Little Feet...

We attended a baptism recently & I captured these little feet just after being handed into the arms of their new  Nonos/Νονός. (Godfather)  

A little more baptism...

The morning after the baptism we went to church with Alexandra's Nona so that Alexandra could receive her 1st communion. After a Greek baptism, it's tradition to attend church for 3 services/Sundays following the ceremony so that the child can receive communion. As of last Sunday, we've attended church together 3 weeks in a row and she's received communion 3 times. She now knows what to expect at church and I have to say, she's not really liking it. Her Nona should hold her in her arms for the communion and she would only go to her once, willingly. So, now we'll try to go to church together at least once a month.

On the third day after the baptism, it's tradition for the Godparents to bathe the child. Yes, she was oily for 3 days.(I kept telling her that she smelled like salad) The bath water is saved and either poured into the sea or into a flower bed. We chose the flower bed since it was easier for us at the time.

Depending on the region and/or family traditions...the bath can be another big event in which family and friends are invited to witness. We kept it small. I made coffee and Alexandra's Nona brought sweets. Our two families and some neighbors were here for the bath so it was nice and simple. Everyone enjoyed themselves.

Alexandra's Baptism- Part 2

There she is after the baptism! I couldn't wait to share this picture. It's one of my favorites. All of the pictures that I have are from my camera...and most of them were taken by me. I have yet to call the photographer to see if the pictures that he took are ready.

Here's a picture of Alexandra and her Nona before the baptism. This is only the beginning of a rough ceremony. Alexandra knew that something was going to happen and she wasn't very cooperative. See how she's reaching for me as I take the picture? She put up a good fight at the church. She screamed throughout most of the ceremony. She kicked and punched to get away from her Nona and the priest. I held her for the majority of the ceremony even though the Nona really should. She loves her Nona, but I think that there was more excitement and attention than she could handle. If you have a baby and want to have a baptism, I suggest doing it while the baby is still and infant...not a toddler. :)

After the ceremony she settled down and that's how I managed to get a few nice shots.

Little Joji wants to cheer her up.

Izabella's dress is pictured above. She loved this dress! Below is one of the very few photos where my two children are actually together and you can see how she looked in her dress. As you can see, Foti is untucked and comfortable. He was running around throughout the ceremony. Everyone, including the priest, kept asking..."where's your husband?". I frequently whispered, " chasing Foti" or " looking for Foti". Foti just doesn't like to be involved in gatherings of this sort. He did the same thing at the last baptism that we attended, but it didn't really matter then because it wasn't his sister being baptized. So, when we look at the pictures 20 years from now and he's not present in most of them, we can just laugh and tell him that he put us through hell on the day of his little sister's baptism. The girl in the pink dress is Alexandra's God sister, Irini.

*** Me & another BAD hair style ***

Yes, it's true. I hated my hair. It's not what I wanted at all. Everyone was really nice and complimented me but I didn't like it one bit. Why? Because it's not me. Once again I brought a photo of what I wanted my hair to look like on this very special day but alas...my hairstylist had another idea. My hair looks nothing like the picture that I handed her, nothing. My new koubara (the Nona) and I talked about it the other day and said, "well-as the day went on it started looking more like you". AAAACCKKK! Better yet, when I walked in the door fresh from the salon my kids cracked up laughing. Iza said, " Foti, (hee, hee, hee) LOOK AT MAMA!" (giggle, giggle, giggle)...and Kosta inquired, "how much did I pay for that?" and walked away. Fantastic. I think that I'll shave my head and start over. The day was about our little princess, not me- and the show had to go on.

Here's something that I forgot to include in the previous post. It's the decoration that we put on the koloumbithra. The koloumbithra is the vessel that holds the water in which the baby is baptized. It looked so beautiful during the ceremony. Here's a close-up showing some detail...

Finally, a photo of the dessert boxes that were chosen for to hold the sweets that were handed out at the end of the receiving line after the baptism. I didn't have the chance to take pictures of the actual dessert. We chose a dessert called "coke" (kok). It's a cream filled puffy pastry that's easily eaten by hand. Ours had pink frosting instead of the typical chocolate frosting, they were delicious!

I'm taking a break for a few days. Hopefully, the photographer's pictures will be ready and I will have some pictures from the actual ceremony. Until then...

Alexandra's Baptism

It seems that whenever I'm not online very much that I must be up to something. Well, for the past month or so I've been organizing Alexandra's baptism that took place on the 19th of July in Kozani. I've just been recovering from all of the excitement as well as spending time with friends and family. Preparing for this baptism was unlike the last one that because I was actually here to shop and plan. Izabella and Foti had a joint baptism in 2005 that we planned from Milwaukee, which meant that MIL and SIL did most of the running around here in Greece. I looked at pictures of boubounieres(favors) that were sent to me via snail mail and we sent our self-designed invitations overseas in bulk ready for MIL and SIL to hand deliver...which is how most invitations in our family are given out. For this baptism I had an idea in mind of what I wanted the invitations to look like, but decided to go to a printer to have the them made. That decision alone saved me a lot of time and work. I ordered them on my own, which is a big step for me. Of course, the owner of the print shop had to go into the "which is better...Greece or America?" spiel but I'm used to it now so I didn't let it bother me. It's just so silly isn't it?

So, I ordered the invitations and headed for the photographer who was a referral from a friend. Everything went ok with him also, except about a week before the ceremony he called us and told us that he needed gas money to travel to Kozani. Um, what? The problem was that he couldn't find a videographer willing to drive so he wanted us to compensate him by paying him the gas money. My husband basically told him that he'd better get busy looking for someone else. Here's what I think...why didn't he just slip the cost of gas into the total estimate before we booked him? (Weird and unprofessional) So, a few days after that he called and said that he found someone to work and everything was fine and we didn't have pay for his gas.

Alexandra's Nona (Godmother) was extremely excited and started shopping immediately after we accepted her proposal. Yes, she asked if she could baptize our little one since she hadn't been baptized yet and I was really flattered and excited that she was willing. I joined her several times as we shopped for the event. She wanted me to approve the baptism dress and boubounieres. I really didn't think that was necessary since I believe that everything was totally her choice but I accompanied her to the baptism shop anyway. Plus, it was an enjoyable experience and it got me away from the house. As I suspected, the things that she chose for our daughter were just beautiful. Here's the dress...

The baptism box that contains most everything needed for the ceremony...

This box is also a little bench that she can use in her bedroom later on.


The contents of the box...

What's all of this?

-baptism towel

-new shoes

-new socks

-new underclothes that will help absorb some of the oil from the baptism

-a keepsake box containing the oil used in the ceremony with some soap

-the hat

The boubounieres(favors)...

They are little money banks...


The labada... The martyrika...

The martyrika were actually chosen by my cunyada (SIL). I think that she did a great job as well.

We also shopped for dresses, shoes, sweets and anything that you can imagine that was needed for the day. I really don't like shopping though. It was nice to get out of the house but shopping isn't one of my favorite things to do so I think that I managed to come out of it alright. I was a good sport and I'll admit that I enjoyed myself.

That's all that I have time for today. There will be more great pictures to come!!

I'm sure that everyone can probably imagine just how busy we've been over the last few weeks. The kids went back to school today so I'm taking a few minutes to share some photos from the holidays.

We spent Easter in Kozani. Here's a photo of Izabella just after she received the Holy Light. It was a challenge walking back to the apartment with the kids trying to keep their candles lit!

The Easter table complete with roses from my garden...

MIL roasted the lamb in the oven and it was wonderful. I can say that because although I'll eat lamb, I'm not a big fan. But, this one was really, really succulent. We had salad, roasted veggies, tzatziki, beets, tiropita, spanikopita and rice that was cooked right in with the lamb... amazing. The next photo is of the hungry kids waiting to eat...

Dessert was karythopita, a Greek walnut cake drenched in syrup. I need to learn how to make that!

On the Monday after Easter we had a baptism to attend. It was my husband's cousin's baby that was being baptized. Izabella was lucky enough to have been chosen to hold the labatha. She was thrilled!

After the baptism we attend the dinner at a local taverna and as usual, the food was great. Isn't funny that I'm always talking about food? Well, it was fantastic. There was pork souvlaki, bifteki( ground beef patty heavily spiced), "shiskebob" ( the difference between souvlaki & shiskebob is that the "shiskebob" is usually large cuts of beef served off of the skewer opposed to souvlaki that's smaller cuts of meat served on the skewer) and a plethora of salads. You name it, it was on the table-marouli (romaine), cabbage, argura-domata (tomato-cucumber) and more. Fantastic.

After the dinner we retreated back to MIL's so that we could enjoy coffee before our ride home.

Our ride home was actually not as bad as we had expected given the holiday weekend had come to an end.

But, once we got home things were probably as typical as a day in our lives could be. What do I mean? Well, we arrived home just before 10 pm to find a neighbor talking to my husband's uncle (up the road) because he needed a little help. Why? Well, apparently the neighbor was passing by our home-showing his wife where we lived and he drove straight into a ditch aka wheat field. Why did he end up in a ditch? He claims he was trying to turn around...but I just can't begin to understand why someone would drive into an unknown field rather than pull a Y-turn by our gate...
So, in order for Kosta to help pull his car out of the ditch we had to unpack all of our things, like immediately, so that Kosta could get the hitch that he needed in order to start the process. Sleepy kids, 2 suitcases and a dog that wanted to pee really bad and I still had to open the door. Just typical in our lives and all that we could do was laugh...and finally settle in.

The next morning we were full speed ahead again since we were expecting 30 or so people for May 1st... more to come on that in my next post!

Oh and for those of you that celebrate- have a wonderful Cinco de Mayo! Gotta try to dig up some tequila to make myself a margarita.