Some spring updates and remarks about Nature

The most obvious sign of spring/summer time is now the length of the day. With our living room and bed rooms windows to the north west we are exposed to all those beautiful and every night later sun sets. It is hard to feel the bed time when you see the sun high up the sky. We have installed in kids room those darkening curtains. We don't have such in our bedroom and so we go to sleep with a full light, but to be honest - I am so exhausted that it doesn't matter. This is a picture taken on the last night of May around midnight. Still three weeks before the shortest night. I will try to make another photo closer to mid-summer night, but usually I am in bed around 11pm. Tonight though my on woke up around 2am, I went to ccheck for him and it was already deep yellow light on the east side or better to say north-east side of the sky and again - light. It still amazes me and makes me remember how far to the north we live. 

But there are also some down-sides of this fact. For example I still wear gloves while riding a bike and the temperatures are still way below 20C even on sunny and warm days. I long for summer heat! I long for wearing a summer dress and not to wear a jumper anymore. This year is really cold even for Finland.
In a meantime I took one short but intensive Finnish course. It was nine days, every day, half a day. The purpose was to activate my language skills and in actually worked quite well. What I didn't like was the teacher, who was sort of absent. I expected her to listen what we are discussing in our small groups and correct us, suggest some better words or sentences. She was only giving us a basic commands what shall we do. So we were talking how each of us was able to making probably many grammatical mistakes. But I think it was still quite a good brain exercise because somehow I pushed myself to speak, to use those few learned words and structures and not to be so timid of using this strange language.
During the last few weeks I was searching for job, writing some applications, searching for some good contacts and maybe, maybe there will be something interesting to do. I hope so. So it might be that soon I will be again a very busy person. I'm already excited.
On the weekends we are exploring our Espoo. Last time we took kids and biked to the Espoonpuisto - The Espoo Central Park, which opens just behind Suurpelto and is actually a wild forest, beautiful at this time of the year. We made a picnic on a shore of a tiny lake in the woods. Sunny, lazy Sunday. Kids were so happy to walk together holding hands hiding behind trees, exploring nature.



We spend too much time indoors which makes them to feel bored, to ask constantly for iPad, to fight about every little thing.



When we take them somewhere to the nature, they suddenly transform into best buddies, happy and relaxed. Recently I was reading about all the research made on the positive effects of spending time in the forest. It came to me when I was looking through my window and watch the construction site. Right behind it there is a beautiful view of a iddillic country side - an old farm house, a stable, fields and forest. And now day after day it disappears from my eyes because they build there a new apartment building. Sad.



I have this longing for living closer to nature. I chose for summer vacation an old country house located in a forested land in southern Poland - Roztocze - you can check here - Guciow. 

First spring day

It's spring. And not only according to the calendar, but it really came to Helsinki. I've already spotted some early spring flowers. This year they came up so early because of no snow. And today is so warm and sunny. Warm, I mean, it depends on what you expect of course. For me it means something like +5C and sun and no wind. I spent with Tomek the whole morning outside. After we left Wanda in a day care we went to our favorite park. Tomek feels there at home because we go there for so many months already. And there are plenty of other small kids from serounding day cares. It's funny, because you can hear there many languages. There are kids from Finnish kindergartens, from a Swedish one, from a French place, from Wanda's place, that is English speakers. But it's nice. And after that we walked along the shore, passed Ruoholahti harbor and went towards Eira and the park at the sea side. You can walk there following the now biking/walking path, previously probably some industrial road. And you get strait to the beach. Yes, there is a tiny sandy beach. I missed it so much. I feel such comfort when I listen to the sound of waves, to the scream of sea guls. When I can look at the sea. The powerful nature. Calming and energizing in a same time. And my little boy was so amazed by the sea. He run strait to the water. I had to keep him tight. We were throwing rocks to the water and chased the waves. So much fun.

A ray of sun and... optimism

My bad mood is over. I hope so. Has anything changed since my last post? . Well, the days are longer, much longer all of a sudden. When we wake up around 7-7.30 in the morning it is light already. I mean - it is getting light, but it is changing from one day to the other, every day the day light comes earlier. And we have long bright afternoons. Yesterday I played with the kids outside almost up to 6 o'clock and around this time it started to be dark. And it's sunny. This makes a huge difference. I even had to take my sunglasses! Yoo-pee!!!! Spring is coming!!! Not so fast. It's actually mid-winter still with tons of snow, an igloo outside our house built among others by my husband, couple of "mountains" on our yard (around 3 meters high, made out of snow, cause normally there are no hills on the yard). But the birds are singing, they already know spring will finally come. And what's best we planned our spring vacations. We are going to Spain in April. It really makes me happy.

Summer in the city

Yes, it came! Summer! It's so beautiful - warm and sunny and I enjoy those warm days more than ever since this year even summer in Poland was awful. And what do we do with this great weather? We went to an outdoor swimming pool. It's a cool place for a nice family day or just mom plus kid day. The pool in a part of the Olympic Stadium that is it was build for the Olympics held in Helsinki in 1952. And it means the whole area is in this old-school style. There is a big tower with a trampoline and a clock - a view resembling pictures from American movies from the 50s. And the surroundings - an old park, so lots of trees and those huge rocks "growing" from the ground. First time I took there Wanda about two weeks ago and today we went there again. She was quite tired after her daycare, but when you have 24C and no single cloud on the sky you don't want to head home in the afternoon. So we went refresh in a warm water. Yes, the water there is nice and warm - it's heated. And Wanda can already swim by herself (I mean of course wearing the water wings). Anyway, if you ever have a chance visit the place.

White Nights in Helsinki

Now we go. No one can beat us! :) If you remember my gloomy mood in December from not having sunlight at all, now you can be sure I have plenty of it now. As for today the official sunrise and sunset times are as follows: 3.56 and 22.45. Unfortunately I don't have many opportunities to enjoy those long days, but it's weird to go to bed when it's light outside. Yesterday I went to town to meet with my friend and it was also quite a funny feeling: going out for a drink (non-alcoholic in my case) and going back home while the sun was still quite high on a horizon. But it's beautiful! And if you have a chance go to Helsinki in June, but don't forget a wind- and rainproof jacket! :)

A day on an island

Last weekend was unbelievably warm. Perfect weather for a whole day picnic. My mum visited us for a weekend, my husband was away on a conference and so I decided to go for a trip. Short trip. And I found a wonderful place, especially magical at this part of a year. Uunisaari and Harakka. Tiny islands just couple hundreds meters from a mainland and the southern marina in the heart of Helsinki. So we packed our picnic, that is some oranges and bananas and water and off we go! The boat goes to Uunisaari (3,50 euro round trip) and you can walk along that island and cross to the other one on a tiny bridge. It's green and rocky and the most amazing thing there were the nesting birds. This is actually why I wanted to go there, cause I've read in SixDegrees that it is a great place for bird watching. And it is indeed. At this part of the year the birds are nesting and they just sit on a grass, I mean they do have sort of nests, but they are set up on the ground and not hidden from humans eyes. They sit literally steps from the path people use for walking. And they look so calm and relaxed. And there weren't that many people, so I guess they can feel safe. So the females were sitting on eggs and around each female there was a male watching around and keeping his eye on any potential danger. There were some sort of geese (I don't know the name) and seagulls mostly but we also saw a swam couple. Beautiful and amazing. Wanda was so happy to see that many birds and also some offspring. She was jumping around on the rocks and splashing water in the tiny ponds. I wasn't in charge of taking pictures, but there is just couple to show you the atmosphere. We had our first summer day in Helsinki.