Dance

I've been completely hooked the last weeks on the Finnish version of the program "so you think you can dance". The Dancer's have been amazingly good and the choreographies as well. My favorite choreoghrapher in the program was defenitely Reija Wäre. Her choreograhpies were just amazing.

She did all my favorite performances:

Dance - Videot | Nelonen.fi

Dance - Videot | Nelonen.fi

Dance - Videot | Nelonen.fi

There was of course so much more different dance styles represented in the competition but these were defenitely the once that stayed in my mind.

The dance that opened the whole competition was also good:

Dance - Videot | Nelonen.fi

I am proud that in this small cold country they managed to find such great dancers :-)

In the end Sam won and he defenitely deserved it. At one point he did this reeeaallly slow perfect piruett and it just showed what a perfect control he has over his body.

Dance - Videot | Nelonen.fi

Hopefully we see more of him in the future :-)

In the final show the national ballet was performing and aaaaaaaaw how I adored it! It made me wonder why I have not yet visited the ballet. I so need to go and bring a pack of napkins as well because I will for sure cry.

Dance - Videot | Nelonen.fi

I understand if no one will have the patience to go through all those videos but I am so thrilled I can't help sharing the experience :-D

I have a fridge in my shoe

New York New York

We went to New York and during that time our little boy had an accident, you can check Stefan's blogg for some pics on the poor little one while he had to keep his leg in a bandage. Luckily he should be fine unless the hip will be dislocated again, we just have to be very patient and skip agility and other fun stuff until his leg is strong enough again.

We had anyhow a fab time in New York, these pics are taken by our friend Ninnu who joined us in the trip, she's great at taking photos.










After this lovely trip we have run a few times to the Vet and now we are taking Faro swimming and to the physiotherapist also. Perhaps Stefan will put up some pics from that because it was quite interesting. But whatever it takes to make him well again :)

Bears

Funny coincidence that at the same time as there are United Buddy Bears – The Art of Tolerance on the Senate square in Helsinki. The hunters and police had to shoot a bear in Pernaja, Finland (close to were our country side house is) since the bear got too close to the village. They tried to scare it away back to the forest but a bear that has gotten a taste for left-overs in trash cans is not likely to return to hunting grounds on it's on will.

picture from here.

Read the article about the bear in Pernaja in swedish (Pernaja is Pernå in swedish) here;

STORVILT | Polisen ger upp björnjakten

Prue's Blogg

The first time I was in Australia I attended a youth camp organized by LIONS in Halls Gap national park in Victoria. It was great and I am forever thankful to the LIONS organization for making it possible for me to go to Australia so young. We got to meet other people from all over the world and it was so much fun! We did everything from rock climbing to gold panning.

Here's a view of the magnificent scenery there is in Hall's Gap:


I do recommend a trip to Halls Gap if you are the active outdoor type! Please remember though that it can be cold in Victoria during Australian winter's.



With some of the people from the camp I am still from time to time in contact with (at least facebook friends ;-) ) .

Some moment's ago I received an e-mail from one of our camp leader's, Prue, about her new blog, I quote:

"For a while we've been talking about the lack of websites with ideas on what to feed kids, how to keep the entertained and where to take them. My and I have decided to take action and have started a blog at http://nestlingblog.wordpress.com/ ."

Feel free to read about the life of Aussie mums if you're interested :-) Even if I do not have kids I think I will try on the risotto recipe, looks yummy!

Esperanza

Last week I heard by mistake that Esperanza Spalding will be in Helsinki and I said "oh, I would like to go" so Stefan ,as the real gentleman he is, bought me tickets :-)

So we headed to the new Jazzbar in Helsinki called Birdland. She was there with her band Elm trio. They were really good, even though I think that Stefan thought it was a bit too Jazzy. It was true that they were much more Jazzy than only Esperenza by herself as I was used to hear her. But I did enjoy hearing them and it is amazing seeing the musicians play. The things she does with her voice is impressive and it's even more impressive to see that she is playing the bass at the same time and still manages to keep the voice so clear. In the end we did not stay the whole gig though. Not because we didn't want but we were quite tired and had to work today. Perhaps next time she is in Finland we can see her again :-)

This is the song I fell in love with maybe a year ago.



If you want to hear her newer sound check out her myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/esperanzaspalding

Holidas are Over

This summer holidays we decided to stay in Finland for several reasons. One because we wanted to enjoy being with Faro now when he is still young and learning new things all the time, two because we wanted to work on the house in Liljendal and three because we just wanted to stay here for once during the light months.

It was a good decision, we enjoyed watching Faro little by little learning to swim, now he swims like a champion and he is a fast swimmer as well :-) We managed to also buy a lot of stuff for the house and fix a little bit of this and a little bit of that. As a bonus it was one of the warmest summers in looong time, they even classified it as tropical weather as we had more than 20 degrees during the nights and we broke the heat record in Finland. All in all we enjoyed it!

We are now very excited about Friday as Stefan's brother and wife are visiting us. Let's hope the weather stays nice and that they enjoy the stay!