Thursday, July 11, 2013

MY BROTHER'S FAMILY AND KIRPPUTORI SILINTERI

My children love to visit my brother's family in Jyväskylä. Every time we come to Finland they are excited to go and spend some time there and hang out with their cousins.


Here we are driving to one of our visiting locations.


My brother also runs sort of a second hand store, where he rents tables for people, who will sell their stuff.
You can visit their website here:













One can make all kinds of treasure finds, while visiting their store.

 
We BBQed with my brother and his family, spend time at the store, visited, went to sauna, even went to a local Mexican restaurant one night, before ordering pizza for kids. 
 














Kids stayed up practically all night watching movies, going swimming close to midnight, and playing XBOX. 
Our plan was to spend one night there, 
but we had such a good time that we extended our visit with an extra day.


Timo going to a quick atore run with her daughter, Aino

We also visited a Panda Outlet, a local candy factory. They make a really tasty black licorice!
 

We have had such a great time visiting my family. 
Now we are back at my parents, running out of time...
tomorrow we will be heading back to Helsinki, and a day after that it will be back to USA. 
Three weeks have flown by fast, but we feel like we definitely saw a lot, did a lot, and had no regrets. 
Living the life fullest.

I fell in love with this old table in my parent's house. 
My dad was going to let me have it, but I can not think of how to bring it back to US.



My dad's greenhouse, where he grows his tomatoes.
 

My parents' strawberry patch
 
 

 

Blueberries by my parents' yard
 


Apple trees and berry bushes in the yard.

 



 
 

Maija with one of her picks from Kirpputori Silinteri.


I love visiting my mom's friend's store.
She makes candles, and sells all kinds of small decorations as well.
You can visit her store here:
 

Esko's family went up North to viisit Marjaana's mother, 
so Esko came to my parent's home to spend few days with us. 
Esko and Markus made couple of cakes for us. They were delicious!
 
 
 
 
 
 

Markus got to practicing driving my dad's non-automatic transmission car. 
Now he really appreciates driving the automatic ones :)