Greek Festival

After a 10-year hiatus, our church revived its Greek Festival. Today was the first day of the festival, it will also be open tomorrow. My brother John and I worked the ticket booth for most of the afternoon. It was a little hot and muggy, but at least it did not rain.... we were worried! Tomorrow Nate and I will be back again to sell tickets and eat some more Greek food. Today's festival had a great turn-out. I saw several old friends and fellow church members. There was excellent Greek food (I sampled a little bit of everything), Greek dancers, and even tours of the church. I'm glad that our church decided to work together and bring back the Greek Festival tradition.

John selling food tickets and handing out menus. It is interesting how many pronunciations we heard for the word 'gyro'.

Taking a break from ticket selling and enjoying a gyro. So good!

I saw one of my students from last year, Selena.

Greek dancers performed throughout the day. The above picture is of a Chicago dance troupe. Below is the dance troupe from our parish.

4th of July Weekend

The Fourth of July weekend this year was busy. We celebrated with my good friends, Dan and Renee. We went to Renee's parents' house for a BBQ by the pool. Afterwords, Nate and I went to the parade downtown. We took Zoe with us, but she did not appreciate the loud noises. Nate spent most of the parade inside the car, trying to console poor Zoe. We figured the fireworks would also be scary for her so we didn't go see them, but we heard every one from our house!

On Saturday we stayed around the house most of the day. We kept busy by printing and framing some of the pictures from our trip to Europe. While in Paris, we bought some artwork as souvenirs. We framed the paintings and put them up in our bedroom. Finally, we have some real artwork to decorate our bare walls!

On Sunday, June 6th we attended our third wedding of the summer. My godmother's sister got married in Olympia Fields, Illinois. It was another traditional Greek Orthodox wedding. Since we are also distant relatives of the bride's family, we saw many of our relatives and good friends at the wedding. The wedding was a lot of fun, I'm glad that we were back from Greece in time to attend!

James and Frangitsa, the happy couple

Cutting the cake...

We spent some time with my godmother, Calliope, and her huband, Kent, during the reception