More skiing pics and snow tasting and finally giving up and sitting in the car

Elli

Elli is 10 1/2 years old and in 5th grade. We found out on February 16 that she has Type 1 Diabetes.
Boooooo to diabetes.
(Sorry diabetes but it's true.)
Type 1 is where your body attacks your own pancreas and stops it from making insulin. So now we have to inject insulin before every meal.

Here she was in the hospital. She thought she was pretty special to get to stay up late and watch movies, skip school and order any food item from the menu. Oh and she got lots of stuffed animals while she was there too. She has a weakness for any type of stuffed anything.

A few days later we went skiing in the park. My mom has a bunch of cross country skis straight from Finland. Doesn't she look like a little Finnish girl? I really wanted her to have a Finnish name when she was born. I chose the spelling of her name from a list of Finnish names. 

I did a few rounds too. It's such a great workout!

Elli's doing pretty good with all the pokes and helping to figure out what she's going to eat. She's a kova evästeen (tough cookie). I'm not sure if that idiom translates right into Finnish. My relatives are going to be like: why is she calling her daughter an inedible dessert?

V Day

Addie made a cupcake at her little preschool. Have you ever seen a conversation heart say this?

Trop tard. I've never seen it. I guess it's too late. Meaning that in French it means "too late". Have you ever seen a conversation heart that says "too late"? Hmm. I guess I might have. But of all the popular French phrases out there that we Americans see, I've never seen this one.

Finnish breakfast

Do me a favor... no, do yourself a favor and next time you can't find anything to eat for breakfast (or lunch) do this:
Put some dry, uncooked oatmeal into a bowl- about 1/3 cup. I like the minute oats just because they're smaller but I do use old fashioned oats at times too.

Then you'll need to make a mixture of equal parts applesauce and equal parts cranberry sauce (whole berry). If you don't have these items in stock, then start! You're going to always want to have some of these items on hand. Mix 1 can of cranberry sauce and equal amount (or more) of apple sauce together. Keep it in an airtight container and store it in your fridge. Then this breakfast will be even easier tomorrow.

Spoon about some of your cran-apple mix. However much you want. Maybe about the same amount (or more) as how much oats you have.

Throw some bananas on top.

Then add milk. I usually put as much milk as you can see in the picture but then I lift up some of the oats at the bottom with my spoon and the oats soak up some of the milk. You want the oats to be soaked with milk and not dry. Mmm. It's seriously the best. You'll have to play around with some of the ingredient amounts and see how you like it. I can't give you the exact amounts cause I change it every time too. Sometimes I add way more fruit sauce and sometimes way more milk than I need, but it's always good. It's very filling. Don't feel like you need to add more oats.

When my mom still lived in Finland, her friend taught her how to make this. We grew up eating it as kids. We called it banana breakfast but now I realize that name doesn't describe it very well. I should be named banana apple berry oats or something. I go through phases where I have it every day and then I go for a few months of not having it. It definitely hits the spot when I want something different.

Ice cream cake

 Here's how Addie eats it:

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.