Aaaaahhhhh, how refreshing to join the civilized world again!
After what seemed like the longest move in the history of moving houses, we are finally in our new house! Actually we've been here since Tuesday but we just got our internet and telephone late last night, so things still felt unfinished the last few days...until the glorious colours and sounds of Google, Facebook, Yahoo and YouTube finally came pouring out of the screen, to my great joy and relief.
So here we are again! Getting back to normal, establishing routines. Some old routines and some new ones.
An old routine with a new view!
This is where I'm sitting at this very moment, writing to you.
How nice to look out a window instead of at a plain old wall.
I wonder if this will improve the writing....
or make it worse...
I guess we'll find out....
Anyway, I'll take you on a little tour.
Don't mind the mess,
we're still living with a few boxes and trying to organize things,
but we'll get it done eventually
The new living room
...yes it's pink.
Very pink.
Actually, the entire house is pink.
Even the bathrooms.
Complete with a pink, sparkly toilet seat.
We're going to live with it for a while apparently.
I thought it would be a good idea to paint everything before we moved in.
But that wasn't in the time schedule
or the budget
so it will have to wait.
Oh well, at least it's appropriate since I'm building an army of women to take over the world we're going to be a house full of girls........
But besides the interesting paint colour, there's a ton of light in the room which is nice. Cheerful.
The windows and doors are all brand new,
with screens to keep out the kounopia (mosquitos) during the summer!!
It may not seem like much, but in my opinion
having those screens is like hitting the Greek jackpot!
This is apparently the only photo I took of the kitchen...and it really doesn't show you much
Sorry about that! Not sure what happened there....
Or maybe,
I was just trying to avoid revealing the mountain of dirty dishes in my sink at the moment.....
Hmmmm
Anyway, it's a small kitchen but it has what we need so it will do just fine.
There's a little more cupboard space then what I had before.
We have a beautiful view of the village and castle from the table which is the best part.
We'll be getting a new stove eventually so that will make life A LOT easier,
since I've been trying to cook meals with ONE ELEMENT, and a tiny oven for the last 5 years!!
Not exactly the most time efficient way to cook.
Oh, and not to mention that there's a loose wire or something like that, so if you're not wearing the proper footwear or using wooden utensils,
it will electrocute you.
I won't be sorry to say good bye to that hunk of junk when the time comes.
Everyone cross their fingers and toes that that time comes
SOON!
The beginnings of a baby room!
More baby room
Our bedroom is just off of this one (for now),
No photo of that because Antonis is still sleeping and I didn't think he'd appreciate that very much.
Eventually we'll move into the 2nd bedroom (it's too the right of the bathroom/laundry room), and all the girls will share this big room
But that won't happen until the twins are sleeping through the night....
And once again I'll ask you all to cross all your fingers and toes that that happens
SOON!
(yes I know, good luck with that one...)
We now have 5 cats!
Well they're not ours, but we'll be taking care of them while the owners are away.
The owners of the house live upstairs,
but they also have a house in Florida that they live in during the winter months.
So from October to April we're out here in farm land on our own,
with the 5 cats,
and then Charlie and Litsa (owners) will join us around Easter and stay through the summer
Eleni's not so sure about the cats.
She's very curious about them and follows them around everywhere,
but the norm around here is to chase animals away (cats, dogs, whatever),
so she's learned from the older locals to hiss and stomp at the cats to scare them off.
I'm trying my best to fix this but it's a bit confusing for her.
Yesterday I found her chasing them with a broom, yelling at them to FEYEH! (leave!).....
this is probably going to take a while....
But we need the cats around actually, because living outside the village in the boonies means we have all kinds of other critters to contend with now:
rats, mice, snakes, foxes, scorpions, lizards...probably others, but that's all I know about for now...
that's all I WANT to know about for now...
Anyway, the cats will take care of all of those so I'm happy to feed them and keep them happy.
Just as long as they don't bring me any little "gifts" as cats sometimes like to do...
And the outside space.
The best part of the place!
Huge yard and garden area for Eleni to play,
she can ride her bike around here,
we'll put a big table and chairs out here in the garden in the spring and summer
so we can have all our meals outside.
There's even a little space for me to plant some veggies.
This is "The Zen Spot"
Just up, over the rocks is this little place that's so quiet and peaceful
View from The Zen Spot.
Perfect place to sit with a glass of wine once all the kids are asleep,
or with a tea or coffee before anyone wakes up.
Shhhh, don't tell the kids about this place!
I had a few visitors for breakfast this morning.
Between the middle sheep and the one on the right, you can see the view of Molyvos and the castle.
It's a bit foggy today so it's not the clearest view,
but at night it's especially beautiful when the castle is lit up
Outdoor cooking space.
This is actually the owner's outdoor space
but we're welcome to use it when they're away in the fall and winter
Stone table
Again, this is actually their space but we can use it when they're not here.
The 'laundry room'
Well, it's where the clothes are hung to dry. Because no one uses dryers here.
Last night I was hanging up a load when a little red fox came trotting through.
He either didn't know I was there or he really didn't care because he just walked through
without even a look in my direction.
I'd never been so close to a fox before!
And finally, the olive grove.
Eleni loves running around through here
and it goes waaaaaaay back so there's lots to explore.
So that's our new place! Like I said, we're still unpacking and rearranging things etc, but overall we're all happy to be here. Actually, I would even say it's like we can finally breathe! Living in the village is nice, there's people around, you have easy access to the shops and things. But everyone is so close together that you start to feel like a canned sardine! Not to mention there wasn't any space outside for Eleni to play
The first night was hard on Eleni. She was exhausted from moving all day, so was I. She told me she wanted to go to bed so I told her we'd put on our pajamas and she said,
"No, we go home first Mommy. After, pajamas"
and I said "But we ARE home baby! This is our new house, we're going to sleep here"
and she said "NOOOOOOO!!!!"
and cried her little heart out on my shoulder.
But since then she's been perfectly fine and has adjusted really well.
Moving was interesting...to say the least. First of all, it was a bit frustrating not being able to do much since I'm now 6 1/2 months pregnant. But a few weeks ago I did come out here and measure each room, and I measured every piece of our furniture. Then I drew very detailed plans of where all the furniture would go in each of the rooms, complete with room dimensions and furniture measurements.....
why did I do that (you're probably wondering)?
....Because it's been my experience with Greek men that they are all "experts". At everything. Even interior decorating. Now, if we were all sitting around having a chat and talking about "interior decorating" they would tell you that's 'women's stuff' and they couldn't care less about it. But suddenly when they're carrying heavy furniture and sweating and grunting, the feminine words "interior decorating" don't exist, and this just becomes 'men's stuff'. So I knew that if I wasn't organized about how I wanted the furniture, and if I didn't present it in a way that made sense to man brain, it wouldn't be very likely that my voice would be heard through the thick, stinky cloud of machismo.
Antonis was great, he knew I'd done the math, so to speak, so he was happy to put the furntiure wherever I asked him to put it. The others....they had their opinions. About everything. As expected. But I had the drawings....with measurements....and I had drawings and measurements of what I expected they would suggest, just to show them how that would NOT work.
It worked. They put everything where I told them too.
But not before they each gave their expert opinions. THEN, they'd put the funiture down in the place I wanted it.
And eventually this pregnant momma got sick of hearing their opinions, because it was wasting so much time. So I told them so. And I didn't even try to put it nicely.
After that, everything was moved from the truck, to the house, into the room I wanted, against the wall I wanted, without protest or opinion.
It was a house-moving miracle!
They all hate me now of course, but they'll get over it.
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