Beautiful days flashed by...

...and it was the last days of summer, again. The annual routines and ceremonies are there but it feels a bit different this year, because of the long summer out of the country.


The annual blackcurrant day. This year the yield was the best so far, and with Annu such a fast picker, the berryfest continued late into the night with jams and purees and stuff... There's also a few litres of blackcurrant liqueur in the making - now there's a good reason to wait for the xmas holidays :)

With the start of the school year Reko has come to face the fact that the Finnish 3rd grade is a leap forward from the 2nd. Homework must really be worked with, there's no casual "just taking care of it" anymore. And the school days are longer, too, which is not a bad thing - less time to get bored ;-) His first foreign language at school turned out to be English after all. Reko's own choice was French but there were too few kids to get a group started. He was disappointed at first but got over it fast and says he now enjoys English a lot.

Atte still has it easier this year, and plays with other kids a lot. He hasn't touched the drums a lot after we came back but spends time with his synthesizer instead. Atte retraces our American travels in Google Earth and shows his friends pics and videos of the huge American rollercoasters (not that he actually rode them all...).


The first morning of the school year, with the boys modeling T-shirt styles from across the ocean.

















With Annu back at work it's basically full steam ahead for the whole bunch. In Canada we decided to become better people (us adults at least). Consequently, Annu has now promised both to run a half marathon and yell less to the kids, while Make has enrolled in an all-male yoga class; the "yoga for geezers" thing is getting bigger year by year.

The boys will try their sporting selves again, this time with floorball, which is pretty big in Europe. Time will tell if they want to stick with it.

Time flies and we all have lots to do. We have started making more detailed plans for North America 2011, and if everything works out right, we all may be in for a few things worth waiting for... but that's for later.

The cats were so well taken care of by our friends & neighbors during summer that they hardly noticed our return. They are doing great and send a big purr to everyone who helped!






















So yeah, right...













...we all got one of those neo-retro hippie tie dyes. We are so, like, peace and love and everything, anyway, eh ;-)