24/12/2006

Merry Christmas

joulukoristelua Ithacassa
... and very happy New Year 2007!

Here's still one photo from Ithaca, NY. My husband took it a little before he left the upstate in December.

17/12/2006

Dog show


I went to dog show last weekend here in Helsinki. This video is from there. It was a nice show, I went to see the agility races. They are always much fun.

My husband got back from the USA today. Safe and sound.
Panu
The dog was very happy and so was I. There's a small Christmas tree in our living room. I thought it might be nice to have at least a small one. It brings you that Christmas feeling.

13/12/2006

Finding some photos

I went through my book shelf and found some older photos. These were the ones I had taken in 2003. They brought back some memories of that summer.

Like this:

Here's my relative Kristine from USA in front of the so called "poor man". Wooden statue is in front of the church (this case Ilmajoki church) and in older times you were meant to put your coins inside for helping the poor.

Kristine and his father Waino were visiting us June 2003.







Panu's brother Mikko and Minttu got married in Hollola June 2003. Life really goes fast. It seems to me like yesterday.

10/12/2006

Bread crumbs revenge

I went to have lunch with my brother and father today. My father was visiting Helsinki, he had a meeting here yesterday. I can recommend the Empire Plaza in Kamppi Shopping Mall. Nice food. Not as good as I ate in Chinatown, NYC, but OK for Helsinki.
I hadn't seen my father for three or four months so we had a lot of catching up to do. I told about my trip to the USA.
After the lunch my father left for train and my brother and I, we went to do some Christmas shopping. It's always so hard to decide what to buy. I'm not a much of a shopper. It always amazes me that somebody can consider it to be a nice relaxing hobby. For me it's just a lot of stress.
Later I visited a friend of mine who has a small baby. It was nice, baby was a cutie and her other child, who is now almost 2 years old, had grown a lot.

When I got home, dog was nowhere to be seen. This is not unusual, oftentimes he sleeps downstairs and is too lazy to get up. But what I did see, was some pieces of plastic and some bread crumbs on the kitchen floor. The naughty thing had somehow managed to drop my bread from the table. And of course, eaten it all.

"You surely have some stomach ache now", I said to him when he finally came to see me. I think this might have been a somekind of revenge for me not being around. You know, he sometimes does things just out of boredom or to annoy us. Usually he gets the trash bin from the toilet and spreads the papers and such around.

06/12/2006

Back home in Helsinki

I must admit that this blog has been severely neglected during the past three months. But now I'm back home from my trip to the US.

The dog was happy to see me and I was happy to see him. Now he is watching what I'm doing here.

The evenings are boring because my husband is still in Ithaca. It will take about 2 weeks until he is home as well. We talk together with this Skype program. It's quite marvelous and let's us talk for free with our computers.

The work seems to be pretty much the same, I have some new things to learn, but that's it. I though it might be more different because there have been some major changes in the organisation.

And what I have been doing since I came back to Finland. Well, I have been working, taking the dog out for walks, swimming, cleaning, reading some books (Nick Hornby), watching some TV (news, The Lord of the Ring and some episodes of Lost) and shopping. I went for example to IKEA. It was crowded.

It's the Independence Day of Finland today. 6.12. We have been independent for 89 years now. This day is also a national holiday.

Later I'm going to watch TV. They will show, as always, the annual Gala Reception at the President's Palace in Helsinki, hosted by President of Finland.

If you want to peek what it looks like, see it as direct show (or later as videos) in YLE pages. Kuvagalleria = picture gallery, Videot = videos.

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