"Oh, the places you'll go!"

The title of this blog is stolen from one of my favorite Dr.Seuss children's books.
A book about a successful future for anyone willing to try.
Willing to try, regardless of the end result.
And if you follow the author's magic formula, you will succeed.
One hundred percent guaranteed.

This book, with its messages, makes me think of my sister.
My younger sister.
I have 6 sisters actually, 3 older and 3 younger.
This one is the 2nd youngest.
From a very young age she was well ahead of the game with her unusually early speech.
She spoke fluently by 18 months, knew the whole family's birthdays before her 2nd birthday (12 people).
When she was 3 years and 5 months old, she taught herself to read.
By four she was writing short stories, with very few spelling errors.
Maybe thanks to her having so many siblings, my parents encouraged her, but didn't make a big deal about her special gifts.
First and foremost she was a child.
And my mom let her be just that as long as she wanted.
She was, however, very, very creative, and there were many nights when she and my youngest sister would be up late at night working on some craft project.
They had ridiculous goals at times.
Like "We have to use all this material before we can go to bed!".
(they were around 7-8).

One remarkable story is from when she was three years old.
My dad asked her:
"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
To which she replied:
"I want to work in an office where you draw houses for people" (this is more or less what she said)
Well.  19 years later she graduated from college in Minneapolis with a diploma that let her do just that.
Remember, she grew up in Sweden and figured out, more or less by herself, how to make it possible to attend college in the States.
So, she drew houses.  And successfully so.
People would ask for "The Swedish girl" to do their drawings.

Then she got married and God blessed their marriage with a little boy.
I told her, while she was pregnant, to be prepared to become restless as a stay at home mom.
She didn't think that was going to happen, but I still told her that, just in case that day comes, don't feel bad if you want to work part time.  Knowing her busy, creative mind, I could see her brain burning from not getting enough use.
Well.  Little baby boy wasn't old before she drew houses part time again.
When the little boy was 1 1/2 they were blessed with a little girl, and mom had to slow down a bit.

Fast forward 6 years in time.
This dear sister is now a mother of 5.
You'd think by now she'd be busy enough, or just simply not have the time anymore, to create etc.
Wrong.
This girl is busier than ever!
She's gone from drawing houses to designing fabrics on www.spoonflower.com
She has been very successful with the designs, and she branched out by making baby/children's clothing from the designs that she got printed.
Now she has a growing business on www.etsy.com, she's been featured in magazines, had her clothing design printed in a book, been contacted from many different places that are interested in her stuff.

This girl is definitely going places!!!
I will share a link to her blog where she shares her creativity, designs and clothes, and links to her store etc.
Pellerina Design

"Fnill" (that's her childhood nick name), God bless your success.  I am so proud of you, and thankful that you are able to do these things that you truly love, on top of being a great mom and wife.
Just had to write this for you.... please don't shoot me.

Oh yeah, maybe the thing I love the most about her is how humble she is about her talent.
She honestly, truly never, ever does anything to draw attention to herself.
(if she was already good at that, I wouldn't have bothered writing this post!)

"Oh, the places you'll go!"
I can't wait to sit on the sidelines and just watch!

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!

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?

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 :)

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.

An eye opener

I feel like I keep sliding forward on a banana peel!, trying to keep my balance with a crazy grin on my face and my brain in a jumbled mess.

Rewind.

In the last 2 weeks we have packed our overseas shipping container.

We got it sent away with whatever we thought we wanted to keep and some extra stuff.

(for example: LOTS of Finnish candy!)

I hope no pirates get to it...

The day after we cleaned and moved out of our house and drove to Helsinki to catch the ferry at 5 pm the same afternoon (a 3 hour drive).... all in one breath.

The night before we were up to past 2 am, and enjoyed our last sauna in our house, somewhat awake.

At 1 am I realized that we had waaaaay too much luggage to fit in our Suburban for our Sweden trip, so the oldest girls and I repacked all of them and split things up so that we shared space and could leave half of the luggage behind.

I honestly don't remember much of what I packed, so my dear hubby had an interesting selection to choose from... (he was busy with construction btw, in case somebody had the urge to blast him for not packing his own stuff!)

When we left our house I was quite wiped.  And realizing that "it's over"... made me cry.

It was very bittersweet moving out.  I really didn't have time to dwell on emotions while packing and cleaning, but just below the surface there was pain.  That house was special in so many ways.  It started on a piece of paper and I did most of the designing and it was build by my husbands own hands.  A special experience for sure.

We made it to the ferry and exhaled.

Whew. 

We did it.

We moved to Finland.

We built a house here.

We got the experience we were looking for.... and on paper it looks pretty good.

Kind of like "Wow, did things ever work out well for them!"

What happened behind the scenes and the journey to this point is what many forget.

We have had some trying times in many ways.

I suffered two miscarriages, we struggled with money and well, things did NOT go as planned in many ways.

There were many, many, many hours of planning, organizing and hard work.

But at the end of the day I feel thankful.

Things went the way they were meant to go.

On the day we closed on our house this became especially clear to Hubby and I.

For the first time in our married life we are economically ahead.  

Not in a crazy "we are officially sickly rich" way, but in a way where we for a while don't have to worry every month how we are gonna make ends meet.

To "celebrate" we went out for lunch and took a brief break before going back home to our chores.

As we sat there I got a real eye opener.

Before that day we already had it all.

We had a beautiful, happy marriage.

We had healthy, fun, crazy kids with whom we have great relationships.

We share the same faith in our hearts.

We have true friends.  Lots of them.  In many countries.

We are cared for in all ways that matters, and to this day God has kept his promise to provide for each day. Not one day have we gone "without".

It became so clear to me that when our bank account was below zero, we still had it all.

We didn't change or became happier after closing on the house.

The quality of our life did not drastically improve.

And after realizing this.... I felt a huge sense of thankfulness.

No matter what tomorrow brings, we have it all.

And the things that matter are things without price tags.

We spent a wonderful week in Sweden and it was so nice to see my parents and one of my sisters.

We also spent a few nights with one of my cousins and her family.

Coming back to Finland meant yet again rolling up the sleeves.

There are so many places to go to and things to take care of before moving overseas.

I will not bore you with a list, but today hubby and I spent 6-7 hours running errands!!

Felt good to get a bunch done though.

This last week we have also had time to stop and enjoy some time with friends.

On two occasions we have visited friends where many people have gathered to bid us farewell.

It's a good reminder of the good things this move brought.

These friendships will last and they are true and strong.

It's hard and sad to leave so many dear friends behind, but it also brings me great joy knowing that we are so loved and cared for.  Maybe I need a lot of approval, but I can't help appreciating feeling loved.  If any of you guys read this, Thank you.  Thank you for being there.  Thank you for listening to my complaints and frustrations.  Thank you for being patient and a good listener.

I feel so very blessed, and I think I am speaking for my whole family.

And to all you Scandinavian friends: "Welcome to Canada!"

Dear Finland...

I need to write a little letter to this great country that has been our home for the last 3 years.
First I have to compliment you on your clean, fresh and beautiful nature.
I LOVE the tall birch trees stretched up against that blue, blue sky.
I often stop at the top of our stairs and just look outside.
I love the wild untamed nature.  It brings peace inside me.
I love walking along the many, many trails that criss-cross through the woods.
Soft, quiet and peaceful trails.
I love the wild berries that we have enjoyed picking and eating.
Blueberries, wild strawberries and huge, beautiful raspberries.
I am so thankful that our kids have gotten to experience this.
They have learned to cross country ski and they have skated hours and hours on some of the many public rinks.
We have cooled ourselves in the clean, clear lakes.
We have enjoyed wood burning sauna's at the edge of the lakes.

Sigh.  I will miss these things will all my heart.
When the summers are nice here they are absolutely gorgeous.
I will even miss the dark winter nights... yeah.  I actually will.
Even when it's so cold that your car struggles to start and no amount of clothes will keep you warm.
Those winter nights.  Nights that are lit up with billions of stars on a velvety night sky.
So, so beautiful.
I will miss sitting on the couch in front of a hot fireplace, filled with snapping birch logs.
And the spring time, I will miss that too.
When it's cold and the sky is icy-blue and the pine trees are heavy with snow.... and the birch trees sparkle from all the frost.  It's breath taking.
At the end of summer, when the forest is full of mushrooms and lingonberries and the trees turn bright like fire.  Then the first snowfall...

Dear Finland.  You have tought me so much.
You are quiet and you have a fun sense of humor.
You don't waste your words.  You are honest and you don't try to impress.
I don't understand you.  Neither the language or the silence, but I still like it for being you.
I appreciate your old history and deep roots.
Some of the food I eat here I enjoy immensely!
Especially the candy... and the Finnish strawberries...and chocolate...and bread....

I will miss you.  We will miss you.
This is the country my dad was born in and I recognize myself in the people here.
I am impatient but quick to forgive, very much like the people of Karjala.
I am full of life and love and get frustrated easily... I can see that in many of your people here.
It's been humbling and neat to see where some of "me" stems from.
Other parts I don't recognize, and that's OK.
I feel that I have gotten to know myself better somehow.
I have learned so much about so many things, lessons I would not want to be without.
I know what it's like to be an immigrant.
When you lean on your kids for help with translating and placing phone calls.
I know what it's like to sit through hours of parent/teacher meetings without understanding much at all.
(Dear Hubby translates later, but in the moment, I often miss out)
I have learned to be the quiet one in the corner. (you who know me will get a chuckle of this!!)
I have been recognized as a shy person (more chuckle)
It's been so good and so humbling.
My respect for people who move to new countries, for whatever reason, to start a new life, has increased a lot.
For me it has not been easy and it will feel amazing to again sit in a room where I know what everyone is saying, where I "get it", where I'll again laugh when everybody else do (not after getting translation).
I am looking forward to lift up the phone to call the Dr, dentist, school etc, knowing that there'll be a mutual language.

Dear Finland.  Thank you.  Thank you for your quiet love and care.
I also thank God for giving us this opportunity.
I feel like several layers of who I was has been peeled away, and I think I like the "new" me a bit more.
I will cry when we leave you behind, headed for new adventures in Canada...
I will miss many of our friends and I will miss being in Scandinavia.
I am from this soil.  The Nordic countries are my home countries.
In North America I sometimes feel foreign too, but that's the land where our kids belong.
And I feel belonging there through them.

Dear Finland.... take care, till we meet again.