I couldn't help it....it had to be done!!!!

Sometimes you just can't be to serious! So, I couldn't help myslef i had to pinch the statues hiney! What we didn't realize is that we were moments away from a museum "guard" coming to tell us to delete the pictures because they weren't "serious" pictures of the art! So....Taylor got in trouble and actually I probably did too because I was the one snapping the shots! Unfortuantely this is the only one we have....Taylors were much worse than mine!!!

So this blog tonight isn't going to be about the whole day even though we had a blast today....be sure to check out Taylors blog at taylorstrax.blogspot.com because she will probably have more detail about the Museum.




Tonight I'd like to tell you about dinner. We've discovered our favorite places to go and it seems to be in the same area meeting new people and seeing new things! We had dinner at the top of a little alley way where we met this young man.

There are kids and others who walk arround the square trying to peddle their different products. Tonight this kid just wanted to give Taylor and I a flower just to have his picture taken with us! What a sweetie. We did end up giving him 4 Euro for the flowers. Dinner was delicious but we knew we wern't done.

Taylor seems to have her eye on this one particular "cute" waiter at another establishment so after dinner we headed over there for some coffee and dessert. And of course some spying on the cute waiter!

There was a rather large crowd of children celebrating the end of the school term. These kids were told to be in primary school and all were there dancing and having a great time!!! We had so much fun sitting there and watching them enjoying the autmosphere. They sang, they danced and I took pictures....of course!

See how much fun they were having.

So in Greece the time right now is almost 3 in the morning and we have pretty much just settled in for the night! This is also partly due to the fact that we ended up in great conversation with a man named Nickolas who was sitting having a drink at the table next to us. We talked about everything....Taylor seems to think I've met my future husband! :P

All in all this was a great day! I had a bit of jet lag and ended up taking a 2 hour nap earlier which I think may be causing some of this staying up late business. Now, beauty sleep!

1st Full day in Athens, Greece!! What a blast!

This was our first full day in Athens! We had decided to take a bus tour of the city to make sure we were able to see all that we needed to see. We started our day with breakfast in the hotel which consisted of crossints lots of various breads, some fruit, juice, eggs, little smokies that looked more like mini hotdogs, cheeses and cereal selection. We headed down to the front desk around 8 am which is 10 pm Oregon time. Met our bus and headed into the city.

Chat Tours Guided Bus Tour

We had a great tour guide. In fact she has been teaching at the university for 32 years and does the tour guide gig because she enjoys it. Not only has she been teaching there but is also an archeologist who has helped with some of the various dig sights arround the city. This is Sophia. She has also published at least 2 books which we decided to purchase and had her sign. It was pretty amazing visiting the various dig sights. At first glance they look like a pile of rubble that no one decided to clean up but with more insight and understanding you can discover many magnificint things about each site.

Sophia our Guide

The first place we stoped at was the original stadium for the olympics which seats 60,000 people. They don't use this stadium any more for any kind of track and filed excersizes however, we did learn that they used it in the 2004 olympics for the archery field competition.

Taylor in front of the Stadium

Our next stop was The Temple of Zues. It is actually right in the traffic pattern for the city with 100's of cars going past it every day. It seemed funny to me that it would be located there but I guess you can't exactly move a historic site like that. There are 15 standing pillars and 1 fallen one. The original temple had 104 collums that surrounded the temple. All the enterances to them face east.

Zues Temple Ruins, Athens

Rock sitting arround the ruins

Next was the Parthenon which has The Temple Nike and the Temple of Athena. Pictures are worth a thousand words! :)

Temple of Nike

Temple of Athena

When the Apostle Paul was preaching in Athens it was said that he was preaching from this rock!

With a short break between tours we were able to grab some lunch from a local's hangout! At least thats what the man on the street told us who actually took the time to walk us into the restaurant.

Our next tour was a coastal tour arround the outskirts of Athens. We went to see The Temple of Poesideon. The ruins are in their original found state with no tampering. Aparaently they have had to re-inforce some of the structures so that they don't fall over and with city built up arround most of them it's no wonder they'd want to stablize them.

Temple of Poesideon

We got back to the hotel around 8 pm in time to rest for a few minutes, freshen up and head out for dinner. We have had good luck with the places we choose to eat but we can't seem to get them to stop giving us free drinks or food! Just when we think we're done eating....out comes another surprise dish. This time it was a drink and dessert!

Stay tuned for more!! We're going to visit some of the museams tomorrow and who knows what else! Be sure to check out Taylors blog too at http://taylorstrax.blogspot.com/

Leave a comment if you dare!

It's all Greek to me!!!

Oh my gosh we are finally here!!! After 12 hours of air time, 4 hours layover in Frankfurt and a speedy pass through customs in Greece we are finally on Greek soil! There was no problem getting through customs once in the country and in fact they didn't even check out bags! We came to our hotel rested for maybe an hour before venturing out! The hotel is a quaint and comfy place right in what seems to be the middle of the shopping and dining district. We will be here for 4 nights.

Once we ventured out we had an experience similar to the one I had in Paris in the Latin Quarter. The barkers (waiters) at the restaurants try to get you to come in and enjoy their meals. They hand you their card, offer you free drinks and free dessert until you finally give in to one of them and sit down to have a meal. We had a great tasting dinner, however I ordered chicken and I'm pretty sure what I got was pork! Still good. The picture below was after dinner and after 36 hrs of being up!! So please forgive the "dazed" look as Taylor calls it! She of course is cute as always!

After dinner we took a stroll along the cobble stone streets to see what we could see. We decided to head back to the hotel because I'm sleepy!! We seem to have the knack for getting lost. Of course there are plenty of people on the streets willing to help or wanting you to come in and enjoy more food and drinks! We couldn't possibly eat or drink another thing! So we did get a tad lost but came across this Cathedral in the heart of some of the surrounding streets.

After all was said and done it was a pretty good day! The weather is beautiful, the flights were comfortable and our room is just right for crashing! So hope you all have a wonderful day. Thanks for reading! By the way we are 10 hours ahead of you. Also, Taylor will be blogging on her blog at http://taylorstrax.blogspot.com be sure to catch her blog too!

Nice weather, good cookin' and loads of fun....

How do you spend your warm and beautiful summer days? I have to admit that today I needed to head out to the outlet shops in Woodburn but what i did on the way home was take the long way arround. The nice part about the long way is you're able to think, sing your heart out to the radio and observe all the beauty of the countryside. It was also nice driving through the neighborhoods and smelling all the different cooking going on which made me realize....hey I need to learn to cook! Feel free to "comment" me your favorite summer recipes and I'll be sure to post a couple of them when I can. Also, stay tuned for updates from January through May since I've been such a slacker I have quite a bit of catch up to do! :)

Conquering those fears....

What are fears? Are they reality or are they things our mind uses to play tricks on us? Maybe little ways we happen to let Satan into our lives. Tricks or not some fears can be totally paralyzing to us. I'm dealing with the fear of not being good enough. I don't need a ton of e mails telling me how good I am because I know what God says about fears. I'm just being real. I think we allow some fears into our lives so that we have an excuse to fail. Do we want to fail? Mostly no but we use that to get ourselves down from the start so that when/if our "fear of failure" really does happen we can say "see...I told you so!". But what if we give those fears to God from the start? Why is it we try to sabotage our future before it even happens? If we believed that God would improve things for us would that improve our motivation? Our outlook? Our drive for success? I would think so!!! How about we Pray Pray Pray! Isn't that what it's all about anyway? So what fears do you deal with? Let's try to put those in the Father's hands and find success from the start without the worry and fear getting to our core.

I know what you did last night!

GIRLFRIENDS!

This didn't take a lot of planning, invitations or phone calls to get a group together. Some times the best times are the spontaneous moments when you can call/text or facebook people and get a group of gal pals together for a night out!

I have not, in a very long time, laughed as much as I did last night! We ended up having about 13 of us at the movie Bride Wars. It was pretty funny and I thought it was also an interesting view of how women can be so mean to each other but in the end we realize how important our friends really are to us. It doesn't matter if we're hurting, happy or sad, it's the bond that holds us together. What bond is that you ask? For everyone it may be different. It may be because you've known each other for a long time, you've experienced the friendship of that person because of something traumatic in one of your lives or it might be a new relationship. Whatever the bond the friendship is there and that's the whole point!

I have been blessed with a great group of gal pals. Some who could make it last night and some who will have to come to the next movie night. With so much going on in my family right now this night out was just what the doctor ordered. I was able to meet one of my friends for dinner before the movie and it was great to catch up with her. One of the things I love most about her is that we can go for weeks without seeing one another and nothing is ever "weird" when we do spend time together.

After the movie a group of 5 of us....you know who you are....went out for a snack. I laughed so hard I had tears running down my face. The best comment was about potato chips and family meetings! The conversation was great and the company even better! Thanks Gals!

So let me just encourage you...if you don't have many gal pals in your life right now, try reaching out to someone you don't get to spend a lot of time with. One of my favorite things about inviting people to go out last night was the comment I got, "thanks for thinking of me". Who cares if you're married or single, you have 1 kid or 10, time isn't always convenient or there are dishes in the sink! Make time to go out, accept the invitation, enjoy people, and remember to Laugh! After all, laughter is the best medicine!

Next girls movie night is February 13th! Let me know if you want to come!

PS Names have been left out intentionally to protect the embarrassed!

Things aren't always what they seem...

The beginning of the year usually starts with people saying..."Can you believe it's 2009? Where did last year go?". Well, lets just say that I'm not one of those people! Of course you can believe it's a new year! It happens ever year at about this time. The true cause of the disbelief is the fact you still have things you weren't able to complete the year prior and perhaps a to do list a mile long that doesn't magically disappear at the start of the new year. We don't suddenly get a new beginning, a new body, changed habits, or money in the bank but perhaps more of a fresh start in our own mind. Maybe this is part of the trick we play on ourselves in order to get some motivation back. How about we make a resolution to stay the same? Continue on with the things we need to get done, the people we want to see and the tasks around the house that still need to be completed. We can do all of this while improving what we look like, what we wear, how we act, what we eat and habits we want to break. So follow me as we stay the same this year! Perhaps by the end of this year we will have made some positive changes that we can say at the start of next year that surprised us!