busy with paper work on top of everything else, but now things seem to slow down a bit and he's really itching to work.
It's been really nice for him to have this time off until we got ourselves in order (kind of), but now we hope and pray that a job opportunity will arise soon!
(he has a few things on the go, but nothing for sure yet)

That was a brief summary of how things have gone so far.
Tomorrow will be one month since arriving here!
Can't believe it.
It feels so normal to be here, but I find myself missing friends from overseas as well as little "things" that are different that I really appreciated there.
Today I mowed our lawn (we have LOTS of grass to cut), and it was a beautiful fall day here.
A bit over 20 C, sunny and humid.
The way I like fall to be :)
My feelings keep colliding when I realize how much I have missed things from here and now am able to enjoy them, but at the same time I miss things from overseas...
Well, it just makes my heart twice as full I guess :)



Thursday, September 12, 2013

Greetings from Canada!

Ok.  Here's attempt number two at writing my first post after returning back to Canada.
I tried to write one on my phone the other day, and well, it flopped.
So, now we have a computer set up and internet working, meaning that I again can blog with ease.

Where to begin?
We left Finland quite wiped, physically and mentally, and I can honestly say that I was too tired to really have any strong emotions.  We had a long trip ahead of us, with 2 layovers, and a 7 hour time change, so when we took off in Helsinki I felt pretty neutral.
Not bawling, but not either grinning like an idiot.
What brought a huge smile to my face however, was watching my husband and little guy.
Our almost 4-year old son, sitting at the air-plane window, with his dad next to him...
Well, that sure made me smile and tear up all at ones.
Our little guy was pumped to be on the plane.  For months we had talked about the big plane, even showed video clips of take off and landing etc, so he was well prepared and very excited.
So yeah, watching his face as we took off, seeing all sorts of emotions wash over his face, and then noticing that my hubby with tears in his eyes proudly watching his son's reaction.
Priceless.

We had layovers on Iceland and then in Halifax.  The flights themselves went amazingly well, the weather was perfect and I dare say our kids were too.
We almost missed our flight from Halifax.  They literally had our boarding cards printed for us, waiting to run us through security, VIP-like, to our flight that was scheduled to leave at 10.05 pm.  We made it on the plane just past 10.00 pm.... Whew!!
I still can't believe they did that.  I bet they rather not have 9 people miss their plane...
We were late because our overseas flight was behind schedule, and then we had to go through customs, get all 15 pieces of luggage, go through secondary (since we were moving back to Canada and this was our first point of entry), then dash through the air-port and check in our luggage again...
We got to the check-in at 9.55 pm.... (10 min before departure)

So, amazingly enough we landed in Toronto as scheduled, but our luggage didn't.
So after being awake for more than 24 hours, I had to recall all 15 pieces of luggage to file a report.
Sigh.
The kids were border line comatose at this point.
Then we needed to find a shuttle to the hotel.
Through the terminal with all the kids, down one level, walk, walk, walk... only to find that the shuttle service to our hotel ended at 10.30 pm (It was 1 am at this point).
Soooo.  Backtrack.  Upstairs and walk, walk, walk to where the taxis were running.
We needed a mini-van and a regular car to bring us to the hotel.  (it was actually a good thing we didn't have our luggage since we probably would have needed a 3rd taxi for that!!, and thankfully all our luggage arrived at the hotel the following day)

As we arrived at the hotel with our sleepy bunch we were met by a super friendly receptionist.
She grabbed some muffins from the kitchen and offered everyone free water bottles, figuring we were hungry.  She was right.  After having our late night snack we finally were able to go to bed around 2 am.
Aaaaah.  Man did that ever feel GOOD!! ( = 9 am in Finland, we'd been up since 7 am the day before)

The next morning the kids couldn't believe how warm it was.  We had left a fall like Finland, and arrived in a very much summer like Canada.  It was around +30 C, and humid.
We enjoyed a yummy breakfast, and it was fun to watch our youngest two as they realized that they were able to understand what everyone else were saying!!
Which reminds me of what our 1st grader said after her first day back in school here
"Nobody spoke Finnish all day, not even a little bit!"

Anyway, this is getting long.
I will write another post soon, but I mostly wanted you all to know that we are safely back HOME.
And yes, It feels very much like home.  I had been worried that it would feel different being back, and that I'd regret moving again... But already on our drive down from Toronto, the closer we got, the more "home like" it felt.  I am thankful to say that this was the right decision for us.