Keep calm

Works every time!!

Made this at  http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/

Things we do for love

Like standing in the supermarket with my all important piece of paper,

studying barcodes on small packets of Lego!
Oh yes, mad as it may sound but it has saved us time, money and the frustration of getting 5 the same. I am talking about Lego minifigures - we love them!  Great pocket money buys and good(dare I say it) bribes!

Here is one of our many mutants - a zombie headed, ninja hatted wrestler on one ski, singing karaoke!

Calm before the storm

Sunday afternoon. 30 degrees C, kids running around the garden, adults chatting and enjoying the sunshine. We had a small party to celebrate my 49 3/4 birthday! December is not a good time to have a birthday in Finland - grey, dark. cold and I am usually working at one of the Christmas fairs.
We had a great afternoon and a big thank you to all my dear friends and famiy for their gifts and good wishes.

A few hours later just as we were sitting down at the end of the day all hell broke loose. My Mum took this photo of the storm front.

Within minutes the sky went black, the wind roared, lightening flashed and the heavens opened. My Dad and Olli just managed to rescue the tent whilst I ran and grabbed umbrellas, chairs and anything else that threatened to fly away.  It was spectacular to say the least!
Here is a link to a video on You tube that someone took on a beach near Helsinki and yes it did happen that quickly -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reB8FkJdvo4

Gone

Someone stole MY bike! My lovely comfy bike that I have pedalled hundreds if not thousands of miles on. Together we have pedalled from John O'Groats to Lands End, Bordeaux to Barcelona, London to Brighton twice, London to Suffolk in the dark and through endless back streets and parks in London as I went to work. OK she was old, 19 to be exact(I even have the original receipt!) but she was MY bike and I will miss her. No it wasn't locked and yes I know it should have been but the fact that someone walked up to the front of our house last night and took her has made me quite angry and a bit sad. Lesson learned.

 August 1994, me and my bike at John O'Groats(no grey hair then!!)

Old 'friends' meet new 'friends'

Mad dogs and Englishlady

Go out orienteering for a whole week in temperatures hovering around 35 degrees C! Yes even in Finland it can get that hot. Also said englishlady was the only one in the family to get soaked in the massive storm whilst walking to the start of the last day of orienteering, which by the way went very well! We also learnt this week that insulin and 35degree C heat is not a great combination - hence a string of numbers in the 20's, not seen for an age! Finally I have to say a huge thank you to the wonderful child care facility provided at the Fin5 orienteering event near Imatra. As good fortune would have it one of the carers had a young son with Type 1 Diabetes. A was in good hands. We were able to go orienteer knowing he would be fine - Thank you Nora.
Home again and load number 248 done in the washing machine( well 7 at least!). Not content with smelly clothes washing I also washed a load of wool, the weather was perfect, sunny with a breeeze. So now I have some lovely clean wool to look forward to creating with.Can't wait!

From the hard stuff to the soft stuff.

Lego, lego everywhere and what fun we had! We had a really very pleasant drive through Sweden and Denmark and then spent 2 busy hot days at Legoland. The hotel was perfect, right next to the park, lego everywhere to build and excellent food. Yay, no cooking! Needless to say we came home with a car load of lego, squeezed in along side the duty free!! Now it's home to do the washing and I had hoped a bit of felting, perhaps planning for Christmas. Weird I know in the middle of a summer heatwave but time zooms along. However we are off to do a bit of orienteering first at the Finnish 5 day event near Imatra, Eastern Finland. Thankfully it is near our summer cottage, so swims in the lake and wood fueled saunas after a hot days running in the woods.
So with luck I may get to dive into the soft stuff and get creating again in a weeks time. The hard stuff is here to stay - we almost have enough lego to build the garden shed we so desperately need!
Of course Diabetes gets a quick mention, hurray for the pump, hurray for easy bolusing those enormous ice creams, hurray for getting most of our carb calculations right. OK we had the odd - oops where did that number come from but generally Diabetes behaved itself.
Mmmm - I wonder if  I could make a pancreas from Lego.................