Three weeks before Christmas Brian decided to:

Go Christmas shopping?

No.

Make some Christmas treats?

No.

Construct a new room in our house?

Yes.

Of course, it's just a small room. When you walk in our front door, the ceiling goes clear up to the second floor. Our neighbors who have the same house plan added a laundry room just above the front door. Our laundry room is currently in a small closet just inside the garage next to the kitchen. Our neighbors then turned the old laundry room into a mud room with hooks and places for shoes. We went and saw the neighbors house and Brian was so excited, he couldn't even wait til after the holidays.

The very beginning of construction.

Just inside our front door.

Looking toward our front door. That window up above will be in the laundry room.

This banister will be gone and we will walk right into the room.

This is how far we are now. Like I said, it's pretty small. But it's much bigger than what we have currently. Brian's brother has come and helped him a lot with this little project. There was lots of prep work and then last Saturday they worked all day and got this floor in.

These parts above the stairs will have walls. I'm actually so excited about it also that I don't even care that I had to take down some of my Christmas decorations or that I have tools all over my house.

2011 visit with Santa

 Will - 17 months old. Not so happy. He doesn't even realize who Santa is and what this man can do for him.

 Addie - 4 years old. A little nervous. We had to talk and talk her into sitting on Santa's lap. She didn't say a word though. For weeks she's been talking about wanting to see Santa and tell him what she wanted. We were at the mall a while ago and we waited a few minutes for Santa to start his shift. She was DEFINITELY going to sit on Santa's lap and tell him that she wanted a Lalaloopsy doll. She talkety-talked all about it. But as soon as Santa came walking up he waved at her and she got the most scared look on her face and I said - do you want to go sit on his lap and tell him what you want? She replied with a super slow motion shake of her head without taking her eyes off him. She was petrified! I thought the guy was a little gaunt looking. Not really my kind of Santa. I asked her if Santa looked like how she thought he would and she said no. So here at our family Christmas party this was the real Santa.

 Ben - 8 1/2 years old. He told Santa he wanted Legos and a new robot.



Elli - 10 1/2 years old. Who is this grown up girl?! She is less that a foot shorter than me. Everyone says she's going to pass me up soon. Yikes! She told Santa she wanted 'anything'. That is the best kind of request. Of course, she always has a lengthy list for me. But then I can get 'anything' from it and she'll be happy with it.

Also, her nails totally matched this dessert! Fun.

Isn't this the cutest thing you've ever seen?

You probably think that title is for one of my kids. Nope. A tiny jar of vaseline:

 

It's so teency. I had to have it. I keep it in my purse. When I'm out and about and I get a patch of dryness on my hands, I hate when I only have lip gloss in my purse. I used to use chapstick for this purpose, but my favorite brand is getting harder to find.

Summer trip

Oh... Finland, right. So here's a tip for you: don't take a 10 month old on a 13 hour flight plus layovers. You're welcome. If you are holding a baby and you feel like reading on the airplane, you can't. If you feel like sleeping, you can't. You can only sit there holding the baby trying your hardest to keep a flailing baby hand from going into your neighbor's space grabbing at the stranger's airplane meal or trying to let a baby sleep while keeping his feet or head from going outside of your space.

Really, I'm very glad that I took Will with me so I could introduce at least one of my kids to my cousins. And now 6 months later, I can actually think about the travel part without breaking out into cold sweats. Will was a good little baby on the flight, but even with a good baby it was still hard. And thank heavens my sisters and mom were on the same flight. They helped a lot.

I went with my mom and my sister Sinika and her family and my step-sister Jackie. My brother Ari met us in Helsinki and my brother Eric and his wife Tagen came later. It was a lot of people! My mom is Finnish and she is the only one in her family who left Finland. Her two brothers and sister still live there along with all of their kids and grandkids.



Will sleeping on the Chicago airport floor on the way out. A little bit gross.
I'm pretty sure that no one has ever thrown up in that very spot though.
Also, that cute little car blanket was lost on the final flight home back to Utah.
Poor little lost blankie.



 This was the yard my mom grew up in. The red building is a sauna in one side and a storage shed in the other.

 This is the view she saw every day! Amazing! Can you believe people actually live here?

 Sinika, Adam and their boys soaking up the beauty.

 Will sitting on the curved stairway that leads up to my mom's childhood room.

 The house that my grandpa Matti Hyypia built. My uncle currently lives here and has added on a few rooms.

 Will sitting in a lake that is partly in Finland and partly in Russia.

 Mmmm! Karelianpirakka (I hope I spelled that right) on the top left is so delicious. It is thin rye bread with a rice mixture in the middle. You put butter and meat and cheese (just imagine the best tasting cheese you've ever had in your life and that is what the cheese on the right tastes like) and you top it off with tomatoes and cucumbers. It might be my favorite Finnish food.

 This is the biggest kid in the world, my oldest brother Ari. He's a big kid in that he is so excited about life and he loves to create and experiment. I admire him so much.

Ari on the zip line.

 This is the Olavinlinna Castle in Savonlinna. Named after, and built under, a Swedish king named Olaf. Sweden and Russia fought over this castle over the years and each owned it for a time. Now it is owned by Finland. That little thing hanging off of the left side of the tower is a toilet hole. Yep, everything just fell right into the water below in the old days.

 Aww. Look at that little chubby hand holding on for dear life.

Then we went to another aunt and uncle's summer home and cabin.

These are my nephews Elliott and Oliver looking off the deck into the water. I think they were also looking at the spider webs underneath.

 Will checking out the plant life.

 Lincoln, Elliott and Ollie.

 The cabin sauna. You have to pronounce it 'SOW-na' if you are in Finland. You get super hot in here, whip your back and legs with birch leaves to open up your pores, then run and jump into the cold lake. Then back into the hot again. Seriously, my skin never felt so good.

 The floppy pool. It never got higher than the 80s, temperature wise. It was perfect. It got a little humid just before storms but still nice. That typical Finnish swing in the background is so fun. Two benches face each other, when you push your feet gently on the floor it swings. It fits 4 to 6 people.

 A picture of a rainy Finland.

 My sister Sinika, me, my brothers Eric and Ari, and 3 of my cousins: Jaakko, Maija, and Marika. Man I'm a shorty!

 We took a side trip to Stockholm, Sweden. We got on a ship in the afternoon, slept in our rooms and when we woke up, we saw all the archipelagos of Sweden. We bought a boat pass that took us to all the must-see spots of Stockholm. (Stockholm is made up of islands.)

 We went to the Vasa Museum. It is a building that was built around a huge warship that sunk on it's maiden
voyage in 1628. (It was too top-heavy.) It stayed under water until the 1961! They knew they couldn't just pull it up and let it dry, it would be destroyed. So when they pulled it out they continuously sprayed it with water and a type of wax to help preserve it. It is the most preserved 17th century ship ever salvaged. It was a very cool thing to see.

A picture of the outside of the Vasa Museum. Those masts are the height of the original ship masts.

 Here is the ornately detailed back of the ship. So pretty!

One of the old town streets of Stockholm. We spent one day in Stockholm then got back on the ship to sleep. When we woke up we were in Helsinki again. We spent the day seeing a few sights like the Museum of Finland and old churches etc.

Sleepy boys:

Will

Lincoln

Ollie, Will and Lincoln

I'm so glad I got to go and see Finland again. We got to hang out with amazing family and also do the touristy thing and see some amazing places.

Greetings from Suomi Finland

I am currently sitting in the sauna eating rye bread with cheese, meat, cucumbers and tomatoes on it, typing up a little post. It is dark and quiet. It is very nice. Okay, that's not true. I'm not eating bread with cheese, meat, cucumbers or tomatoes on it right now. But I did eat that earlier today. Along with some smoked fish that was just caught this morning in the lake. Alright, there is another thing that's not true. It's not dark outside. It doesn't get dark in Finland in the summer. Ever. The sun goes down for a few hours but it stays light. And also, I'm not currently in the sauna. So really, the only true thing that I have said is that I am typing on a computer- so I am not a complete fibber. But yesterday I did the whole jump in the cool lake, then get in the hot sauna, and then get back in the cold lake. And that really was fun.  I am visiting my aunts, uncles and cousins in the land of a thousand lakes. I'm at my uncle's summer house near Jyväskylä. How about that. I didn't even need to look up a way to do the special letters cause they're right here on my aunt's keyboard.

This country is so green. Green and green. Both greens. Green the color and green describing how good they are to the earth. It makes me want to be a little more green. Even though usually when I usually hear that word it hurts my ear balls. But really, they've been this way forever. Their garbage cans are half the size of ours and they are only dumped once a month. It just blows my mind when I think about it. Why is America so wasteful? (Me.) I mean, I'm not super wasteful but compared to here I am. They burn any papery garbage and use it to start up the sauna fire. They separate any food garbage. They take their own plastic bottles to get the deposit back for them. So their actual garbage is so tiny. They take their own bags to the store cause when you check out, there are no bags to put your stuff in. I now have a handy little shopping bag so I can start doing a little bit of that kind of stuff.

Slowly I'll start turning a little more green. (The color, I mean.)

(When am I going to learn to stop posting when I'm tired?)

See yöu läter!

When do birds sleep?

There is a bird that likes to chirp outside my window in the middle of the night. It's not a light, nonchalant chirping. It seems like it's either a "Danger! Everyone beware!" chirp or a "Hey, everyone, night is halfway over! Let's all wake up!" chirp. Over and over. Constant and loud. I hear it around 3:00 am. And 4:00. And 5:00. Five o'clock is a little more acceptable even if it's still early. But three?! That is not a time to be chirping. It's not an owl cause I know what owls sound like. Is it a nightingale? It's definitely not a dayingale, that's for sure.

Okay, so I just looked up what a nightingale sounds like and it sounds kind of similar but it's probably not.  My bird - wait, I don't want to call it that. The bird that sits in a tree that is near my window every single night sounds more urgent. Plus I'm not sure if nightingales live in Utah.

Thank goodness for ceiling fans. I can almost drown the sound out. But really birdie, don't you just want to sleep sometimes?

Addie at 3 1/2

This little girl is beautiful. At least I, as her mother, think that. And she has the cutest pretty, little voice. But she is constantly making faces and changing her voice to be silly. Especially if the camera comes out. She can't not make a face for the camera.

Don't even think that I put her outfits together. She is little miss independent and MUST dress herself lately. She's come up with some interesting combinations.

She's all about the layers. Sometimes I don't even know that she has layers underneath her clothes until night when she gets ready for bed.

 Long sleeves with shorty shorts. Sometimes your arms are cold when it's hot outside.

She found my lipstick the other day. But THIS is the face she made (below) when she first showed me what she'd done:

It was scary. Crazy lip stick lady was in my face.

The other day we were at the store and Addie and Will were in the shopping cart. Addie was using her 'witch cackle voice' - yeah, picture a witch cackling and that's the voice she was using - she was getting in Will's face saying,

"ERNIE!"

"ERNIE!"

There was a woman standing in the same aisle as us. I was so embarrassed that this stranger was going to think that I named my baby Ernie. Addie stopped for a while and I sighed. But then,

"ERNIE!"

"ERNIE!"

right at Will again. She just went on and on. There was no mistaking it now for this woman. She was going to go home and tell everyone she knew that she heard that someone named their baby Ernie. Sorry if your name is Ernie, but I've never met an Ernie in real life. I've only met an Ernie in make believe life.

Also, she is finally potty-trained. FINALLY! [cue Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah'] I'm sure I started at the wrong time and then I started and stopped a few times what with having another baby. I'm definitely not a pro when it comes to potty training. It's been a long year. She's been doing it for about a month now but I'm still shocked when I see her just get up and go to the bathroom. She just did as I have been typing this. I just can't believe it. Whhhewwwwwwww!

Mothers' Day

Mothers' Day. Me and my babies.