First Day of School

The girls started school August 18th a week and a bit before Andrew, and 4 weeks before Kate.  It is hard to believe that summer is already over when we still have one more wedding to pull off but time keeps slipping...

Emily as a Sophomore.

And Lily in 7th.

Love these little monkeys; hard to believe we are down to two.  How will I go from feeding 8 this summer to feeding 4?  It's going to be a fun year!

MK Nature Center

As the last days of summer drifted closer we figured we'd better make the most of them.  On our big trip I realized that nether Emily nor Lily remembered the MK Nature Center trips we used to take.  So we picked a day and invited Payton along for the ride.

The girls had a blast wandering the trails, looking for the big sturgeon and learning that mink are regularly spotted there.  Emily will be coming back whenever possible to watch and wait for her mink spotting.

End of Sunmer

The morning after we got home from Finland I took Emily back to the airport so she could meet up with Natali in Atlanta and help her drive back to Utah.

They spent the first night together in Atlanta then loaded up the car and hit the road.

First stop, Bentonville.  They enjoyed chatting with Spencer and Keeley and playing with the kids.

Then on to Denver.

They stayed with Natali's friend and then Natali dropped Emily off at the airport the next morning as she soloed the last leg to Utah.  The trip gave Emily hours of experience behind the wheel and lovely bonding time.

We needed one last play day at grandmas and took advantage of of the change to hang out with cousin Anna in town working for grandpa.  We were there on Spencer's birthday so the girls took the opportunity to find the weirdest Uncle Spencer pictures and reenact them.  That wig isn't too far off Lily.

LOVE IT KATE!

Then it was play and swim time...silly girls.

Grandpa picked Emily up when she was done with work and she had to do her own Spencer picture remake.  

Finland - Porvoo

We had a few hours Monday morning before we needed to head to the airport so we drove to the second oldest town in Finland, Porvoo.

On the way we had an amusing conversation about song length.  How common are songs under 3 minutes? Are songs getting shorter?  What is the best song length?  Opinions differed but I personally vote for short songs - embrace 3 minutes or less...but onto Porvoo.

Porvoo Cathedral surprised and entertained us with these photo cutout boards.

The 15th century cathedral itself was beautiful although the organ music was not as beautiful as the church in Copenhagen. 

The old town hall is now home to a museum, which we didn't have time to see and sadly the ice cream stand wasn't open yet.

We walked down the cobblestone streets, through the old town, and by the river.  It was a lovely little town and a nice place to spend an hour on our way to the airport.

Strange things in the airport and I'm not talking about my girls...

With no where to sit we found an empty table in this pub and waited for our plane to board.  It was a lovely trip but we were all ready to get home.

Finland - Church and Seals

We dove into our delicious berry porridge and enjoyed our last slices of the well beloved blueberry lemon bread while Eero let Emily pic our large prints of wolverines.  He was so generous.  It had been really special to him that we had connected with his grandsons and made their visit more enjoyable.  With a tub full of prints and Greg's camera filled with pictures we headed 90 minutes to Joensuu for 10:00 church.  

The church building was lovely and they provided traslating devices which unfortunately were out of battery.  It was testimony meeting and we didn't understand much except for the Ugandan man who spoke in English with a missionary translating to Finnish.  

Andrew had to leave the meeting twice to wipe up the ooze from his forehead.  After the meeting we chatted with the man from Uganda, a refugee and another man from New Zealand who had married a Finnish woman.  

We hit up Lidl for lunch and had to try the "best chocolate in the world" as the boys and Simi had advertised.  It was pretty delicious.

A two hour drive took us to Porosalmentie at a lodge, near Lake Saimaa, home of the Saimaa ringed seal.  We were all pretty sleepy from our two nights in the hide and had plenty of time before our boat tour so we took a little nap in the van before heading on a hike.

The sign explaining stuff about the seals that we didn't understand included a picture with a construction worker complete with plumber's crack - Kate couldn't resist a picture.

The trail meandered all over the hills, criss crossing with other trails, dead ending, basically going everywhere and no where, but there were lots of blueberries and raspberries to keep Lily going.

It was starting to get warm and the wandering inspired Lily, "this is giving me distinct Gibraltar vibes and that's not good."  It was not as hot as Gibraltar or as painful as a hike but the comparison was appropriate.

Emily and Andrew got excited about the alpacas, but the rest of us were more excited by the trail that obviously led back to the lodge.

We struck out using the map app to find a restaurant; after two fails we just drove around looking for anywhere that looked open and serving food.  We ate too much fried food but it was yummy and fueled us for out seal tour.

The water of Lake Saimaa was like glass and the scenery was gorgeous.  It felt like an early morning on Payette Lake with no skiers.

Less than 30 minutes into our cruise we saw a juvenile seal that was very curious about us and followed us, reappearing several times.

While watching the juvenile an adult female surfaced and let us see the size difference between the young seal and the adult.  At one point we could see both of them at the same time on different sides of the boat.

We continued to look for seals without any pressure, just enjoying the ride, the view, and conversation with our tour guide. 

Stopping the boat the kids enjoyed the yummy strawberry juice and Kate and I braved trying what our guide called "Wendy's" (fish pies).  They weren't actually that bad, in fact Kate really enjoyed hers.  

We enjoyed the lovely lakes and forests, looking for moose and raccoon dogs on our drive to the hotel nearer to Helsinki.

Steps: 

Just short of 10,000

Interesting Facts: 

Lake Saimaa is the largest lake in Finland, the 4th largest natural freshwater lake in Europe and has the world's longest lake shoreline.

The Saimaa ringed seal is only found in Lake Saimaa, and is critically endangered with around 500 individual left.

The seals birth their pups in snow dens but due to climate change there isn't always sufficient snowdrifts for the seals.  To preserve the species volunteers create snow caves for the seals.

Raccoon Dogs are often seen around Lake Saimaa, but we didn't see one.