sometimes traveling with pets and an infant is all about making compromises and today odin was not seeming like he might be up for the hour or so drive from our comfortable accomodations in gladstone to the finnish festival in marquette.

so, i decided to pass on the opening day parade and ceremonies and hangout with odin doing as many new and fun things as we could find while mamma made the trek with auntie gina. since i’m not finnish, this is actually not much of a compromise – or it might be about the same sort of compromise that kris might make if we had travelled a long distance to gaze at geeky, gadgety things only to find that odin needed a rest.

and besides i think it’s obvious to any sane individual that visiting where odin’s ancestor plotted revolutionary plans is much more fun than getting together with around 700 strangers trying to break the record for the world’s largest finnish sauna. and when you’re 13 months old none of those things is nearly as much fun as swinging, sliding and playing with surreal sunflowers with all your cousins ( and pops and grandma salmi ).

not only did odin play on a slide for the very first time, we also found the biggest sunflower evah(!). since odin has never seen a sunflower – big or otherwise – naturally, i decided to capture the moment.

it was soooooooo tall that i had to hold him up above my head ( which is 6 feet and four inches off the ground ) while grandma salmi took the picture because she’s too short ( and i mean that in the best possible way 🙂 ).