October already??!!

Gracious sakes! I just looked back at when I last posted something on here --- August! Life has been a bit of a whirlwind! Life should feel relaxed and boring when I send six kids out the door to school each day, and I have only one 5-year-old home with me, hey?!! But an example of how a school day is for us ... each day of the week, each child has a different schedule. So Monday's T and D start school at 8:00, M and K start at 8:45, N starts at 9:00 (different school- Jr. High, I suppose it would be, if sort of compared it with American schools), and L starts at 10:00. Then D is done at 12:00, K and T at 13:00, L and N at 14:00, and M at 14:45. So, big deal, right? But for some reason, it really rattles my focus. Seems that by the time the last one is at school, I've put in a whole day's work- tho' in reality, they can for the most part get ready for school (I wake them up, and give a reminder or two ... or three, or four for some of them ... when it's close to time for them to leave.) And actually, when I have to explain this all out, it most likely means that I'm  a bit lazy by nature, because I feel that I have to crow about how busy life is! :)

On the other hand- I do not have diapers to change, don't have to get up during the night with anyone (they are too old to cry for a bottle, and too young to be out-and-about, with me fretting at home!) 

What else has kept us busy this fall? Let's see ...

*The Chief started building our outdoor sauna ... it's really going to be a fun one!! It's usable, but there's lot he will do on it, before it's all done. 

*I went to work with the Chief of garage door installers for a week. It should have been two weeks, but there came a complication with the job order, and they postponed the installations. So we replaced 17 doors in that week (just got the old doors off, and new ones installed- didn't get the trim-work done, etc.) Mrs. B (niece) was here with the kiddos during those days, so it worked out nicely!

*We started working on getting permission from the city to build the addition on the house. And they denied our initial application (or whatever it's called.) A's first reaction was, 'I can't stand living in this communistic country!! Let's just move back to America when we've been in this house two years!' (After two years, could sell it without paying a horrendous amount of taxes ...) But - we will reapply, and then re-reapply, if the deny a second time. The denial was based on some old ordinances for this area, it seems, so maybe they will approve with the second request.

*Kitties are growing, and we've all actually enjoyed them!! Bunnies are growing also, and when they are in their pen, we enjoy them! :) The times one of them have escaped, we haven't enjoyed that one very much ...

School has gone amazingly well this year. I am feeling sooooo thankful that we moved to this school location. The kids seem to have nice teachers, and they seem to take our kids' circumstances into consideration (the older 3 are considered to have Finnish as their second language, since they learned to read and write in America in school ... the next 3 have been learning in Finland, so although they all read at least at a basic level in English, and their spoken language vocabulary is probably still higher in English than in Finnish, it seems they will not need any extra lessons in Finnish.)

And ... how did my garden grow? With silver bells, and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row ... of course!! Heh! Well actually- one evening when we had company, about half of the boys had an onion war, so there went the onions. The carrots pretty much got picked and eaten before they were very big, because it is sooo fun to watch the progress of carrot growth! :) We got quite a few peas (mostly just ate straight from the greenhouse) and would have had many more, but when school started, garden watering fell waaaay down on the list of priorities. We got enough potatoes for about 6 meals (not too good- we probably got 3 times more potatoes than the amount we planted.) Strawberries flowered way late (they were planted from seed by the kids, early in the spring) - but have been flowering like crazy all fall! Hopefully we get a good crop from them next summer (well- as good crop as you can get from about 9 plants!) :) We got a few cucumbers, and enough green beans to go with a couple meals. So - for all the excitement and steam that went into planting and caring for the plants until August- we didn't really get much out of it. Will we do it again next summer? Absolutely!!!