Marissa's Baptism

The Monday after Easter was Marissa's baptism in the Greek Orthodox church.  Demetris and I have chosen to baptize our kids in both his church and mine.  That way they are doubly blessed.  Demetris' cousin, Renos, came from Athens with his fiance, Vicky, to be the godparents.  In the Orthodox church the godparents are in charge of the baptism and provide everything necessary for it. I wrote about that for Sofia's baptism last year so won't bother to repeat the information. The child wears one outfit to the church and then after the water portion of the baptism is changed into the baptism clothes.  Marissa looked beautiful in both of her dresses.  She had quite the fancy lacy dress complete with little silk jacket, silk hat, and the cutest little shoes.  She started out quite happy at the church, even clapping her hands.  Once the priest approached her to start rubbing holy oil on her that was the end of the happiness.  She cried the rest of the time.  Poor Renos had his hands full carrying her around, but he handled it well. After the service, yiayia took everyone to lunch at the village restaurant, Amelios.  The food was very good and cousin Elena brought a yummy cake to end the meal.  We are really thrilled that Renos and Vicky took the time from their busy schedules to come be her godparents. Marissa bonded quickly with them and I am sure that bond will continue even across the distance.

With cousin Electra and yiayia ready to go to the church

Two cutie pies at the church:  Sofia and her cousin Evelina

With her godfather, Renos as he reads his part

Clapping her hands

Hey mommy, this is fun

Sofia and Aunt Margaretha

The service does get a little long

Still happy

Hey!  Who invited this guy?

Not fun at all!

In her underclothes

Looking pretty in the baptism clothes

Better now that we are home

This day wore me out

At the restaurant with Renos and Vicky

Special cake

The end of the day

Easter Weekend

For Easter, the whole family travels to the village for the weekend.  The village house is in the Pafos region.  The first day we were there, Friday, was a bit rainy in the morning.  We did what everyone else does in that situation.  We went to the mall.  There is a new mall in Pafos and we wanted to check it out.  It is probably the nicest mall in Cyprus right now, but there are only two others with a third being built.  Once the weather cleared up we went to the Pafos waterfront area for a walk.  Saturday we stayed put in the village.  Themis' family has three dogs that they brought along.  Sofia is scared to death of them, but Alex spent most of his time with them.  He really enjoyed having the chance to take them on walks.  His favorite is Gabby.  The Easter church service starts at 11:00 at night on Saturday.  The ending is at midnight to welcome in Easter.  Demetris is the only one who attended this year from our family. I didn't see much point in taking Marissa and Sofia hates the noise of the "bombs" going off. Alex said he wanted to go but he was too tired and fell asleep.  Once everyone was home around 12:30 a.m. yiayia stayed home with the sleeping children and the rest of us gathered at Uncle Yiannis and Aunt Margaretha's house to break the fast that everyone else had been doing.  During this fast for holy week they don't eat meat or dairy products.  The tradition is to eat a lemon-rice soup after church.  Some of it also has chicken in it.  We finally made it to bed around 3:00 in the morning so it wasn't that easy to jump out of bed with kids who wanted to look for Easter eggs and baskets.  We did it anyway. This year since the Greek Easter coincided with the Western Easter the bunny left baskets for our nieces as well.  The bunny doesn't leave chocolate or hide baskets in Cyprus.  Poor Nayia took a bit of time to find her basket that was hidden in the washing machine.  For lunch we had the typical souvla done on the grill and pastitio. Everything was good.  

She looks just like me, doesn't she?

Sofia and the Easter Bunny

Marissa with her godparents, Renos and Vicky

The cousins: Sofia, Tatiana, Marissa, and Alex

Pafos castle

Girls team:  Vicky, Diana, Tatiana, me, and part of Sofia

Boys team:  Michalis, Alex, Renos, and Demetris

Souvla for Easter!

Alex and Uncle Yiannis

I've given up on getting a good picture with my girls

There's the apple and the tree

The village house

Alex and his cousins walking the dogs

A Day at the Zoo

Two weeks ago we went to the Limassol Zoo for the day.  We have been there once before.  It is a small zoo, but that gives the kids a chance to really take their time looking at the animals.  They have many questions about the animals and we can easily go back a second or even third time to visit the favorites.  We took a picnic lunch with us and once we had exhausted the zoo we visited the playground at the adjacent municipal park before heading home.  Recent milestones that the kids are proud of include:  Alex learned how to tie his shoes.  Sofia can now do a forward somersault.  Marissa is beginning to crawl, but it is still a bit uncoordinated.  It is fun to see all of them growing and changing.

The cutest little caged animal

Impossible to get all three of them to look at once.  At the zoo.

Thinks she is hot stuff standing up.

Alex "touching" the alligator.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

The gray owl

In the middle of a somersault.

Carnival days

Carnival festivities kept us busy at the start of Lent.  On Sunday, March 23, we went to a nice parade here in Nicosia.  It is the warm-up parade for the bigger one to come.  Some school friends joined us to make it even more fun.  On Friday the kids were able to wear their costumes to school.  Everyone looked really cute.  One thing I love about carnival is that the costumes are primarily festive.  There aren't many scary or ugly costumes.  The carnival fun was topped off with the big parade in Limassol on March 30.  It is a pretty awesome parade with a hundred groups taking part.  Confetti, silly string, streamers, and noisemakers are in abundance.  Alex had a blast throwing his own confetti and spraying the silly string.  Honestly, what six year old boy would not love the chance to be allowed to make a huge mess while throwing stuff at other people.  Sofia was a bit more restrained and threw nice dainty handfuls only.  Marissa had a pretty good time as well and only ate a small bit of confetti.

Sofia as a fairy princess

The princess and Zorro

Parade in Nicosia

Alex and his friend, Bianka

Sofia and her friend, Alex

The stunned bunny

In Limassol, delicately throwing confetti

Ready to bombard someone with streamers

Marissa having fun