Ystävänpäivä

What a difference a week (and several truckloads of snow) makes!

The little roadway to our garage is no longer a pond, and the huge piles of snow are gone.

This is what it looked like today after church.

In addition to a little bit warmer weather this week, 

on Monday morning, all sorts of trucks were out removing the piles of snow. 

There are all sorts of interesting trucks that are used to scrape, pick up and carry the snow away.

The roadway to our garage is no longer a pond and the piles of snow are now gone.

On Tuesday, we went over to the Posti to pick up a couple of packages, and to meet these two lovely sisters. 

Sisters Bicknell and Coffelt had been to the temple 

and I had a temporary nametag to give to Sister Bicknell (she had lost hers), 

so I met them before they headed back home on their train.

Elder Shurtz has been busy this week getting the old finacial records filed away. 

He decided to change the way that things were filed a bit and he made all new labels for the binders.

Thursday was Valentines Day. In Finland it is ystävänpäivä (friendship day). 

While we saw things in the stores, it is nothing like the commercialization of the day in the U.S.

We did notice that they had decorated a bit in the lobby of our apartment building.

We decided to go out to dinner for Valentines Day. 

We had to wait in a line at Chicos for a while because a lot of other people had the same idea.

It was worth the wait.

We bought a pomelo this week. I think that we have tried one in one of our trips to Asian countries.

This one was the size of a cantaloupe. 

You can see that one section takes up a good portion of a dinner plate!

It was an interesting change from our usual fruits.

It has been such a delight to have Sister Laitinen in the mission office. 

She is fun to be around and brings some youthful energy to the office.

I got her to help me work on organizing a couple more shelves in the storage room.

Here we are in the middle of the mess.

 Just before it was time to leave on Friday, Sister Laitinen had us all come into the front office and told us that because it was Friday, she was going to have us try some of her favorite candies. 

She had a little bag of candies (4 of each type) so that we could all try them.

Here are a few of them. Each one, she would say something like: 

"this was my favorite when I was young", "this one is my new favorite", "this is my all time favorite", etc.

They all had a licorice flavor.

Sister Airto said that she is allergic to licorice.

The one in the picture with Elder Shurtz is colored on one side and black on the other. 

It isn't even sweet, but rather it is kind of salty.

The pink and blue bottle is somewhat like a sour patch kid.

The rather appetizing ball is licorice and chocolate. It tasted better than it looked.

On Saturday we drove to Pasila to see where to take the car 

when we are going to put it on the night train to Oulu later this month. 

We were a bit nervous because this was the map from the website and when we go, it will be in the dark.

Now we can be a bit more confident that we will be able to find it again.

It was a beautiful SUNNY day! We love it when we get to see the sun!

We also went to a museum that was near there, the Urho Kekkonen museum. 

The villa Tamminiemi was one of three official residences for Finnish presidents from 1940. 

It was the official residence and home of President Kekkonen from 1956 to 1981, 

and then was his private nursing home until his death in 1986. 

It was then turned into the Urho Kekkonen museum. 

It was fun because the items in the home were from the era of our childhood and youth.

It was in a lovely setting. The views from the windows were amazing.

What about that sphere chair and the TV!

 We thought the 70's style kitchen was especially fun.

It was quite the phone system, and we also liked the food scales.

We decided to take a little walk outside. There were a couple of people out ice fishing. 

I didn't think that I would want to get out on that ice.

There were a lot of people out because it was such a beautiful day!

Seurasaari was just across the bridge. 

Seurasaari is an island known mostly as the location of the Seurasaari Open-Air Museum, 

which consists of old, mainly wooden buildings transplanted from elsewhere in Finland 

and placed in the dense forest landscape of the island.

I have wanted to go there, but the museum is closed in the winter. 

We decided to just walk across the bridge and back because we didn't have much time.

 There are some very tall trees on the island.

 Elder Shurtz found some signs and "skated" across the ice so he could read them.

We definitely want to come back!

 Oh, and did I say "What a beautiful day!"

We had to hurry home so we could get our shopping done and get dinner ready for the Sisters to come to dinner.

We have enjoyed having Sisters Pack and Broderick come over several times over the past couple of months. 

Sister Pack is being transferred, so this is the last time she will be able to join us for dinner.

We love these sisters.

Tonight for dinner we made some spicy turkey and sweet potato soup. 

Elder Shurtz decided to make some biscuits to go with it. 

 They turned out really good!

Sunday was another beautiful sunny day.

We were excited to see this cute picture of Lucia from her blessing day last week, 

and to hear that her cardiologist appointment went well and things are looking good with her heart.

We felt so blessed that we were able to participate in Lincoln's baptism Sunday night.

 It was almost as good as being able to be there in person. 

 If only we could have reached through the screen to give everyone a hug.  

Thomas' family and Stephanie's family were there as well, so 19 of our grandchildren were there. 

It was nice to be able to see everyone there.

We also participated with the Shurtz family at the couple's retreat in Arizona. 

We joined them via SKYPE for a meeting late on Sunday night.  

We are grateful for the technology that keeps us connected, even if it was very late for us.

We can't believe that February is about 2/3 over! Did someone turn us onto fast forward?

We are really enjoying the fact that the hours of daylight are getting longer!

Today in Espoo, the sunrise was at 7:55 and the sunset at 17:16 for 9:20 hours of daylight.

In Provo, the sunrise was at 7:17 and the sunset at 18:04 for 10:47 hours of daylight.

We are catching up!