Snow, Snow, and More Snow

We have had a lot of snow this past week. This was our walk on Tuesday morning. This part of our path had not been cleared off. It was several inches deep. The picture on the right is looking back at where we had been. We got much more of a workout than usual with our walk because of the snow! 

You can't really see very well from this picture, but this car looks like it may not get out until spring. 

There are many cars where there is a snow bank on the road side of the vehicle. 

The cars just drive on the walkway and get into their parking space from the walkway side. 

Now this car has a snowbank on the walkway side as well as the roadside. 

It looks like it will be difficult to even open the doors of the car. 

Someone has their work cut out for them.

I don't think anyone is going to use the benches anytime soon.

Elder Shurtz wanted to step over the snow bank to show how deep the snow was. 

 He just about got stuck in the process.

The pile of snow behind the fence is from what they scrape off the ice skating rink 

on what was a basketball court in the summer.

 Usually they have done a good job at keeping the walkways scraped off, 

but with it snowing most everyday, they haven't kept up. 

This was what much of our walk looked like.

This is especially bad when it is like this on the way to the office.

Thank you Charlotte for letting me bring your boots!

We wondered when we first came why there was so much packed snow on the walkways, 

and why they don't clear the walkways all the way down to the pavement. 

We have discovered that with the sun at such a low angle, it doesn't even reach most of the walkways

and even if it does, it doesn't warm it up enough to melt it dry like it does in Utah. 

If it does melt, it soon freezes again and then just becomes ice. The method of scraping off the top layer of snow and putting down gravel seems to work well here.

Even a mess like that pictured above doesn't stop people from getting around. 

You can see the bike tracks and that people had been walking in the above picture. 

I even saw a man pulling a little shopping cart like the one pictured below through the snow.  

You also see parents pushing their buggies and strollers. 

With there being snow on the walkways and even on the roadways, 

people often put the kids in a little sled and pull them where ever they need to go.

 Here is a mom pushing the baby in a stroller and pulling another child behind her.

I saw a picture on facebook of a cute lady in our ward pushing her baby in the stroller 

and pulling two sleds behind with her two other kids.

Yesterday when we were at the mall to do our grocery shopping, 

we saw several people with shopping carts with plastic sleds in them. 

At first glance, you might think that the people are buying a sled, 

but in looking more closely we realized that they had pulled their kid to the mall in the sled 

and then put it in the cart with the child while they are shopping. 

Then they will pull the kid and groceries back home again.

One of the things that we have for breakfast is hot cereal. We have tried many different kinds.

I don't really like oatmeal (which is plentiful), but there are many other types of cereal as well.

This is a barley cereal.  

I bought it thinking that it might be more like a cracked wheat cereal, but it is much finer ground than that. 

The directions have you cook it in milk. 

Elder Shurtz scorched it the first couple of times, but he has now perfected cooking it.

 This is a combination of two cereals. Early on, someone recommended neljä vilja (4 grain) cereal to us. 

I thought the texture was too much like oatmeal so didn't care for it too much. 

We combine it with siemen-täysjyvä (seed-wholegrain) cereal. I like it because it has all the seeds in it. 

This is mannasuurimo (semolina according to google translate). It is somewhat like cream of wheat. 

Elder Shurtz cooks it in a combination of hedelmäkeitto and maito (fruit soup and milk). 

The fruit soup pictured is veldelamakeitto (raspberry soup).

I like to have bananas with all of the above cereals and I also put craisens in as well.

We brought a big bag of craisens back with us when we came back from Virginia in November.

 This is riisi puuro (rice porridge). It is a Christmas dish. We have only seen this at Christmas time. 

We bought some to try it and have eaten it for breakfast several times since Christmas. 

Elder Shurtz is a pro at cooking this. 

We eat this with cinnamon sugar or fruit soup.

You put the rice in a little bit of water and cook it until the water is absorbed by the rice 

and then add milk and cook it on low for a long time, stirring constantly.

 We learned that it is easiest to cook this in a double boiler, 

because then you don't have to stir it so much and it doesn't scorch.

We don't have a double boiler, but we have two pans, so Elder Shurtz uses those as a double boiler.

When Elder Shurtz had to go over to the bank from the office, he found the stairs looked almost like a sledding hill.

 Instead of going around, he went up the "stairs". 

The view from the top doesn't look quite as bad, but I still think sledding down would be the way to go.

We decided to try making "flying jacob". We got the recipe from Sister Harris. 

That is what they served for dinner when we visited them in Vaasa.

It is a Swedish casserole invented by Ove Jacobsson who worked in the air freight industry, hence the name. 

The recipe was first published in Swedish cooking magazine Allt om mat in 1976. 

It has some very interesting ingredients: Chicken, mushrooms, bacon, bananas, peanuts, cream and chili sauce.

 It sounds strange, and looks a bit odd, but it tastes good!

On Tuesday night when we went to the temple, we drove past the mission cars parked there 

to see how much trouble it would be later in the week to get them ready 

for someone to come and look to see about buying them.

Some have been parked there longer than others. 

Sister Herttuainen thought that this one looked like a hippopotamus with its ears sticking out.

This next one is smiling at us. 

The snow is so deep between the cars that you can hardly get to the doors, let alone open them.

Elder Shurtz was able to arrange to go over to the parking lot 

when the snow removal people were there working on Thursday. 

As you can see, we did have one day with some sunshine this week.

In this picture he had already backed two cars out of the area 

and the man was clearing off the snow from where they had been.

 Here are the two cars that were moved. One is mostly cleaned off and the other is ready to be brushed off.

 He moved the cars that needed to be cleaned off to a spot where they could easily 

throw the snow to a area where it wouldn't be in the way.

 After the cars were cleared off, the little snow removal truck used the snow thrower 

to clear off that part of the parking lot.

 The cars are cleaned off and ready hopefully to be sold. 

You can also see that the sun is no longer shining.

On Thursday evening there was a Relief Society activity.

 It was an exchange, where we each brought things that were still good 

that we didn't want/need anymore and we could take anything that we liked. 

It was a fun activity, but not very well attended. (Perhaps because of the weather?)

The roadway and parking lot to our garage haven't been cleared off all week either. 

By Friday night they had cleared some of the roadway part of the parking lot, but not this little roadway. 

It is hard to see in the picture, but in the very middle of the road, 

the snow is so high that the bottoms of the cars just scrape it off and flatten it out. 

We are sure glad that we have winter tires on our car!

 We found it interesting at the mall that this restaurant  has all its furniture still out and it is all covered with snow. 

The area in front of the mall must be heated because it is all cleared off and not icy.

 We were amazed at the size of this pile of snow. 

It doesn't look nearly as impressive in the picture though. 

This covers the entire area where they had little buildings set up at Christmas time for a Christmas market.

We are trying to enjoy the Finnish winter since this is the only one we will have here. 

We are surprised that it has been 6 weeks since the shortest day of the year. 

We are noticing that it is much lighter when we go to the office in the mornings 

and not quite as dark in the evenings when we come home.

The sunrise today in Espoo was at 8:32 and sunset at 16:38 for 8:06 hours of daylight.

In Provo, the sunrise was at 7:33 and the sunset at 17:47 for 10:14 hours of daylight.