Dinner

I bought chicken breast on Monday, eight juicy bits. This morning I put them in a pot with some chopped garlic, fresh basil and sundried tomatoes. I put the pot into the fridge, and showed Risto how to put the oven on at 175C and asked him to put the pot into the oven when he comes home from school. He called when school finished and asked if he could go to a friend. I let him go, but told him to be home early to put the chicken into the oven so we could have a nice, home-cooked dinner.
At 4:30PM he calls and says he's home. I ask him to put the chicken into the oven. "Oh, Mom, it's already in there!". Darn, the chicken's been at room temperature for 8 hours..... I guess we can eat it anyway. "Ok, dear, just turn the oven on." Risto:"It's on already. I put it on when I left for school!"
If you ever wondered what chicken breast cooked for EIGHT hours looks like, then have a peek. It was hours beyond crispy-on-the-outside-juicy-inside, believe me. I couldn't even poke a fork through it! When I finally got a piece cut off , by stretching my imagination I could find a tender part.

We're having frozen pizza tonight.

Wedding day!

Our annual wedding day picture. Looks like we have twins and a younger child, but no. The boys are all 2 years apart.

We have enrolled the boys to the new school in Costa Rica, but that's about it. The house hasn't been sold yet and we have no idea so far where we're going to live in December. But something will turn up!

DH is off tomorrow to see his host family in Australia. 2 weeks alone with the boys will be a challenge.

Pediculus humanus var. capitis

We came back home from Scotland at 1AM. Tuomas, as usual, had a total fit (happens often when he's tired), started screaming. This resulted in a massive nose bleed. He was jumping up and down in the bathroom, blood all over the place. And as usual, I didn't have the patience to deal with this when I'm tired. DH took over, and calmed the bleeding boy down. I started cleaning the floor, walls etc. And finally my maternal instinct came back and I was able to concentrate on the way too tired child. And that's when I saw it: something moving in his hair!

Before we left for Scotland I had seen some small black specks on his neck hair. I had pulled one out, studied it: not moving, no legs, must be a seed or something. The boys had been in the forest, crawling in bushes and hay, so seeds would be a logical explanation. Logical, but apparently not the correct answer.

Lice! Not the thing you want to meet for the first time in your life in the middle of the night. Risto and Jaakko were already in bed half asleep, so there was really no point in dragging them up again just to check the parasites. So, to avoid Tuomas from spreading them into his bed I shaved his head. Boy, was he unhappy!!

The two older boys were leaving for a basket ball camp early next morning with DH. In order to avoid them from spreading the zoo further I shaved Risto after I found that he had them, too. DH said straight away that his head could be shaved, too, lice or no lice. I know it's not necessary to cut your hair if you have lice, but there was no time to treat it with the special shampoo. Risto and Tuomas were raging mad at me:"You have to cut your hair, too!!!!"

I waited until Jaakko woke up, checked his hair, shaved it. Checked my hair, yuck. Could I trust a four year old to comb my hair thoroughly after the shampoo treatment to get rid of the whole zoo? How would I look without hair? Hmm... the older boys were pretty upset.... Jaakko, do you want to shave my head?

He had fun looking for my "side eyes" as I call them, the hidden eyes that mothers have underneath their hair.

I have got compliments on my new look, raised eyebrows from strangers. In the end, it's just hair (or the lack of it). I'm still the same person, it will grow back eventually. And how easy it is to wash!!!!

The toughest job

What's the toughest job you can think of?

For the past five months we have been thinking about it. And now we're doing it! DH gave in his notice a week ago and I told my boss a couple of days later that we're packing our bags at the end of the year and moving to Costa Rica. To do the most demanding, yet fulfilling job: being a parent. The boys are old enough to enjoy the experience, yet still young enough to want to spend time with us.

It is our last summer in this house. We're selling the whole lot, except for what you can fit into 5 suitcases á 20 kg. So we have a couple of things to do, e.g. learn Spanish!

Hopefully, by Christmas 2010, we have returned to Guanacaste, Costa Rica!

Suffocating

We have way too much stuff. "We" meaning us as a family, but also "we" as in general. I need to get rid of it, before I suffocate. But it is really, really hard for me. It took me two months to throw away boys' corduroy trousers that had been patched from the knees and torn from the buttocks. Two months they sat in the utility room waiting for their destiny. It wasn't for sentimental reasons. I just didn't want to throw them away just in case I found some use for them. But they were beyond thrift store quality. I just couldn't throw the fabric away. Finally one night I took my scissors, ripped the zipper (I might need it one day), saved a couple of buttons and elastic and cut the rest into rags. They're now in a plastic bag in the storage room to be used for cleaning... something... some day.
I found a black bin bag full of drawings from my school days. Also a project on husbandry in Finland. The first two newspaper clippings (from 1988) made me smile:"Warehouses full of wool" and "Beekeeping and research limping" (I know, pathetic translations, but you'll have to live with it). I have boxes and boxes of yarn and I'm dreaming of having an apiary.
How 80's the guy with the huge shoulder pads! Beginning of every school year we mad a big paper bag into which the drawings of the following school year were put. I remember being very proud of the one I did starting grade 8 (I was 14 I guess), the one on the top left.
And the dung beetle was one of my favourites, too.
And I was so ashamed of the portrait of my dad in the middle. He didn't look like that!
This is actually fabric glued on paper.

For over two decades I have moved the black bin bag from house to house. It's time to say good-bye to them.

The next project is the book shelf. What should I keep?