Thanksgiving post...a little late

We had an un-American Thanksgiving this year. Yes, all the traditional dishes were there cooked by yours truly, but our company was of the Finnish variety.

They all volunteered to bring a dish. One couple arrived with a homemade cornucopia! Yes, an edible cornucopia made from scratch with a decorative ribbon tied around it. Inside were traditional cheese-like quiches. They also brought a heavenly sweet potato casserole with pecans and brown sugar sprinkled on top. Mmmm!

Ah, yes. They bring wonderful food and we serve them turkey we dropped on the floor before it went in the oven and homemade gravy that could’ve doubled for tile grout. Awesome.

One couple stayed the night with their children, who don’t speak English, and proceeded to get absolutely drunk. The husband, who lapped Jarmo in beers several times, stood up in front of the TV we were watching and broke out a total rock star move for us. You know the one where the rock star goes down in the splits and you know that no normal man should be able to go separate his legs like that? Yeah, that one. For the remainder of the evening he danced about the house doing the splits and other random moves while asking his wife repeatedly, “You hate me, don’t you?”
It was an interesting evening.

Friday morning, after our hungover guests left, we realized we had enough food for another Thanksgiving. Two sets of our neighbors came over Fri. evening to help us eat the leftovers. It was nice to have dinner guests who knew what stuffing was and weren't afraid to eat it.

After all the cleaning before the event, cooking all day and then cleaning up afterwards, I quickly realized that we will not be doing this again anytime soon!

Baby Kelker arrives!

A little late, but last week my friends, the Kelkers, welcomed their new baby boy, Will, to the world! You have to read Nicole's story of labor. It's crazy!

Backtrack

Yes, we had a great Thanksgiving, but I will post about that later. I thought I should begin where I left off a month ago.
My little sister is getting married in January! We flew out to AZ in November for her bridal shower. It was so nice to see my friends and family and celebrate with her. It'd been six months since last time I saw my family.
This a picture of my sisters, aunts and cousins taken at a family get together we had after the bridal shower.

They're creepy and they're cooky...

Halloween was low-key for the Monttinen household this year. We handed out candy to the few trick-or-treaters we had, ordered pizza and went to bed at 10:30pm. Yes, we're that lame.
I did, however, make some fun cupcakes to hand out at work. They're cupcakes with crushed Oreos on top and doll hands sticking out. There's something creepy about buying dolls at a store knowing you're going to rip their arms off.



The following day we went to the evil Wal-Mart and picked up costumes for the dogs at half price! Enjoy the pics below!

You're the Bomb...er

Yes, that's really what it said on the screen at the Dayton Bombers hockey game we went to last night. I forgot how cheesy those games can be. But, they took it to a whole different level when Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" was played as the game began. Why, oh why? The damn song stuck in my head the entire night.

Annual Finnish party

J and I attended the Scandinavian Society of Greater Cincinnati's Annual Finnish party this past Sunday. It was filled with blond hair, blue eyed pasty people of all ages. Several people came up to me and started speaking Finnish before looking at my name tag with the American flag on it, which indicates I don't speak that funny language (yet anyway). Does that mean I'm just as pasty since they thought I was one of them??
We had a nice time and Jarmo got to have conversations in Finnish, something he doesn't get to do often. We also met two couples who were from Northern Finland, just like Jarmo. One couple has only been in the States six weeks, but their English was great.

They don't celebrate Halloween in Finland, so I thought I'd have them over to carve pumpkins since they both have young kids. Do you know of other fall/Halloween activities we could do?

We don't like Ike

The remnants of Ike hit Ohio Sunday afternoon. Winds were recorded at 76 mph, that's considered a Level 1 Hurricane.
The damage was extensive. Siding torn off houses exposing the plywood below, traffic lights falling from their wires shattering on the road below, and fallen power lines dancing in the wind across highways.
Power outage extended from northern Kentucky to Cleveland. At one time the power company said 90% of their service area was in a blackout. Many schools still remain closed because they had to throw out all their food and can't serve students meals until fresh shipments come. The grocery stores are slowly able to restock food, but many are still waiting on shipments to arrive, as well.
We were fortunate and only lost power for two days and had no damage to our house.

This is a storm Ohio will talk about for years, yet it's only a fraction of what Texas had to incur with the full brunt of Ike pounding them. I struggled to find meals to prepare on our grill with the power out, but knew I'd never go hungry. Those in Texas struggled to find clean water or a place to sleep. While we moped about losing the food in our refrigerator, many in Texas lost everything.
So, I'll go to the grocery store this weekend, replenish our food and be grateful that it was only a wind storm.

He's too legit to quit

That's right, our favorite Finn is finally a legitimate, legal resident. What does that mean exactly? It means he received his permanent green card last week!
It makes our lives easier when traveling out of the country (because you know we're quite the jetsetters) and when filling out legal documents for cars, house, jobs, etc. I'm certain there's more valuable reasons to this rather expensive card he received in the mail, but I can't remember.
So, now the real marriage begins for us. I can't boss him around and hold the fact that I can have him deported over his head anymore. Damn.

The end of summer flu by

Yes, I mean flu, not flew. We spent our last remaining weekend hunkered down in the house fighting the flu. Jarmo volunteered at the AVP games this past weekend and brought home some sort of 24 hour flu bug.
Nothing like sitting at a restaurant enjoying dinner while your husband dashes for the restroom to let's say "dispose" of his food. I'm certain the other patrons assumed it was the food that made him sick because I noticed a few people push their plates away as my honey made a second quick trip to the restroom.

Saturday evening brought back college memories...a long night of little sleep intertwined with frequent dashes to the bathroom to "inspect" the toilet. It made me realize I'm so glad I'm past that stage in my life and hey, there's nothing wrong with going to bed on a weekend night at 10pm and getting a solid eight hours of sleep.

How was your Labor Day weekend?

Oh so belated housewarming party

We had a very belated housewarming party this past weekend, nine months after we moved in to be exact. I had to find a time when a majority of our friends weren't close to going into labor because nothing ruins a party quicker than a lady's water breaking and me spending the rest of the evening trying to scrub that stuff off my carpet.

The weather was sunny and hot, but we had water activities for the kids and enough beer to keep everyone cool. We had a great turnout and enjoyed seeing our friends and their cute kids.
I put our camera in the kitchen hoping we'd remember to take pictures, but we didn't. So, use your imagination to picture what a great time we had. I suggest starting with the image of a small circus and going from there. At times there might've even been circus music playing in the background as I ran around our backyard chasing our dogs who were running and barking at the toddlers who, in turn, were bolting for their mothers because they were extremely scared. No one was bitten, thankfully.

It was really nice to see all my friends, and hopefully we'll get to see them again soon!

My sister is getting married!

When I moved to Arizona all my friends in Indiana got hitched. Now that Jarmo and I moved to Ohio, all my family is getting married in Arizona!
Seriously, what's with that?
For those of you who know my younger sister, Alyssa, she's getting married to her boyfriend, Heath, on January 31st. Congrats to the happy couple!
As soon as I figure out how to link to their website, I'll post it for you to check out!

Welcome

We (by we, I mean I) decided it was time to get a blog. We'll (again, I mean I'll) post about our mundane lives, friends, and lots of pictures of our dogs. We won't dress them up in costumes, I promise.

I'm hoping this blog will get me in the habit of taking pictures more frequently. I realized how few pictures we have of ourselves when we had to meet with the INS, and prove our marriage was legit. The only ones I found were the drunken photos from our first trip to Vegas together, which only makes us look like lushes and really guilty.
I hope you enjoy our blog!