WOW!! What a weekend

It's the end of the weekend and boy do I have a lot to blog about. Since last blog on Friday, we had a good old fashion "Louisiana" style barbeque with some new people here at post on Saturday afternoon. Troy had invited a few people we've spent time together and a few new ones that are just getting here this past week. We had a great turn out and we are so happy about that because most everyone has children. The new couple that just got here on Sunday, a week ago, have a 4yr old and 2 1/2yr old triplets. WOW!! It was wonderful for Chloe because now she had a lot of other children to run around with and they certainly all did that. JP and his wife, Melanie have three children, which includes a brand new baby girl who is 3 months old. Matt and his wife, Kim have a brand new baby girl too that they brought over, Piper who is 2 wks old and an 8yr old daughter. She's a lot more brave then I was at that time for both of mine. Our turn out was wonderful. The 8 children that could run around, they certainly did that and had a ball doing it. The adults, of course, just hung out and got to know each other. It was really nice and refreshing. We just talked about our children, work, Finland, things to do around here, shopping, and just about anything that we could think of to help each other out, advice or any pointers. It was great and a lot of new information that we all jotted down. It's great to do things like this and promised each other that we'd do this more often. Everyone went home a couple of hours later and then it was time to clean. Troy got the children bathed, while I cleaned the house. It was all done pretty quickly and then it was off to bed. Another great Saturday had come and gone in Finland.
Sunday, the 21st, wow, what another day we had. I had blogged on Friday about finding a gymnastics type place via flyer for Chloe. The class I found was 45 mins every Tuesday until November, so I signed up and had been in touch with the instructor via email. She informed us that it was in Espoo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espoo) and would take us up to 45 mins travel time. I was a little scared so that is why I wanted Troy, the children and I to take time out to do a trial run so that on Tuesday, her 1st day of classes we wouldn't be late or get lost. So, we did our journey planner via the internet on the local transportation. Buses, metro and us walking we figured out our route and were still a little lost but we figured that we'd get there OK, because we had it mapped out. We had to get on a bus by our house, then take the metro to a station that we'd get on a bus to transfer to Espoo. A lot of traveling but well worth it for our little princess, so we thought. We knew we had to count out 6 stops to get off the bus and had the name of the stop also. We did this and pressed the button to get off the bus. Realizing that we are getting off in the middle of no-where, we knew something was wrong. We looked at the map and the stops to the map were not matching up, so we knew we were in trouble. We saw another bus stop across the way, on the other side of the highway and realized that it was going to take a while for us to get there because of course we had to walk, so we just headed out and took us a nice little stroll. We then knew we didn't have a route to get back to Helsinki from Espoo so we just had to sit and wait. It only took about 15 mins before the next one came. Thank God!! We got on that one and decided to go back to the bus station (depot) and then try again maybe after lunch. We got back and found a place to eat, ate and then walked around the city for a little while, finally deciding that it just wasn't a good idea to do it at all, even on Tuesday. Too much travel time only for a 45 min class, and who knows if we'd have ever found it. Really not worth it, so we decided to try and find something local for her to join. We got back to the house late in the afternoon, and took Troy Jr out of the stroller and he joined his sister in the sandbox. They had a great time for about an hour and then came in for supper, baths, and getting ready for bed. The weekend was a great one and seemed to feel like a long one. It's over and now it's time to have another great day. Until then... have a great day!!