As most in Finland, that are of age to work fulltime, I all so had 4 weeks of paid vacation, and this year I enjoyed it in July. And almost every minute of it, out at the cottage with my 3 kids.
This year, due to the pandemic, we made a deliberate decision of not making any trips, but to stay either at home or at the cottage. With as little as possible of getting in situations where we would expose ourselves to large crowds or elevated risk of catching Covid19. As we are fortunate enough, to have our cottage close by from where we live, the distant to travel is no problem.
Our oldest daughter had her first school year last winter, and with that a long summer vacation as well. It is a noticeable time period for parents, as this year she was between June 1st, and August 18th. That’s 2½ months, and that forced us to spread out our summer vacations, and come up with other solutions to have somebody taking care of the kids. This resulted in me having the kids for 3 weeks in July by myself when my wife was working.
To ensure that my wife could work in peace and quite, I spent the whole time at the cottage, and it went very well. Of course I had help from my wife’s parents, who spends a lot of their time during the summer at the cottage, just 30 meters from the house we get to live in. Thank you so much for the help. ❤
So as the summer was spent pretty much at one location, there has not happened that much of activities. Some of the things that did happen can be found below, with attached pictures.
What we did do, was tear down a old boathouse that has not been used for many many years. There’s some tidying up to do still. But the view changed pretty drastically for the better.
Something I’ve thought of doing is to go on a little boat trip around the neighboring islands, and that was done, which was fun as well. My father-in-law worked as the guide and drove us around, as there are shallow places and he knows them best. The trip was not too long, it only took about 36 minutes, and covered 11½ kilometres, but very enjoyable still.
I all so did a night shift at the boat clubs premise, watching that nothing were to happen for either the cars or boats. The night itself was very event less, so the hardest part was to keep myself occupied during my shift. As it was night and pretty dark, I ended up playing around with my phone’s camera, and it’s night mode. It really is impressive on how good they have become so far. The following morning was extremely beautiful.
My summer vacation ended with a very nice event, as one of my best friends got married. ❤
Due to the pandemic, I’ve used clothes for the last 7 months, that can be described as very much on the comfy line. So it was really fun to dress up for the wedding. And as an experience, a truly long step back in time was the bowtie. I’ve used as long as I can remember neck tie’s so this was fun as well.
But now the work has continued, and I’m very happy to get back to what one could call everyday life. Well, the pandemic is still raging, and I just received the good news of our company continuing work from home. But anyway, more or less normal life, with some timetables, and structure. The kids are still a couple of week on vacation, and then they will go to school and pre-school.
Budbuda 