Quality one-to-one -time

I've tried to spend some one to one time with all my kids. Today it was raining, Nader and Donjana didn't want to go out from home. Deena is always ready to go, so we put on the rain gear and left..

I had some coffee with me and a bottle of juice for her. We also had a book of mushrooms with us (I've been teaching the kids about them lately, as I told earlier). We bought some chocolate from the shop and went to the forest.

We saw so many different mushrooms, and checked out the names from the book. We also took pics of them, so that we can study more about them at home. It was so fun mashaAllah. Then we sat on a rock eating chocolate bars and having our drinks. Little joys of life.. ♥

bye ramadan, happy eid and welcome autumn..

So, Ramadan is over. We had a really nice eid mashaAllah. I didn't take the kids to school even though it was a normal friday for Finnish people. We went all together to a sports and entertainment center where the Eid prayer hall was, and after the prayer the kids played at the children world next to the prayer hall. They had such a blast! And so did I :P . but don't tell anyone i was playing too, I didn't pay for a ticket for myself :DDD

We had lunch at my mothers place. She is not a Muslim, but I think it's nice to visit also non-muslim family members. We had a very nice day mashaAllah. We have visited her already for a few years on eid, and it's becoming a tradition mashaAllah. It's hard to feel the real Eid here, so family traditions are really important I think.

The other day we had pizza at my daughter's and her dh's new pizzeria in a small town 10 mins from our home, my birth town. The place was nice and the pizza was tasty mashaAllah. after eating we went to my
childhood playground. my dad used to take me there when I was very little, before we moved to Turku.

Yesterday we went to the forest for a walk. Autumn is coming and we already have some colours, and the mushroms are showing up. the kids loved it mashaAllah. I can only admire their will to learn new things. we had a book of mushrooms with us and they wanted to learn of each and every mushroom we found mashaAllah.

Here are Some examples of tthe different mushrooms we found.. We don't collect them btw, just take pics and read about them. I'm not so much into mushroom foods :P . My dad used to teach me a lot about nature, and I want to do the same for my kids.

Have a blessed Autumn, sisters! ♥

Some little action these days

We had a little action the last few days. MashaAllah fun, different and not stressful.

Yesterday we visited the navy base next to our home (1km away actually). They had an open doors day, including tour in the military harbor in a bus (I've been there by walk ages ago, but now they let people only with a bus). There was also a cool military police action show, special fire unit show, some different army vehicles and other 'big boys' tools, and the kids got to try some boat simulator which reminded me of a computer game, it was just more real looking.

I don't like war or weapons, but it was kind of interesting. Alhamdulilah we live in a safe, peaceful country, so the army only gets to practice and they don't have any real situations. The vecicle in the picture is the special fire unit (puts OFF fire, not make it :P ) It shoots water bombs and sprays water with high pressure. the kids got to go in it and try some stuff. they were so exited.

The most hilarious moment was when Nader went to the mariners, who were showing their recoilless riffles and telling about their part in defending the country. Nader told them straight off that he wants to join the navy, the boats are more cool than riffles lol.. the mariners looked quite disappointed :P .

And I must say that as a hijabi I got treated really nicely by everyone. I wasn't so sure about it.

The other day Donjana went to a kids party to a really cool place. It's an Indoor playground, a really large one! In the picture it shows maybe one quater of it, or less. I took Deena and nader to have some burgers while Donjana was there, but they got a chance to try the playground action a bit afterwards.


Today we went to the city library. Can you see how my kids run fast to get there? Lol.. They love books and so do I! The new library here is such a cool place, they have a lot of stuff for kids, toy exhibitions etc.. And a toy corner too. And plenty of comfy chairs and sofas to sit, read and relax.



I read detective stories mostly. I should read something more serious more often too, but I have also learned a lot just from these stories that I read. Alhamdulilah most writers these days try to find out real information about things they write, not just pick up stuff from their heads. The last book that I read 'happened' on Shetland Islands. It sounds really interesting.

This evening we went to pick up lilies of the valleys. Btw, doesn't that simple flower have any more simple name? I love them anyway, and now the house smells sooooo good! mashaAllah!



Tonight about 11 pm I went to take the rubbish bag out and I saw the sky looking really weird.. All the clouds were straight lines, starting from one spot like rays.. I've never seen such mashaAllah. The sunset colours were not yet showing, because sun set only 15 minutes before this (it takes a long time to get dark here after the sun set, about 2 hours). The colours were brighter later, but then the clouds were already gone so it didn't look special anymore.

It looks like the wind up in the sky has been really strong to make these lines like that mashaAllah!

My little friend is back!

Last summer a baby squirrel used to come to my garden for left overs, and later in the autumn it came to steal apples from a basket I had on my porch. It often used to sit in a tree when I was sitting under it. It was dropping some rubbish on me when it was eating seeds from cones etc haha.. Lol it was so funny.

I didn't see it in the winter and I thought it won't come back. I always put some dry, left over bread under my tree for birds, we have plenty of sparrows. I guess my little friend finally remembered to come and check it out, because now it's back!



He was collecting courage in the tree first


Then he came down


And finally came next to me to eat ali's leftover chicken and rice. mashaAllah ♥


I hope it will survive and be a regular visitor inshaAllah!. It's so cute!

We went hiking with the kids!

This country is not perfect, but there's something here that I really like! It's the clean nature, and we have plenty of it! MashaAllah!



My children share my interest in nature. That's why my daughter Nadia and I take the kids out in the woods as often as we can. This is the first year even my little grandson Ali is old enough to walk a bit more far by himself.


Today we took them to a place we call a troll mountain. There's an old light house (lol it was used for airplanes, not ships. The sea is not near enough :P ). There used to be an airport near here, since 1936, and that's why the light house was built.


The airport was the most northern airport of the world. When the new airport was built in Turku on 1955, the light house wasn't needed and it also hasn't been taken care of ever since.


The light house is not in a good condition, and some youth have painted some art on it and used it as a party spot, but otherwise the place is lovely.


There's a large open area, so the kids can go around alone a bit and it's easy to watch them. The children were playing and exploring the place finding some interesting things. And we don't have dangerous wild animals here so Nadia and I got a chance to relax a bit while the kids were having fun!!


We had a nice picnic and had a very good time and the whole day was wonderful! (some little boys were showing some character at some points though :P ) MashaAllah!


There is a lot of blueberry plants blooming. Later in the summer we have to go back with buckets :P inshaAllah. I love blueberry pie and blueberry muffins! And blueberry milk! It needs just fresh blueberries, milk and a little sugar, eaten from a cup with a spoon.


There's a lot of lingonberry plants too, but those don't bloom yet. They have the berries in the end of summer or autumn. I'm not so exited about them, but my mom makes the best porridge of them mashaAllah! And I'm soooooooo not a porridge eater!


I guess everyone knows what this (under pic) is. Wild strawberry! There will be plenty of those too! InshaAllah! I looooove wild strawberries! When I was little we used to pick them up and string them to a long piece of hay. InshaAllah I will teach that to my kids this summer!


Of course a little something had to happen, like every time we go somewhere :D . This time I thing it was my fault. The juice bottle wasn't closed good.. And of course I had some extra shirts for the kids in the same bag :D . Bad me.. So I hung the shirts to the tree to get dry in case they're needed. Alhamdulilah it was so hot they were'nt.


We also found this kind of little flowers. I used to see plenty of them when I was a kid, but I feel like they're disappearing, I haven't seen any for years! They say it's still very common, so maybe I just have been in wrong kind of areas. We call it a forest star. I found two english names for it from wikipedia: chickweed wintergreen or Arctic starflower.


The view from up there was great! Green everywhere! And Finland is like this all the way, 'The Land Of Green Gold' mashaAllah!


We could see until my mothers home, which is over 10 km far from that place. It doesn't show so much in the pic because it's small, but you can grow it a little by clicking on it. Nader the attitude dude wanted to go to my mothers place by walk because it looked like it's so near :P . He is crazy sometimes :D .


Most of the trees high up there are pines, so there's also a lot of ants building houses. This is just a little one, but on the way there we saw some big ones too. Alhamdulilah the kids are used to the ants by now: in the beginning of the summer they often fear them first, and don't want to sit on the ground for picnic because of them :D .


Just before we left my daughter Nadia saw something cute and funny. Two ants were trying to carry a piece of salad that dropped from our sandwiches. They couldn't decide which way to go and ended up walking here and there and after a while in a circle. Lol it was kinda interesting :P like a little movie. Poor ants.


There's something else I also love in this country! That is the summer nights when we don't get darkness! It's not yet the time when the darkness doesn't exist at all, but we're getting there soon inshaAllah! The sun set at 10.23 pm today, but it takes a long time after that to get dark, like two hours. I took this picture from my garden at 11 pm today and it was still like daylight mashaAllah!



Alhamdulilah for days like this! Alhamdulilah for everything!

No need for toys!

Now days the children are given everything ready. They don't need imagination, there's plastic fruits, bread, trees, animals etc.. My kids have tons of them, (which I actually don't like) but sometimes I want them to use their own ideas and create stuff. Otherwise they will grow with a very poor imagination..

Yesterday we went to a play ground near our home. We had a picnic and the kids played with what ever they could find, because we didn't bring toys with us, except shovels and buckets to use for sand. My kids spent the day building farms and gardens! It was fun lol, I got to help them :P and i enjoyed it as well!

This thing here is a cone sheep. It could as well be a cow if the cone was bigger :D
Already my mom's mom's mom's mom's mom has been playing with this kind as kid, but too many my aged people haven't heard about it.


This is nader's house and garden. his sheep doesn't show in this pic though.. And he found two cars (plastic lol) and put them in the garage :D



Donjana's farm is in the front. she has many sheep on her field :D . she got lazy making the legs so she said that most of them are sleeping :P



Deena's farm is in the front on the right side here. The left side is Nader's



MashaAllah, we had a lot of fun and time just flew! When we got home I realized that we had been there for 4 hours!

Rain! We Are Blessed!

The last couple of days have been really hot here, and it's only May. Finland was even the hottest country of the whole Europe the other day. Still we got a little rain every day. The nature has really woken up, everything turned green within three days!

Yesterday I was cutting the fence bushes around our play ground. The kids were swinging and playing with the sand next to me. Suddenly the heavens burst! It started to rain so hard and we got soaking wet in a second. We were not happy about it.. But that got me thinking.. Again lol. I really do think a lot lately! (InshaAllah it's a good thing :P)

I don't like rain, I would call it bad weather, but still I must see it as a great blessing! There is many places in the world where it doesn't rain very often and those places don't have much chance to use ground water either, or it doesn't exist. (Groundwater makes up about twenty percent of the world's fresh water supply). In such areas they don't have lakes, rivers or ponds either. Freshwater is an important natural resource necessary for the survival of all ecosystems, and here I stand not liking the rain.. Finland is called The Land Of Thousand Lakes, and we don't have to worry about having freshwater to drink, we have more than enough alhamdulilah. And we shouldn't take it for granted.

Did you know?

* Every day, 2 million tons of sewage and other effluents drain into the world’s waters.
* Every year, more people die from unsafe water than from all forms of violence, including war
* The most significant sources of water pollution are lack of inadequate treatment of human wastes and inadequately managed and treated industrial and agricultural wastes
* The quality of water necessary for each human use varies, as do the criteria used to assess water quality. For example, the highest standards of purity are required for drinking water, whereas it is acceptable for water used in some industrial processes to be of less quality.

source


Water quality is important, and we must be thankful for having freshwater to drink! Alhamdulilah!

It is God who sends forth the winds [of hope], so that they raise a cloud - whereupon He spreads it over the skies as He wills, and causes it to break up so that thou seest rain issue from within it: and as soon as He causes it to fall upon whomever He wills of His servants - lo! they rejoice, (30:48) Quran