Weekend

Sinekaya is spending the weekend with us. His mum (our maid) went away for a funeral this week, so I invited Sine to spend the weekend with us. He is a lovely boy, and a joy to have around.

Heikki's gone to the US for a couple of days, so it's just me and the kids.

It was a warm day yesterday, so I put the sprinkler system on and the kids ran around in the garden getting wet. They then had a dip in the pool. It's nice to have a pool, especially in a country where it can be used for most of the year.

We went to Seija's house for a supper. We had wonderful soup that Anna-Kaisa had prepared for us. After that, Matias and Sine watched a DVD and had a mini-feast. They'd gone wild in the shop and bought themselves a bag of goodies to eat.

We spent the whole of today at GrandWest Casino. It's a place where you can go for ice skating, go-carting, mini-golfing, gambling, cinema etc. I told the kids they could choose the activities. We first ate fast food, then saw the film Garfield 2 and ate some more. At this point, Milja and Dan joined us. We spent the rest of the time in a funpark. All the rides were quite small, but the kids enjoyed themselves.

The casino is very American. The main building was something like a cross between Disneyland and Las Vegas. There was even a sign at the exit urging us to "buckle up."

Milja and Dan went to a friend's house for the evening to watch a football game. I'm at home with the little kids. An American friend, Andrew, will be joining us any time now.

I'll take the kids on a safari tomorrow. They have recently added elephants to their collection, so they now have "the big 5": elephants, buffalo, rhino, lions and leopards. We'll leave just after 6 in the morning. Heikki will miss out on this trip, but I'm hoping he'll get to go there with my parents and his mum, who are coming here at the end of the month.