Eric's visit was over before it began

We will miss Eric the kids adored "Uncle Eric" and it was fun showing him around, here are a few photos. Arthur picked up Eric from Thessaloniki on Wednesday and brought him here, on Thursday we went to Plastira lake and as you can see from the photo above there was still a whole lot of snow on the ground and parts of the lake were frozen.
Eric herding some sheep and goats so we could continue our journey, zoom in on the photo, some great detail.
Nik of course was in heaven, yippee snow, Kat wanted to play in the water. It was a great day with play and good food, we ate trout at the lake and then came back to Kokaroka and had lamb and steak.
Nik informing Eric on what movies he likes and what they are about.

Quick Trip

Took a quick trip up to Thessaloniki and will probably not be doing it again anytime soon, the kids both got car sick even though we took the more straight and therefor longer road. Nik's sickness was a result of drinking 3 strawberry milkshakes from the Thessaloniki McDonald's, he definitely got my sweet tooth. If Katerina isn't sleeping then she is throwing up, so you can see why I like it when she sleeps through the trip, but this is made impossible by all of the Tolls along the road (total close to 30euros). Where all of the $#@%$$ money goes is the question. Plus on top of that the price of gas, we got 6 gallons for $60 dollars that's right do the math that's $10 a gallon, do you think Americans would pay that much for their gas, HAH. Now you know why everyone is always on strike, just kidding the idiots called greeks aren't gong on strike because of gas prices but because the government took away their 14 month pay, oh wait there are only 12 months in a year. Stupid, Stupid and even more Stupid.

Snow

Okay so two weeks of having snow on the ground has kind of gotten old, even Nik was excited yesterday when it was sunny. This morning we woke up to the first day of no snow or ice on the roads. The town workers cut up some of the trees that had fallen from such heavy snow and they finally picked up the trash (thank goodness our neighborhood is small and the bin didn't fill up until Monday). Our heaviest snowfall here was about 2-3ft, but in some parts of our prefecture they had 10 feet of snow. Since the roads were clear Arthur took off for Ioannina to do some business but then at 1pm it started to snow again. I'm kind of hoping it won't be to much this time because we were expecting to go to Thessaloniki on Friday or Saturday for an exhibition and some McDonald's.

Rain

Coming in from the cold her hands and face are rosy red.
Following me around with the camera as I take layer after layer of clothing off, the shot below is fuzzy but in the next one that I took she was wiping her eyes in exhaustion which then followed a need for her pacifier, so I put the fuzzy shot in.

In order for Kat to go outside on Friday she had to put on many layers. She had 2 t-shirts, a long john outfit from Grandma Peters, a sweater and a snow outfit on, not to bad, I wanted to put on 1 more jacket but she had had enough so we went out to play and it's a good thing too, because yesterday and today it has been rainy.
There are still a few big snow piles, but the snow is slowly melting from all of the rain.

Nik's Birthday Wish

The neighborhood kids were sliding down the hill on bags and the older ones were using a snowmobile.


All of these pictures were taken on Thursday February 2.
The first day of snow (the one picture above) January 30th, melted quickly as did the second day of snow but on Wednesday it snowed all day and through the night so we got the below amount of snow. This was the farthest that baby Kat got to go. She was not happy about having to stay inside.

I am sure that the reason it has been snowing for 4 days is because Nik wished for it on his birthday.

4 th birthday

Nik turned 4 on Sunday

Katerina Day

Here she is working on her tractor, she always gets distracted when I get the camera out but I told her to start her work again and to pose for the camera and that's when I got the shot below.

My pretty little girl.

Both kids love each other and for the most part play very well together, here Nik is giving her a hug and she's like hey not so close. But she always gives him a hug in the morning and when he comes home after being at KokaRoka.

Today was name day Katerina, so we got several calls from our Greek relatives to wish baby Kat many happy years (Xronia Polla). The Greeks celebrate name days more than they do birthdays, it does make things a little easier you don't have to remember birth dates you just call the person or visit on that persons name day. So if you know several Katerina's you can go to each of thier houses and get little cakes or some kind of refreshment. This is baby Kat's first name day since technically she has not had a name until she was baptized and that was on Oct. 16th. She will be 1 1/2 on December 8th, but I always think she is so much older because of her intelligence and her physical abilities. She can pretty much do everything her brother does and is an even better writer than him and holds a pen perfectly.

No more sugar

In my attempt to stop eating sugar I made one last great dessert, a beautiful carrot cake. It was super delicious and the best I have ever made, you can find the recipe here. I want to limit my intake of sugar, starting at my 4 teaspoons of sugar in my morning coffee. But I have found the task difficult and my cravings for the white stuff border on addiction.
In the last ten days not only have I found myself eating half of the cake, but I also made brownies, chocolate cookies and this morning I am making cinnamon rolls (got the idea from Angela) plus I need to use the leftover cream cheese frosting from my carrot cake. Wish me good luck in my battle of the bulge by first getting rid of sugar, my personal poison.