You Only Live Once

So this entry is a bit dated - I wrote it nearly two weeks ago - but I think it sums up our trip quite nicely.

:) jackson

If you really want to test a marriage, try traveling to Finland. Go to Jyvaskyla with your dear wife (or husband) and two little girls, 5 and 1 ½ years old. Be sure to have your first flight out of Tulsa to Chicago canceled so you get rerouted through Denver and miss your flight from Chicago to Copenhagen so you are forced to spend the night at the Wyndham O'Hare in Chicago. Then wake up early to get your tickets reissued so that you are switched to Lufthansa (a great airline I should add) and go through Frankfurt, Germany on the way to Helsinki. Be sure to check in an exorbitant amount of baggage and carry the maximum number of carry-on bags possible – one of which should be packed so tightly that you are asked to rearrange your things to decrease its size before you board one of your flights. Also, get separated at the Helsinki airport so that your wife (or husband) has to be paged and sought by an airport employee in order to let her (or him) know that she will need to bring both girls and all carry-ons to the baggage claim area by her- (him) self, since her (his) partner accidentally passed the point of no return into the baggage claim while the rest of his (her) party was asleep at an empty terminal gate. (I simply wanted to locate baggage claim while the girls caught up on some much needed sleep). Pay 60 Euros for a private car, since your baggage is so colossal, and oh, and when leaving Helsinki for Jyvaskyla, find out at the last minute that you are only able to travel by train with luggage that you yourself can carry on. Then go pay 475 Euros for a VW Crafter (a transport van seemingly the size of a small school bus) so that you can arrive in Jyvaskyla one day later than your arrangements had suggested. Did I mention jet lag? There is an eight hour difference between here and home.

As I sigh now and fight off sleep, I sit drinking a premium Estonian lager overlooking the lake that will be the centerpiece of our new home for the next three years of our lives. After all of the traveling, bickering, kids’ crying, and money spent…. it has all been worth it.

I met some colleagues once we made it into town, Laura and Tiina, who provide me with the apartment keys to our temporary flat is on the fifth floor of a clean complex and has large picture windows and a spacious balcony. All the girls are asleep. An unknown blue haze covers this beautifully lit cityscape. Parts of the lake are frozen over, since it’s only December 30th, but by mid-January, the surface will be covered with ice-skaters and other cold connoisseurs.

We have our health, our happiness (usually), and our love for one another. I don’t think it gets any better than this. You only live once, and I want to make my one time a good one. Janee has been testy at times, Lillian has been a trooper, and Edith has remained surprisingly happy and uplifting for the entire trip. I wonder what tomorrow will bring.