HELSINGIN SANOMAT INTERNATIONAL EDITION
Source: HOME - Helsingin Sanomat ()
By Anna-Stina Nykänen
Is Christmas stress getting to you? Is there too much work with the gifts and cooking? Let’s see how a really big family can manage.
Eira and Markku Hannuksela are super grandparents, who criss-cross Finland during Christmas time. Today they are in Murro in Kempele, near Oulu with their daughter Sanna Marjanen.
The Hannukselas have 14 children, 105 grandchildren, and 16 great grandchildren. In this house alone there are nine grandchildren.
Grandmother is making Christmas gingerbread with the grandchildren.
One of the younger ones places the cutter down on the dough, but Grandma slides it quietly to one side: “You never start in the middle, dear, but at the edges. That way you make the best use of all the dough”, she says gently.
One has to be precise with these things, but there is no sense in going overboard - at the other end of the table one of the small kids is scrunching ready-made biscuits into crumbs with a rolling pin that looks suspiciously as though it has flakes of plasticine on it.
When you ask the Hannukselas how many children they have, the answer that comes back is longer than a Thought for the Da 
äivi, Hely, Perttu, Tarmo, Juha, Sauli, Timo, Esa, Eero, Sampo, Sanna, Janne, Samuli, and Jaakko.
The oldest of their children is 50 years old, and the youngest is 27. Eira was already a grandmother when her youngest was born. Three of her children have 11 children, and there are more on the way.
The Hannukselas do remember the names of their grandchildren, but Grandmother is a bit hazy on the exact dates birth of all of them, but she has the season of their birth in mind.
“Every …