Night of Ancient Bonfires

Our summer here in Finland has gone too fast and it's time to start packing again. Hot Italy is waiting for us. Here summer is already ending and schools have started. On the last Saturday of August there's a tradition in the archipelago of Finland were people light bonfires to celebrate the end of summer and now it's organized in Kotka, too. This tradition has expanded to other parts of the Baltic coast and the idea is to light the fire at the same time in all the Baltic countries so that it forms a chain of bonfires and gets people to think about the well-being of the Baltic sea. As we still were here I decided to take Armando and the girls (Daniele was visiting his friend in Lovisa) to see the bonfire that was lit at 21.30 in the park of Katariina. There were lots of people, a very nice family event!

Week 33 at the summer cottage

Difficult to choose this week's photo from all the nice photos and memories from the summer cottage where we went with the whole family and my parents. The week before had been so cold, but for this week we had ordered good weather and beautiful it was! No wind, no rain and about 23 degrees, so we could go swimming in the cold water, have barbeques in the evening, go to the sauna, go out rowing, pick blueberries and mushrooms, go fishing (with very bad fishing luck) and enjoy the lovely sunsets on the sea. My pick for this week is Sofia and Daniele rowing one of the evenings when the sunset was amazing. That's the real color without any photoshopping!

Week 32 - The imperial lodge of Langinkoski

Tourists in my own birth town. One day I took my not so enthusiastic children out to see the imperial fishing lodge of Langinkoski. It's a natural reserve where you can see the house and the surroundings where Alexander III used to go to fish salmon. It's a beautiful place by the rapids of the river of Kymi and you can walk around in the woods surrounding the house for chilometres. The weather was very cool and not so summery this week and none of the children wanted to go to see any tourist attractions and I felt very lazy too. But sometimes it's really worth the effort to take them and myself away from the computer screen, because we all returned back home in much a better mood. We took a long walk in the wood and went into a house where a nice artist exposed his paintings of the sea and told us about them. Carlotta kept asking questions about the paintings and he thought that I had very lively children. Hahaaa, don't know if it was a compliment or not, but I guess he thought it was nice to see a child who was that interested in his paintings.

Week 31 - Trip to Varissaari

The weather finally had got warmer in Finland. One of the hightlights of the week was our trip to the isle of Varissaari that's an isle where you can get by boat from Kotka in just ten minutes. It's so close, but really like another world with it's beautiful nature and cliffs where you can have a nice pick nick. First we all went swimming and then we went to our usual pick nick place where both Daniele, Sofia and Carlotta like to climb on the stones and watch the see. We have got used to sleeping late and staying up late in summer, so we got there only in the afternoon when most people were already going away. But the days are still quite long, so we took the boat back in the evening and had a really nice day out.

Week 30

The best thing of week 30 was our long riding tour with lunch out in the woods. The only thing that bothered us and the poor horses were the flies, but otherwise we had a lovely time! 

Week 29

I have lots of photos for week 29, but the most important thing was Carlotta's birthday. She is 7 now and not so little anymore. We gave her our birthday presents in the morning and she was very happy with her bag, sunglasses and other girly things. Then we made the birthday cake and in the afternoon she had a little birthday party where she had invited my friend's children. Sofia was at the riding camp and her father was in Italy, so we will have to celebrate another time with them, as well.
The birthday guests slept over, too so the day was perfect.

A walk in the park "Kumparepuisto"

Today me and the girls went to a very nice park near our parents house called "Kumparepuisto". We bought a warm "posso" at the marketplace and went to our usual little pick nick place there to eat them and then just walked around there. The weather was strange. If you looked in one direction the sky was blue and in the other direction drammatically dark. No big rain or thunder came here, though, only a few small rain drops. One of my favourite photos of the day is this one where the sun is shining and the sky behind is dark. I know it's a overexposed on Carlotta's jacket and trousers, but I like it anyway.

Other photos from our pick-nick

Blueberries and raspberries

Out in the woods today with the Daniele, Sofia and my father. Daniele and Sofia hoped to find some mushrooms. We didn't find many of them this time, but lots and lots of blueberries. You could really get a lot fo them if you had the patience to pick them. We get tired of it after a while, but we got enough of berries to make a blueberry pie. We also found some lovely raspberries. The weather was sunny and nice and the air out in the nature is so fresh.

This scrapkit is a nice summer freebie from Lilypad.