First Day of Pre-Kindergarden and A Pic-Nic

 First day of school pics!

These are pretty dark but as you can see they went much the same as last year...

Me: "Eleni smile! Mommy wants a nice photo of you for your first day of school"

Eleni: "I AM smiling!! Are you done yet Mom?! Let's go!"

Ah, got it! 

Yorgia's head is in the way but anyway, 

my ridiculous need to get 

a posed first day of school photo 

can be checked off the list for the day

So far so good with pre-kindergarden! Eleni's pretty happy there, she's made new friends and is excited to see old friends from preschool. She likes her teacher and most importantly (for her) they have a slide!!

Tuesday we were in Mytilini to see the pediatrician for check ups and vaccines. They were NOT happy about the needles but we went for a picnic in the park after so the tears were soon forgotten

 Gigi entertaining us with a lunchtime story

 Swings are fun!

 No slide goes un-slid with Eleni

 Ta-Da!!

 Queen of the castle

 More fun on the swings

...it's a good thing we were the only people there because Oly and Gigi were not about to share

Weeeeeeeee!!!

We had a bit of rain this week and the temperatures have started to drop....to an unsettling 21 degrees...could it be that after 8 years the Canadian is finally acclimatized to the Greek summer heat? 

How will I ever survive a Canadian winter again?!

Catching Up on Growing Up

Clearly I've dropped the ball on this whole blog writing thing...

It's almost been an entire year since I wrote anything! I knew it had been a while but A WHOLE YEAR?!

Should I even bother with this anymore? I'm thinking I should because it's become such a nice way to keep a kind of diary about the kids that we can look back on over there years. But I'm also thinking it might be better to make this private and just allow close friends and family who are interested in reading it to have access. I'm not sure exactly how that works yet, probably it involves you sending me your emails or something but I'll look into it.

Ok I can't even begin to recap an entire year of life around here so here are some recent photos and we'll all just carry on as if nothing ever happened, there was no pause, I totally was able to balance 3 kids, a house, a husband, a restaurant, Greek life and a blog.....no big deal!

 Eleni waiting patiently to blow out the candles on her mermaid cake

 Her big moment! 

 The happiest 4 year old!

 Singing happy birthday in Greek, English, 

and even a solo in Polish 

by one of Eleni's best buds, Danae, on her right 

 Who wants to eat the mermaid??

 Mommy and Olympia, Vayia and Yorgia

Birthday parties are hard when they happen during nap time

 Still tired, still a little cranky, but still hanging in there

 Eleni, on the other hand, is bursting with energy and joy

 I see a little smile behind there Yorgia!

Olympia is all smiles and dimples

So Eleni is now 4 years old! Kindergarten, (or pre-kindergarten as we would call it in Canada) starts on Monday. She'll be going to a new school this year, here in Molyvos. Monday to Friday in the mornings. She's so excited! She can't wait to meet her teacher, see her old friends from preschool and meet some new friends. She never stops talking in both English and Greek, is fiercely independent, loving and caring to the core, the leader of the pack, creative, funny, curious, never stops singing and in fact says on a daily basis that she WILL be a rock star one day, and is just all around amazing in every way!

Olympia and Yorgia are 19 months old! Running around, climbing on everything, starting to talk in both English in Greek, they're potty trained now (yes, it IS amazing). 

Olympia loves to play dress up and can be seen wearing a tiara on a fairly regular basis. Anything sparkly, pink, and girly and she's gotta wear it! She's a little more reserved than her sisters and likes her independent playtime on-and-off throughout the day but definitely enjoys the fact that she has two best buds around to tickle, cuddle, kiss and drive crazy at any given moment. She's so loving and caring, and when she finds her sister's favourite toys laying around she will immediately pick them up to bring it to her sister (either one) and give her a huge hug!

Yorgia may be tiny but she is one tough little nugget! Her favourite games to play involve anything physical and dangerous....extreme sports baby version. She loves to talk, even if a lot of it is still baby babble but she always sneaks in some clear words to get her point across. She's feisty, strong-willed, sassy, can be found anywhere Eleni is and doing whatever Eleni is doing, but she also has an extremely sweet, loving and cuddly side. We all receive random Yorgia hugs and kisses throughout the day...and then she will run off to the bed to jump like an acrobatic maniac, screaming and laughing at the top of her lungs!

That's my girls in a nutshell! They have so many similarities but at the same time are so uniquely different. I love watching their personalities develop and evolve. I couldn't be more proud of my intelligent, kind, fun-loving, beautiful little army of girls!!!

Eleni's 3rd Birthday Party

One month ago today our little munchkin turned 3!!

Here are the photos from her party...that was also 1 month ago....I'm not going to comment about these being a month late because honestly, I'm impressed with myself for getting them up before Thanksgiving...

 Eleni and Apostolis with their noise makers,

not that they needed them,

they're very good at making a lot of noise without them...

 Our little friend Barbara (pronounced var-VAR-a in Greek)

 A new friend on the left, with her mommy Sofia 

Danai on the right, Eleni's very good friend who had her 3rd birthday Friday 

and is having her big birthday bash today....Eleni is WAY excited...

 Apostolis finding ways to make noise makers even noiser

Well done bud!

I see a future career path emerging...

 Cousin Maria in back

Elenaki with Yorgia

 Olympia, 

by some miracle, 

sleeping peacefully through all the noise and chaos

 Having fun

 Michaela and her red balloon

 Theia Eleni (Aunt Eleni) with Yorgia

...Olympia is still snoozing

 Pig tails

 Aaaaand our usual battle...

"Eleni, can you take a nice picture with mommy? Look at Baba and smile!"

 Nope.

So then I try to make her laugh....

 And as usual, I remind myself that Eleni dances to the beat of her own drum

and I give up the fight

Who needs boring old posed photos anyway?!

Blowing out her candles to the Greek version of Happy Birthday

 Oh look! Olympia decided to join us finally!

She must have smelled chocolate cake...

that always wakes me up too

Yorgia and Olympia with Maria

We light the candles again and sing Happy Birthday in English

What a lucky girl, getting to blow out the candles twice every year...

that's TWO wishes every year!

And now, we're off to Danai's birthday party!

Gaga and Papa, get ready for a high speed, sugar filled chat on Skype later....it should be interesting!

First Day of School

As usual....it's been a while!

We're all sick over here so instead of working on Saturday night like I usually do, I'm home with the girls watching movies and eating chicken soup.....life's tough! 

And while a 14 hour marathon of cartoons is super fun, I thought I'd take a little break from that and update the blog

The main thing I wanted to add today was photos of Eleni's birthday party....which 

was only about a month ago....but then I realized that they're all on Antonis' phone, which is of course with Antonis in the restaurant. So I guess the next blog will be about Eleni's 3rd birthday...and probably Christmas...but lets hope I find some free time before that

Things have been BUSY over here! 

Eleni had her first day of preschool on Tuesday!  

The night before I tried to talk to her a bit about school:

ME: Eleni, are you excited about school tomorrow?

E: No

ME: Why?

E: I don't know

ME: are you a little nervous? Because that's ok if you are, I was always nervous on my first day of sc...

E: (interrupts me) Actually mom, I don't really care. Ask me tomorrow.

Well then.

I will!

And I did. But this time she was excited, although you can't tell by the photos...  

"Eleni, you know you smile if you want to"

  

"Is that your usual smile?"

"Seriously kiddo, give me my mommy moment and smile nice for the camera!"

"Wait mom, I gotta check something"

"K, I'm ready now!"

close enough....

Good morning kisses for Olympia before school, 

which was insanely cute but of course 

wiggly

Going to school!

Checking out her classroom

Rania, her teacher, showing her around

Joining the other kids outside....here it goes...

Aaaaaand no problem!

Instant friends!

Olympia made friends too

Maria, another teacher

Baba and Yorgia

Another reason things are so busy around here:

The twins are both crawling! 

The day after my last post, Yorgia started crawling. 2 weeks ago Olympia decided to join her....and now she's trying to race her all around the house.

Seriously.

She sees Yorgia crawling toward the kitchen, she giggles, and takes off like a bullet! It's hilarious!

"Olympia, can I please get a picture of you WITHOUT you trying to grab the camera?"

And of course you can see the 2 little chicklet teeth on the bottom, there's also a third just starting to come through on the top

Playtime!

"Olympia, seriously, it's mommy's camera"

"OH! Mommy! I didn't see you there!"

Reading time with Eleni and Yorgia

"HI!"

Reading time duck faces

"Olympia! It's MY camera!"

"Whatcha doin' mom? Oh, you were trying to take a nice picture of both of us? How about an extreme close up of just me?"

So that's what's happening here! We're adjusting to a new routine since we have to get out of the  house early in the morning for school. I'm beyond stressed out about this crawling, since they ALWAYS seem to take off in different directions and ALWAYS towards something they shouldn't go to. Add that to all the usual daily things: cooking for everyone, feeding everyone, cleaning up after everyone 5000 times, changing 10,000 diapers dealing with the 1000 or so refugees that have arrived in Molyvos every single day...oh yeah, there's that too but lets not talk about that today. I'm running from 6am until 8 or 9pm every night! 

But not right now. Right now, I'm going to get back to the cartoon marathon and sniffly, sneezy snuggles