Our Holiday

We are back again from our wonderful, relaxing holiday. I was afraid we where going to have a rainy vacation but luckily the rain was always one step ahead of us:) so instead we got fresh and sunny summerweather everywhere we went.

Girls at Mumindalen where we started our journey.


Listening to a story

And here we are in Vimmerby at Astrid Lindgrens Värld, the girls favourit! We took the boat over from Turku to Stockholm and drove to Vimmerby, and as the boat arrived 6am, we where just in perfect time to spend a day there.

Villa Villekulla




No matter how Nico stands the girls heads are always in same direction:)...following Emil i Lönneberga

Junibacken in Stockholm, kept us busy for many hours, ´sagotåget´( storytrain) is very well done and worth a visit,I love it every time:), it goes trough the different stories written by Astrid Lindgren ( this is inside Junibacken).
Sagotåget
Sagotåget
Sagotåget
Pippis House at the playarea

On the boat Silja Serenade on our way back to Finland, Helsinki.

We came home last night, amazingly well rested, the last night we stayed in Helsinki, and had a hotel room with our own sauna:) Was actually nice after being busy the whole day, to get back to the room and put on the sauna, and order some food up to the room, a great way to spend the last night:) That same day we visited Lotte& Johan who have built a new house in Nuuksio, 30min outside Helsinki, lovely place.

During our trip when we where in Linköping, Sweden, friday afternoon, we heard about the devastating happenings in Oslo, Norway and one is just speechless to the terrible actions done by one man, my thoughts goes out to all the families that have lost a child, to the people that have lost a friend, it is just too cruel to be true, so many life with still a long future ahead just wiped away, its impossible to understand and one just wonder why why why?

Take care of yourself and enjoy every moment of your life!

Love,

Jannika

Chickenpox number2

Last night I found a few pox on Viivi, just before we left home to see the jungle book at the outdoor theatre. The theatre was great and girls loved it, and as I know Mowgli the girls got to meet him afterwards:) On the way home Viivi fell asleep and slept until 3 am this morning, when she moved over to our bed and kept us awake for a few hours, scratching and being restless. Today she is fine, but much more red dots all over her as you can see on the picture, luckily she got it now, one week before our holiday trip. Now it is just a question of organizing saturday when we are going to Pori Jazz...Im sure my dad can handle the girls for a day..I think:)

Love,

Jannika

Vacation

Have had a relaxed but busy start to this week. Over the weekend we stayed at home, rented a few movies and spent time outdoors. Monday we went to Wasalandia again , girls had their friend Aina with them, enjoyed it very much.

Today me and my friend Katcha( Ainas mom) took the girls to Stundars an open air museum with old buildings, some farm animals, and the girls participated in the cat hunt, we walked around the area,and into the old buildings looking for the cat:) and after that the fed the animals and played in the park.A nice day, now the girls are lying in bed watching curiouse George( Nicke Nyfiken) and I have just worked for a while, sent out a quote for a trip to South Africa.

I have a few tours to work on again, interesting projects:) This tour I now planned included a 4x4 car rental into Kruger Park 7 days, so there is many ways of exploring the famous Kruger Park, and one of the best way is to have enough time, spend many days in the park as the southern part is so different from the northern part and that means also that the vegetation is different, which in turn means that certain animals prefer some areas more than others, the distances are also to keep in mind, it is over 450km from south to north and the widest point is about 70km, and the speedlimit 40km/h, so you wont make the whole park in a day:) The standard of the restcamps are simple but good, some of the restcamps have shops and restaurants, but you can also braai( grilla) yourself, just buy some wood and meat from the shop and make the fire going. You have to keep in mind that as a visitor you pay a daily conservation fee, which is at the moment R195/ day( approx 20€) so that has to be counted into the budget:)

Then back to our lives, on saturday we are going to Pori Jazz to watch Elton John, we are a bus full of people going from Vasa, leaving in the morning and coming back in the night, looking forward to that:) and then next week we are going on our family holidaytrip. Even if the schedule ends up being quite hectic over holidays it is mostly of things one wants to do:)

Have a great week ahead!

Love Jannika

Visit and vacation

Sometimes years passes by and we dont see our friends, maybe they moved away to another country, maybe you moved,we get so busy with our own lives and all drifts apart. Yesterday I saw my friend Nina I havent seen over 15 years! We used to live a carefree life, do what we wanted, had all the time in our lives with great plans for the future, and both of us had a thing for travelling, no wonder we ended up on the other side of the world:)...Now we both have families, both have lived abroad, she stills lives in Australia, it was with a lot of excitement I look forward seeing her again, and her family. We had a lovely evening, a lot to catch up on, and our children in the range 2-4 years played great together, I will add a few pictures later. I realized she has not changed a bit, it was just like catching up again from where we left off, 15 years just vanished:)

Next week my vacation start, nice long sleep-in mornings, I will try to keep my agenda as empty as possible:) We do have to finish painting the house thought, that is the only must ! Then the following week we will do a holiday trip, all to the girls favorit places,first we will visit Mumindalen and from there we take the Silja Line ship over to Stcokhokm and drive to Vimmerby to visit Astrid Lindgrens Värld and you can believe the girls are already excited to see Pippi Longstocking and Emil! Then we drive back to Stockholm , spend a few days there before we take the ship over to Helsinki, and visit some friends before we start our journey home again. We do like to drive around, but next year I think I wouldn´t mind going to an Island somewhere, just having a holiday with late mornings, blue ocean, great food, warm weather and swimming.

From August I will start writing once a week about South Africa, all about accommodation, activities, backpacking, dining, safaris etc....every week a new topic:)

Enjoy summer!

Jannika