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Hello!

Ummmm....Soooo....how's things?? I don't know, I typed 'Hello!' and then I had no idea what to say next so I've been sitting here staring at the computer screen, hoping something funny will just pop into my mind...but I just sat here for a full 10 minutes and nothing popped other than the cork in the wine bottle (all by itself, I swear!) so I'll just start telling you about what's been happening lately. 

I took a bit of a break from the computer lately because sadly a good friend of ours passed away in a car accident last week and I just haven't been feeling chatty. But things are slowly starting to get back to normal around here so I think it's time to start doing the usual day-to-day stuff again even if we don't particularly feel like it. But that's how it is isn't it? After these kinds of things happen you never can wait for the day you wake up and say to yourself "Oh good, I'm over (insert issue here) now, so today I'll get back to being myself again!" You have to push yourself. And eventually you realize you do feel like yourself again but you're not even really sure when it happened. So that's what's happening over here. We're pushing.

Lucky for us we have our beautiful little Eleni Sofia which makes the process a hundred times easier...

Going for a car ride! 

She gets excited to ride in the car but she's usually sound asleep within 2 minutes of strapping her in. 

This day was a rare occasion...she made it 5 minutes. 

Just enough time for a couple of smiles for Mommy and her annoying camera.

So in getting back to normal, Antonis was home for a few days with us but then it was time to go take care of the olives. I didn't help out this year because our grove is on a really steep hill and it would just be way to hard picking olives with Eleni strapped to my back, so her and I have been at home playing while Baba slaves away under the trees. Most people tell me "Lucky for you!" but I actually like picking the olives, even though it's ridiculously hard work and you feel about 100 years old for about a week after. Anyway, they'll be finished in a couple of days but it started raining today so Antonis will be home with us until the sun comes out again...probably just enough time for him to stop walking around like a geriatric and he'll be back at it.

Even though we've had some beautifully sunny days (definitely not today), it's been pretty chilly at night so our new wood stove has been put to good use. And finally....I have a photo of it for you:

So the house is warm and cozy and smells like cinnamon because I leave a pot of water on the top with a few cinnamon sticks and cloves and whatever else I have in the spice cupboard that smells nice.

 
It has this cool little compartment on the top so you can cook stuff in it, so that's been wintery and lovely. Also handy since our normal stove electrocuted me for the last time a few weeks ago and now we need a new one. It was on it's last legs for a while so we knew the day was coming but thankfully we had the wood stove in before that happened or we would have been eating sandwiches for the last twenty days.

Here's one of our creations: chicken and potatoes with garlic, onions, lemon, oregano, salt and pepper. It was DELICIOUS! It's amazing how the simplest dishes taste a million times better when they're cooked over a real fire. On the side we had a salad and some tzatziki...of course. Since then we've made all kinds of stuff in the wood stove: pork with tomatoes, garlic and peppers, bread, perogies (hand made, not the frozen kind...you can't get those here and actually when I told people I was making perogies nobody knew what the hell I was talking about), stew, a lot of chicken, and I've roasted every vegetable I can get my hands on. Except lettuce. It's been great! And Antonis of course had to do the "I told you so!" speech because in the summer when we were talking about getting a wood stove, he told me he wanted one we could cook on. I told him to go stuff it because I already live like a pioneer woman in most areas of our life and I'll be damned if I'm going to cook over an open fire too...actually I think my exact words were "This isn't Little House on the Prairie, we already have our garbage picked up by a donkey and we can't flush the toilet paper! What more do you want from me man?!?!"... but I'm a mature adult and I can admit when I may be wrong. The thing is though, I wasn't totally wrong because I still haven't figured out how to cook rice or pasta however, everything we have made has been really easy to do and way tastier than it was in the stupid electrocuting death trap I've had to use for the last 3 years. So I will admit that I might have overreacted a tiny bit...and that's as good as he's going to get out of me.

We've also noticed lately that Eleni has been exhibiting some super-hero-like skills. She's so fast, all we see is a blur followed by a rush of wind!!...kidding...here are a few blurry pics of Eleni excitedly trying out her Jolly Jumper for the first time this past weekend.

Woo hoo! Got a clear one! 1 out of 35...not too shabby!

So the Jolly Jumper is a huge hit! She hasn't really figured out how to jump yet but she thinks it's pretty fun to spin in circles and toddle around...toddle, shabby, what's up with my language today? Anyway, she loves the Jolly Jumper so it's become a regular in our playtime line-up.

That's about all really. It's now 11:30pm here and I'm totally ready for bed. Eleni's either getting teeth or she's just so over excited about having Baba home because she's changed her sleep schedule drastically. She used to go to bed around 8, wake up about midnight for a bottle and immediately fall back asleep until 7:30 or 8am the next morning. Now she goes to bed anytime between 7pm and 9pm...she wakes up at 11pm...then 1am...then 3am, and that's the worst one because she wants to play at this time for some reason so it takes about an hour to get her back to sleep...then she wakes up for the day between 5am and 6. And this is what she's been doing for the last 2 weeks since Antonis has been home. The proper Mommy thing to say would be "It's been challenging but it's just a stage and we'll get through it"....stage my ass, this is hell! If she doesn't get out of this "stage" soon Molyvos will be out of wine and I'll be forced to run through the village like a raging, screaming lunatic, throwing condoms at everyone of child-bearing age. Not pretty.

On that note, I should probably go to bed.

Good night!!