A Birthday in Finland

The Bumble Bee Birthday Cake--- Maybe an acquired taste

Mikey bringing in the birthday cake

Mom filming the birthday celebration

Time to open the gifts

Having some fun at the park in Seinajoki

Opening gifts

The birthday girl-- My gosh is she cute

Air Kodie

A little jumper

Ready to catch some air

We spent most of Friday indoors as it was very cold and windy. It was probably the coldest day since we arrived early last month. We did go out to the City Market for some groceries and miscellaneous items for Kaylin's birthday. We did pick up some smoked salmon and steaks for the special occasion. Kaylin turned 3 today, so it was nice to be able to spend some time with her. Kamryn and Kodie wrapped up the gifts that we picked up for her and then she opened her gifts this afternoon.
We had a pre-game practice this afternoon and I felt that it was very poor. We only had about 21 guys there and I left the practice feeling very frustrated. We spend much of the practice having to substitute for players on our special teams units and this feels like a grand waste of time. To sum it all up, we got through about 10 minutes of total offense and about 3 minutes of defense before we had to give the field up to a local soccer team.
We had two things that weren't very tasty today. I didn't have a great experience with my first taste of Finnish hot chocolate. I ordered four of these small hot chocolates at a local coffee shop this afternoon and it cost me about 10 euros, or 14 dollars. All of them tasted like hot chalky water. Later in the day, we had Kaylin's birthday cake which had a very strange taste to it as well. It was unlike anything we had ever tried before. Fortunately, the birthday girl was the one who enjoyed the taste of the cake. On the positive side, the smoked salmon we bought today was really super. The freshness and selection of the fish over here is worth mentioning. I am eating way more fish than I normally do in the states.
We will be leaving for Helsinki on Sunday morning to take on the Wolverines at 6pm. I am driving the car down with Kamryn and Mikey coming along. The three of us will stay in Helsinki Sunday night after the game and then take the 2 hour ferry over to Tallinn, Estonia early Monday morning. We will return Monday evening on the ferry and then Kamryn and I will drop Mikey off at the airport later that night. We will most likely then start our drive back to Seinajoki late Monday night.