Sweden and Great Friends

On Thursday I went to Stockholm. There is a cruise boat that leaves Helsinki at 5pm, and travels all night. When you wake up in the morning you are in Stockholm. We then spend the day in Stockholm and leave at 5pm to travel the night back to Helsinki. We arrive back in Helsinki around 10am. Great little trip. I have done this trip several times before. The first time was when P and I first traveled to Finland one year after we were married. Then when we moved to Finland we went with Mummu and Jussi. The last time I went was last summer when my family was visiting. Each time I have had a lot of fun. So what in the world would make me want to go again?? A 'Get fit in 2008' challenge and two wonderful friends!

In January we made a deal to get healthy. We each set goals and if we made our goal then our reward was a trip to Stockholm on the boat! We each made our goal so we picked our dates and bought out tickets and waited..... then the day was finally here! Nothing makes 3 very busy mommies happier than 2 nights on a boat with no children and no husbands! Well, of course seeing the children and husbands after the two nights was right up there with making us happy! But the break was much needed!

Living in Finland is tough. There are times that I am so sick and tired of hearing Finnish and struggling with everything. The homesickness can be overwhelming and the daily frustrations can seem huge. I know there have been days where I just wanted out. To go anywhere else, just get me out! But in the past few months living in Finland has been much better. Thanks to two very good friends. We each met separately and then came together. H and K met first at a playgroup, but busy schedules kept them from getting together again. I met H next at a different playgroup. She was scheduled to go out of town to visit her family, so we didn't make any plans. We exchanged numbers, but both felt funny calling someone after a month that we had only met one time before. Then I met K at an English storyhour. We immediately exchanged numbers and made plans to get together for dinner. When I first met H, I knew that she was someone that I could get along with very easily. When I first met K, she was telling me that she couldn't get together the following weekend because she was running a marathon. Oh, and this is after she tells me that she has a two year old girl and twin one year old boys. I liked her and it was easy to talk to her, but I just didn't know if we would have much in common. I am not running marathons and I am still using my six year old as a reason why I am chubby! Here she is fit as can be running marathons with twin one year olds! YIKES! But we did make plans and we got together. We went to her house for dinner and had a blast. It turns out we have a ton in common. She too has struggled to get back into shape after kids, and she is such an inspiration to me! Her and her husband and kids were wonderful and we all felt so comfortable together. In the next weeks we talked on the phone and decided to go to the next story hour together. H was there too. So all three of us started to talk and we all clicked together. I am not sure how the rest of it happened, but all of our lives have become so entangled with the others that I cannot imagine not getting at least 2 text messages a day from each of them. Our husbands actually were joking about how low our phone bill was going to be for the two days we were gone! We talk daily and they have become more like family than friends in this strange land we are trying to figure out together.

I don't have many pictures from Stockholm because we were to busy talking and walking to stop and take pictures! This is from the palace looking out over the sea. It was a Swedish national holiday so there were a lot of yellow and blue balloons.

We walked and walked and walked. Then we decided it may be best to head back to the boat. We had no idea where we were, so we started up my phone that has GPS in it. Mike (yes, my phone is named Mike) found us and we told him to please take us to the Silja Terminal. So Mike started us on our way. The thing about Mike is he likes to take paths and side roads. Mike lead us to this WONDERFUL stairway. We were all getting pretty tired and a little upset with Mike at this point! 90 stairs later (yes we counted) we started walking again. Mike took us onto a path with nothing much around. Then Mike died. He brought us into the middle of Stockholm and died. We had 1 hour to get back to the boat and had NO IDEA where we were. So being three intelligent girls we panicked a bit and then stopped a total stranger and asked for help! We had a map and the man and woman pointed us in the right direction. Thank goodness we can all walk fast, we took off and made it back to the boat with 30 minutes to spare! We decided to skip the boat launch and took showers instead!

We ended our day with a fabulous Indian dinner and a bottle of wine. We then went to a bar on the boat that looks out over the sea. The 'bow bar' has comfy chairs looking right out over the sea. We spent the rest of the night chatting and drinking and eating with the beautiful scenery.
This picture sums up our Friday night.

Thanks for a great trip loadies and I cannot wait until our next one! Today P left for India. Of course E woke up sick. Very sick. So I sent a text to H and K asking for the nurse number. Within minutes I had numbers and offers to watch S while I took E in. I called and made E and apt and dropped S off at K's house. Sofia had a blast at the park and had sausages on the grill instead of sitting with her sick sister in the clinic.

Once again.

Great friends!