Welcome and tervetuloa! My name is Annika. My husband’s name is Ryan and we have four boys, two dogs and no recent family picture. You are welcome to use your imagination. I grew up in Tennessee, had our second child in Poland, lived in Utah a number of years and we remigrated to Finland last fall thanks to family heritage. I struggle with singing, dancing, cooking, cleaning, parenting, and photography. I will not be sharing awesome recipes, showing beautiful pictures of my house, giving amazing parenting advice, or showcasing beautiful travel photos. You will need to find those elsewhere, but hey… that shouldn’t hard. 

One of the most important virtues to me is being real. It is exhausting being surrounded by peppy attitudes and photos that make you feel small because you can’t match up. I hope that something in my writing will help you feel a little reassured, understood or simply valued. I decided the other day that I needed to start a blog even though I hate writing. I did it for school out of necessity and the stress of writing a paper was consistently overwhelming. However, I’ve had a gut feeling that I should write a blog anyway. Even now as I draft this first entry, my house is a mess, we had fried food for dinner, my kids are on screens, my dogs are staring at me, and my to-do list is a mile-long (when is it not?). However, if my toddler avoids head-banging until I’m done, I will call it a major win. 

This blog is not centered on any specific topic, but here are some themes we might see: religion, politics, healthcare, education, foreign language, mental health, parenting, adulting, and public transportation, sprinkled with some lighter subjects of various interests. 

Now, for some fun background: I love video games (though I have no time to play them), I have done multiple cross-stitch projects (though have been unable to go back after a work accident years ago), two amazing years of my life were spent working in public transportation (though I then had to quit after contracting COVID while pregnant), I love animals (though am still a noob at caring for them), and I love studying languages on Duolingo (though I am still monolingual). 

There! You now have my basic introduction. It won’t mean much at first, but I feel it only fair to give you an idea of who I am before diving into deeper topics. Nähdään pian!