Love, food and family= fabulous Christmas

We have been enjoying our vacation so much that I have not even been blogging. Or maybe you can say that we have been so wonderfully lazy that I have not even blogged. However, I try to think of the blog as a substitute for a journal, I should be better about updating it. We obviously arrived to Finland safely; however, this time the traveling seemed more taxing than usual. It must have been the five hour lay-over in Chicago before a seven hour flight and the three hour lay-over in Manchester that made the travel time feel like forever.

The one disappointment about this Christmas was the lack of snow. We have not seen the sun for a week now because it has been so cloudy so it's difficult to know what time of the day it is when you look outside. Usually the snow makes it lighter and obviously more beautiful. We had a wonderful Christmas with all of the usual Christmas traditions. Even though we don't have any small children in our family right now, we were all very excited about opening our presents.
Before opening presents, we read the Christmas story from Luke and sang Christmas songs. If we had kids, Santa Claus would come and visit us on Christmas Eve and hand out the presents to us.

In Finland, the whole country shuts down for Christmas. Everything closes after 12 pm on Christmas Eve and stores and such don't open until the 27th. It is quite the contrast to the U.S and I think it really brings the Christmas spirit and gives an opportunity to spend quality time with a family. Our sleeping schedule has been messed up since we have been up until 2 am most nights playing games or watching a movie. Troy and I are usually in bed by 10 pm so it has been quite the change, but that's what a vacation is about:)

Our family picture for 2007.

We went ice-skating the weekend before Christmas. Our feet and ankles got pretty tired very quickly but it was fun to get out and do something different.


One of the Christmas traditions in Finland is taking a candle to the cemetery to a family member's grave. It might sound creepy if you have not experienced it, but it is beautiful and peaceful. This happens on the Christmas Eve and it is beautiful as you can see thousands of candles lit as it is pitch black outside. Mom's grave site is two hours away from Helsinki so we did not drive there but we took a candle to my dad's grandma's grave.


Troy and I also decided to be get out of the house and went to the Young Single Adult dance last night. Troy bought me a nice dress for Christmas so it was fun to get to wear it for more exciting occasion than church. I love dancing and there are not too many chances for that as a married couple, so I enjoyed the time on the dance floor. I will post some pictures as I get them from our friends.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed the time with family and friends.

The Nursing Uniform

I wear this beautiful uniform three days a week. I guess I don't have to worry about my outfits for those days (like I would worry about them anways). That picture was taken on my birthday last April. I got those beautiful flowers and fun games from Troy. If I don't look overly joyful, it's because I actually found out about my mom's cancer on my birthday, which is also my dad's birthday, so that birthday was not much of a celebration.

P.S this was a response to a request from Starla to see my uniform so I'm not totally random.

Aching Feet and Happy Heart

The reason for my aching feet and happy heart is the fact that I worked two days in a row and had incredibly busy 12-hour shifts and my poor feet are so sore and tired; however, my heart is happy because I get to just hang out for almost three weeks:) I had actually had a great time at work because my patients were nice and appreciative of my efforts to provide good care, which definitely does not happen all the time. An elderly man was discharged yesterday and as he took him out to his car, his wife and he both hugged me. I took care of him on Monday and Tuesday and he was so fascinated by the fact that I was from Finland and he would ask questions about everything. Sometimes people can be creepy when they ask personal questions but he was just so sweet and it was fun to form a little friendship with him. I would tell my patients how I'm leaving to Finland on Thursday morning and they would just get so excited for me:) I think sometimes people think I'm younger than I really am and they didn't realize that I'm married so they were probably thinking "this poor little young girl is so far away from home". This is obviously true, but Troy and I are so blessed to be able to visit my family twice a year. We spent a month there last April-May and now we will be there for two and half weeks so we are getting our Finland time in.

So I have been kind of lame in the past two Christmases and I haven't done much of Christmas stuff around our home nor have I send Christmas cards to people. My mom was terrible at getting cards in the mail and I guess I'm just like her in that aspect. So I am already planning about all the fun and nice things that I will do for my friends and for us next year. If anyone has any cool traditions or ideas, I'm wanting start some new traditions with Troy.

So school is over and now I only have three more semesters to go. Somehow psychologically this makes a huge difference from having four semesters left. I will graduate eventually! At least I have some good friends in the program and my lovely Starla at BYU who will be graduating at the same time as me, so I feel like my pains and joys of nursing school are shared:)

I don't have any new pictures to post. I should have taken some as we visited Troy's parents for Christmas. Since we will be missing the actual Christmas with them; we drove up to Phoenix to see them. We had a good time and actually got to open presents already. Now we have a printer that works. We ran out of ink last summer and we were too lazy to buy some for a while. So we finally got our act together and bought the right type of ink and the printer totally stopped working. So I have been printing all my papers and lectures for school at Troy's work. Well he would print them for me since I can't enter the building because of the lack of U.S Citizenship on my part. As you can imagine, some mornings were little stressful as I would drop Troy off to work, he would run up to his floor and start printing stuff and hope that no one else was printing at the same time. I would wait in the car and watch the minutes go by as I waited for my papers. So needless to say, we are both happy to have a new printer!

For the record, I pretty much slept 11 hours last night. Poor Troy had to go to work this morning for one more day while I just turned under the covers. I think I'm going to like working part-time after I graduate; working twice a week does not seem so bad right now:)

Im off to pack, clean and do some last minute shopping. I think my next post should be in Finnish since I'll be in Finland; when in Finland, do it like the Fnnish people(however, this would mean kind of anti-social behavior and lots of beer, so maybe I'll past)

Avoiding Studying...I'm Great at It!

This week is the fabulous week of finals. I took my "labor and delivery" final yesterday and I have two more to go. Usually I'm stressed and studying like a mad woman; however, this week I'm just slacking. I'm studying one chapter at a time for my pharmacology final and after each chapter I read blogs for half an hour. Needless to say, I'm not being very productive. But I am fully entertained by people's blogs. Yes, I am one of those people who reads random people's blogs. I am addicted to blogs. Troy thinks I'm ridiculous, but if that is my one addiction, I think he should be happy.




On Friday, I took Troy to the pizza place where my nursing school friends and I go for their lunch special as a way to relax. They offer a delicious oversized slices of pizza for a good price. So since Troy is going back to school, I figured I would introduce him to one of the UA student hang out places.

Last weekend was eventful as Troy finally took his GRE test and he did great. He is my math genius and we are hoping that his verbal score will be good enough for the college. We were so relieved after the test that we ate some Chipotle and took a three hour nap. Another exciting thing was the purchase of new running shoes for me. I have worn the same shoes for 4.5 years. They are the shoes that BYU gave me as part of the Track gear when I was training with the team. So it was definitely time for me to get new running shoes. I took them out for a test run on Saturday night and they feel fabulous. So now I am ready for my marathon training:)
I'm actually really enjoying running right now. Some days I do a leisurely run with a 9-10 minute/mile and then I push myself for a 8-8:30 min/mile.

We also had a good Sunday evening with our friends Paul and Heather. We used to spend almost every weekend together last year but somehow we have not been able to get together as much this fall. It's a shame because we love hanging out with them. We played one of our favorites games "Ticket to Ride".



So here is a picture of my cute pregnant friend and I. I look pretty gross actually; however, I don't have many pictures with her and I wanted to post a picture of us. One of our fun "couple friends" moved away last year and I have only one stinking picture with them.Yes, Dani that's you guys! I need more pictures with my friends as a proof of not having a lonely life:)

Alright, another 45 minutes well spent on blogging so I guess I should go and read about rheumatoid arthritis drugs....

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

I can't believe it's already December. It seems like this whole year and especially this fall just flew by. We are going to Finland for Christmas, which means that I get to have my white Christmas again. It just never feels like Christmas for me unless I'm in Finland where it's dark outside and white snow everywhere. However, this Christmas season is very different from any other Christmas since it will be the first Christmas without my mom. Last Christmas was very special because my mom was going through a bone marrow transplant. It was supposed to be a second chance and the victory over her cancer. My mom spent last Christmas at the hospital and we were there with her most of the time. My dad was so embarrassed as we carried boxes and bags full of presents to her hospital room. My mom was all about Christmas. She would buy Christmas presents throughout the year (so dad couldn't keep track of how much she spent)and decorate the house into a Winter Wonderland. She also had candles burning around the house all the time. I don't think I will ever be as good of a decorator as my mom, but Troy and I have been burning candles in the evenings to bring a peaceful atmosphere and to include mom into our Christmas preparation.

Troy and I spent our first Christmas together with his family. Since I was away from home, my mom made a book with Finnish/our family traditions and recipes. It was a cute present then and now it is truly priceless as I flip through the pages of her ideas and our family traditions. I know you can't really see the picture above too well. It is a picture of me as a 3-year old making some gingerbread cookies and on the opposite page is a gingerbread recipe. It is my great-great grandma's recipe whose name was Evi. My mom was five months pregnant with me on their first Christmas together and when she saw the recipe and her name, she decided that she wanted to name me Eevi.

I can't wait to have my own kids and have them experience the magic of Christmas that I always felt as a child with my mom.

Turkeys, babies and cars

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend. We saw the movie "Dan in Real Life". I recommend this movie to everyone. Especially if you like the TV show "The Office". We spent time with Troy's parents and brothers and their families. I'm so used to our own peace and quiet that it always shocks me how much noise our nieces and nephews make:) We still love them though:)

Troy and I bought our first car together few weeks ago. We finally got it this weekend and we love it. We already had one car that Troy had before we got married; thanks to his generous parents. We managed to live with just one car for two years; however, Troy is starting school in January and needs to commute between classes and work during the day when I'm at the hospital. So here is a picture of our Scion xA. I even downloaded some new music for my iPod so I could totally enjoy my driving experience in my cute car:)

It's "my car" because I will be commuting 25 miles to Orovalley for my clinical rotation next semester, so I get the fuel efficient car. It's a manual, which makes driving little different. So fa

Another fun experience was "baking" a diaper cake this weekend. One of Troy's childhood friends is expecting a baby so we decided to give her diapers and make a cake out of them. . Troy actually put the diapers together and Barb, troy's mom, and I assembled the layers together and decorated it with burp cloths, onesies and little toys.




It's a cute present idea or even a decoration for a baby shower. So we don't have a baby yet but we still get to play with diapers. (Though, it's nice that they were all clean.)

Head start to Thanksgiving

I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't eat too little over this Thanksgiving break so Troy and I went to In-N-Out for dinner and dessert at Coldstone. For the first time, we ordered from their "secret menu" at In-N-Out. We got double-doubles "animal style", which means that they add pickles, special sauce and grilled onions. They were delicious.

To add to the damage of my fatty dinner, now I am just sitting on the couch and reading people's blogs. I sure love this week and the lack of school work:)

Green green grass:)

We finally have grass on our backyard. It makes me so happy because I am not a big fan of the brown dirt that surrounds my home at the moment. Troy's parents came to help us with it and it sure was a big project. Troy ended up with five blisters from trying to dig through the hard dirt. We are not finished with the backyard yet,Troy is planning on planting trees and building a little wall etc. I really can't take any credit for the work since I didn't get down and dirty there. Instead, I was the good housewife who supplied water bottles, sandwiches and cooked dinner. I never really think of myself as a "housewifey" material since I'm all about making Troy cook and clean and do laundry as much as I do it. My attitude is "whoever has more time to spare should do the house stuff".




We also got new bookcases from Ikea that we put in our den. We had painted it dark brown few weeks ago and wanted to accentuate the dark color with white furniture. As you can see, we need more books. I absolutely love reading; however, I am a regular at the Tucson city library so my own collection of books is not very big. Troy tells people that I act like a kid on a Christmas morning when I go to the library; that is how excited I get about reading good books. Yes, I'm little nerdy:) However, I keep finding GRE words for Troy from my books, so hopefully that will help him on his test. He is desperately trying to learn some of the vocabulary, which for most people is very difficult. I absolutely hate those standardized tests. I think they are evil!

We also had some "new" people over tonight. There are so many fun people in our ward that we haven't had a chance to hang out so finally tonight we had Camille and Birch and Emmy and David over.

Also if anyone wants a running buddy, let me know. I am thinking of training for San Francisco Marathon(august 2008). Though, we all know how successful I was about my half-marathon training. So we'll see...

ABC Tag

A- Attached or single: Attached
B- Best Friend: Troy
C- Cake or Pie: Pie
D- Day of choice: Fridays(when I dont have a class and Troy is off)
E- Essential Item: chapstick
F- Favorite Color: green/pink
G- Gummi Bears or Worms: gummi bears
H- Hometown: Tampere, Finland
I- Indulgence(s): reading magazines and blogs, candy
J- January or July: January in AZ and July in Finland
K- Kids: none yet
L- Life is incomplete without: my family and the gospel
M- Marriage Date: September 10. 2005
N- Number of Siblings: 3
O- Oranges or Apples: Apples
P- Phobias or Fears: failure
Q- Quotes: what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger(nursing school is sure doing that to me)
R- Reason To Smile: when I can make someone happy
S- Season: Spring
T- Tag Three: I don't know who to tag
U- Unknown Fact About Me: I used to snore like a old man when I was little, my tonsils were taken out to stop the snoring.
V- Vegetarian or Meat Eater: both
W- Worst Habit: picking my nose
X- X-Rays or Ultrasounds: ultrasounds
Y- Your Favorite Food: too many--good steak, burgers, SALADS, mexican food....i love to eat
Z- Zodiac: Aries

As I mentioned on my first post, I am trying to be more spontaneous and adventurous and learn and try new things. So today I had my first golf experience Troy has wanted to go to the driving range for a long time and we finally did it this morning. While he was hitting the golf balls, I ran three miles and then met up with him at the driving range. Unfortunately, he got a blister on his index finger a half way through his bucket of balls, so we decided that I would attempt to hit some balls. I only missed once and I actually liked it. However, I had just run three miles and though it wasn't that far, Arizona sun definitely takes the energy out of you quickly, so I hit about ten balls and then we headed home.


Troy was so excited about hitting some golf balls.

I was pretty lazy for the rest of the day. I read for few hours, took a nap, went through some blogs and prepared for tomorrow's Visiting Teaching conference. Oh, I do have to mention the fact that I have been shopping a lot lately, which should be mentioned since I'm not usually a huge fan of shopping. Tonight I bought a cute dress and some lotions when I was just supposed to buy a birthday present for my friend.

candy candy candy

Everyone is posting their Halloween pictures on their blogs and I have to admit that Troy and I were lame this Halloween. Maybe we are just little boring because I didn't feel up to doing anything nor did I care about the fact that we didn't do anything:) I'd like to think that it's the fact that we don't have kids yet. We had a good amount of kids coming to our door and I hope they liked the twizzlers that we were giving out. I absolutely love candy so Halloween will be dangerous time in our house once we have kids because I have a feeling that I might steal their candy. I can eat tons of it and I have been eating quite a bit of candy lately, which does not make me feel too great, so I decided to give it up until we go to Finland for Christmas. So I will try to be healthy and exercise more and eat less sweets until then:)

A busy weekend

Troy and I have decided to try new things and to find different ways to have cool experiences. Basically we don't want to be boring:) So this weekend was full of different things. Some of you might remember that I was planning on running a half-marathon in the end of October. Well Saturday morning was supposed to be the big day and we ended up doing a 5K Juvenile Diabetes Walk instead. I trained for few weeks in August;however, my clinicals and working few shifts a week was too exhausting and I didn't have any juice left for training. So instead of a 13.2 mile run, we walked 5K. We met up with some of my nursing school friends and enjoyed a free breakfast,walked and talked and enjoyed a free lunch. So nothing too rigorous, but a great way to spend our Saturday morning.


Troy's company had an open house on Saturday, which meant that I got to see where he works. It was fun to see his cubicle and the different demonstrations and displays of all the missiles that Raytheon makes. Finland actually uses one of their missiles; it's always fun to make connections with Finland since it's such a small country. Troy got to experience what it is like to shoot a missile from your shoulder. It was sort of like a video game, which the army uses to train the soldiers on this missile. Troy was pretty excited about to shoot "the javelin".


We also took a picture in front of an army hummer.


Later on that night, we stopped by a wedding reception and then attended a women's semi-professional full-contact football game. Some of the ladies were big and pretty scary. It was fun to watch the game an spend time with Phil and Christina.


Life is getting busy again as I start my clinicals this week and Troy is studying for the GRE. He is starting grad school in January, which will make life interesting as we are both full-time students again and he will be working full-time as well.

We are so blessed with good friends and fun experiences!

S'mores , giant beetles and great fun!

Troy and I have wanted to go camping for weeks and we finally got our act together and went. On Friday, we bought a tent, a cooler, camping chairs and camping food and drove up to Mt. Lemmon, which is about 45 minutes away from our house. The wonderful thing about Mt. Lemmon is the fact that the temperature drops considerably as you drive up the mountain. I do not like the Arizona heat, so the temperature change as well as the green scenery made me very happy. We had hoped to have another couple join as for some s'mores around the camp fire, but it ended up just being the two of us, which was made it a fun romantic camping experience. Troy made some stew and started a fire so we could keep warm and we made some delicious s'mores. We didn't sleep too well since our neighbors had had too much to drink and thought it was going OK to yell and scream ALL through the night. We went to bed around 11 pm and I kept checking my watch at 3:30 am and 5:30 am as they kept running around and yelling at each other. We ended up taking a nap around 8 am(when they decided to finally go to sleep) after we had woken up to their gospel music at 6:30 am. So not much sleep, but so much fun!

Troy cooking our dinner


I'm slightly excited about strawberry marshmallow
cookies-n-cream chocolate s'mores.


Our delicious breakfast-we love bacon!

On a side note, Troy thought that he heard a bear outside our tent(trying to get to the food in the bear box) and he thought that I would be intrigued by that. I was so scared and couldn't fall asleep for another half an hour. So fear of bears and drunken people can definitely keep you awake. Also these nasty big beetles kept falling off the trees-they were huge and they could fly.