Carlotta 5 years

Carlotta 5 years loves beautiful things - flowers, butterflies, princesses, ballerinas and cute ponies, she only wears dresses and skirts, laughs at funny things and likes to watch cartoons, but wants to be near an adult when it gets a bit scary.
I made this lay-out of a quick page to which I added something from other kits.

5 years

Our little princess turned 5 on the 20th of July. When she woke up the first thing she said was that she had been singing "Happy Birthday to You" (in Italian) to herself during the night. We sang to her when she had her breakfast and she got her presents - a hobby horse (Sofia was quite jealous about it, she wanted one too), a Barbie and a little pony and I think she liked them all a lot. Then we had lunch at a nice summer restaurant, Kärkisaari, a lovely villa that also has rooms to rent during summer time. I think we have to organize a party with her friends, too later on when we get back to Rome.
It really seems to have happened something in our 5-year-old princess, she is much easier to deal with and has less angry moments. I´m sure it also has to do with the fact that we don´t have to hurry to school early in the morning and she doesn´t have to follow her big sister and brother to all kinds of hobbies and in general, that she feels at ease here. Hopefully it also has something to do with maturing, so this good mood will continue also in Rome!

Evening swims

We have had a nice evening swim almost every evening in these lovely summer days when the temperature here in Finland has been over 30 degrees during the day and warm also in the evening.

Hangö

Today we drove to Hangö, the southernmost town of Finland where Daniele spent 5 days on a summer camp. The place where he stayed was a paradise and the weather sunny all the time. He made lots of new friends and was chosen as the "happiness spreader" of the camp. Now all three children are home again and also their father is here in Finland, so it gets very lively.

Summer camps and friends

After two weeks in Finland Sofia has already been to her summer horse camp in Ingå and we have taken Daniele to his sailing camp in Hangö, both at the south-west coast of Finland. In between we spent three days at our dear friends´ house and also had a nice day with my brother and his family. We are having an exceptionally warm summer here in Finland, so we really enjoyed our swimming pauses in lakes and in the sea while driving to the camps. Summer Finland is really beautiful and the coast is full of summer events and swedish speaking people, so the children kept saying, that it was a pity that their grand parents didn´t live there! Their problem here in Finland is that they don´t speak Finnish, I have only managed to teach them Swedish, so they find it a bit hard to make friends here and to comunicate with people.
There are lots of Swedish speaking people in Ingå, where Sofia´s riding camp was and the two ladies who hold the camp were Swedish speaking, but unfortunately only one of the girls spoke Swedish. Sofia said she enjoyed herself a lot with the horses, but felt a bit lonely in the evenings when everybody spoke Finnish. The Swedish speaking girl was supposed to help her, but girls in that age aren´t always that unselfish and it turned out she wasn´t so keen on helping Sofia all the time. Anyway, Sofia said she wanted to go back there next year, too, so all in all it was a good experience. On the last day they invited us parents to watch their little riding competition. Sofia rode her favourite horse, Cin Cin.

 Between Helsinki and Ingå we found a nice place to go swimming and we stopped there every time we drove that way.

A lovely dinner in the garden at our friends house.

 The children played so nicely together, no shyness at all, even if they hadn´t seen each other since last summer. This summer was also the first summer that Carlotta (almost 5 years) and Cassandra (2,5 years) were able to really play together.

Things we want to do when we get to Finland

These are just a few of the things that we appreciate when we come to Finland in summer time.

Being able to use the bike in stead of the car, at least for shorter distances

The Finnish strawberries. Italy has lots of lovely fruit and vegetables, but the strawberries are just so much better in Finland!

Some of the Finnish food that you don´t get in Italy.

The Finnish nature and of course the sauna!

And the soft grass under your feet. We have a nice garden in Italy, but the grass and the soil are much harder and drier, no matter how much you water it.

More photos from Andalo

View over Cavedago near Andalo where we walked one day.

Forest park, an adventure park where Sofia and Daniele had a lot of fun.

This was a scary walk. On our way to Croz Altissimo. I don´t know if I had let me convince to walk there if I had knowned what kind of path I had to walk with a four-year-old child and our old dog... We never seemed to arrive to the "rifugio". Luckily enough we didn´t have to walk the same way away from there.

After all the walking Carlotta deserved a little train ride around the Lake of Andalo!

The Lake of Molveno with its ice cold water

This was a very little selection of all our photos from Andalo. I think the whole family wants to go back there or some where else in the mountains next year!

A week in the mountains

Time for an update! It has been a busy period with all kinds of shows in the children's schools, work, getting ready for a show jumping competition and then we spent a week walking, eating and relaxing up in the Dolomites. It was our first holiday in the mountains during summer time and it definitely won't be the last one! It was a lovely experience. Armando decided he didn't want to listen to the children quarrelling and fighting for 7 hours, so we left Rome at 11 in the evening and he drove the whole night. Actually, it was a good solution, because there was no traffic and no complaining about the sun shining or other things in the car, all three children slept almost all the time. We got to Andalo early in the morning, had breakfast at a cafè and then went to the hotel and our room was ready for us, so we could rest a little bit.

The first day the weather was Ok, then the next day it rained all day, but the rest of the week it was perfect. The sun was shining, but it wasn't too warm, so we were able to be outside as much as we wanted and we really walked a lot. Maybe, if I hadn't been eating so much I could have lost some weight too... On the rainy day we went to an indoor swimming pool and in the evening when it didn't rain so much anymore, me, Daniele, Carlotta and Milla took a walk to the sports center in Andalo.

The view from our hotel on the rainy morning... and the view from the hotel room next morning

We spent the whole day out walking up and up and up and down and down and down. First we came to the farm Malga Tovre where we got a good glass of fresh milk and a nice rest looking at the cows and the donkeys.

Hard to choose from all the photos when I took about 800 during our week there.... More in my next post!