Pictures from our trips

If you want to see some pictures I took from our trip, go here. The texts are in Finnish, but you should be able to fathom what the pictures are about. The first two are from the Ähtäri nature park in the midwest of Finland. (Or some such place.)

The talking snowflakes again

You may remember my graphic short story (sic) about Kauto and Ottilia and the case of the talking snowflakes. Well, here's more. These I drew in a bus during one of our Christmas trips, when it seemed that Kauto was falling asleep when he shouldn't have and Ottilia was getting too bored. So it's totally improvised and the last frames I drew when the bus was already approaching the place we were getting off. I already ended the story (it says "loppu/the end" already after the first six frames), but it seemed that the bus trip wasn't going to stop for a while, so I decided to continue.

It goes something like this:

It's winter.

Ottilia: Snow!

Kauto [who's apparently out in the yard]: Ottilia, come on out!

Ottilia: No, I won't! The talking snowflake is out there!

The snowflakes: No, he's not! Come on out!

Ottilia [who doesn't have a clue]: Well, okay, I'll come then!

Ottilia: Yippee! It's fun to be out!

Kauto: Let's make a snowman!

The snowflakes: Don't do that!

Ottilia: Shucks! These again!

Kauto: Ottilia, do splat splat!

Ottilia goes splat splat.

The snowflakes: Aaaaah...

The end.

Another one

And here's one more in the series about Kauto's and Ottilia's adventures. I'm not sure where I made this anymore, but from the drawings it's evident that I wasn't in a moving bus. One of the frames was made by Ottilia and I used it - that's why it seems so off-place.

It's summer.

Ottilia's out. Ottilia: Fun!

Suddenly...

Ottilia: Snow! It's Summer!

Ottilia gets confused. Ottilia: It shouldn't be snowing now...

And suddenly it dawns on her. Ottilia: It's them again!

The snowflakes: Who? The talking snowflakes, huh?

Kauto comes. Splat, splat, splat!

The snowflakes: Argh...

The end.

Kids' book shelves

See below. This is also turned sideways, but you can see what's in there.

More kids' shelves

Sorry, this is upside down and I don't have a program in our laptop to be able to turn it.

The kids' book shelves

Lurker challenged people to a meme about their kids' book shelves. Couldn't resist.

At first, here's the first two floors. As our desktop is at the other side, there are some reference books on the same shelf, with their backs turned away.

Pictures from Cyprus

Don't have time to write a full travelogue, but here are some shots from our trip to Cyprus. Captions explain at least something, hopefully.

There are some other pictures at the Daddy Blog here. The texts there are in Finnish.

Here's Kauto and me playing minigolf in front of the hotel.

Haunting pictures

Here are two misfortunate shots from somewhere in Cyprus. Don't know what they are, but they seem like stills of an experimental film, don't they?

At the airport

We had to wait for two hours at the Pafos airport on Sunday. Kauto was able to entertain himself playing zoo with his plastic animals and empty strawberry packages.

At the old castle

On the last day on Cyprus, we visited the medieval castle in the centre of Limassol. It was very impressive spatial experience. Here Kauto and Elina are at the roof of the castle. Elina was afraid all the time that Kauto would fall off.

At the zoo

We are so poor photographers that we when we visit the zoo, we don't take pictures of animals.

Too much wine?

Kauto and Elina at the delightful meze meal somewhere in the mountains. Kauto has had too many glasses of wine (which was excellent, by the way - and cheap!). Meze, for those who don't know, is a large festive meal with some dozen plates of different courses. This one was the better of the two we had during our trip and everything was self-made, even the excellent halloumi cheese. Kauto enjoyed his bulgur, cooked with tomatoes and onions. Elina has fond memories of potatoes cooked with white wine and then fried in oil.

Afrodite and I

We climbed to a

hill on top of which had been a temple dedicated to the worship of Afrodite. The large urn had been found intact among the ruins. It was very impressive.

Kauto and I at an old church

Here we are at an old church in the little village of Lania (or Laneia).