It's all Greek to me

Up until this weekend just about everything I knew about the Greek Orthodox religion and Culture I learned from the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. ~ Love that movie.



But this weekend I asked Buster to take us to the Greek Festival in Houston. The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Houston, Texas hosted it's 43 Greek Festival. This is a four day event and thousands come. They claim it is the original Greek Festival in the United States.

This Houston Greek Orthodox community began with a handful of Greek immigrants back in 1917.
We had a great time watching the Folk Dancers, eating Greek food, touring the Cathedral and shopping in the Greek market.

Here are some pictures from our afternoon enjoying all things Greek.



Inside the Cathedral...


A member of the church gave us a brief history of the Greek Orthodox Faith. It was so interesting. She was so knowledgeable of early Church history. I would love to talk with her more.

Beautiful stained glass:

Looking up you see this:

The Greek Folk Dancers:

The non-Greek food eaters having pizza:

Mine and Buster's Gyro's: Yum Yum!

My purchase from the Greek market... This apron was only .99. I love aprons anyway and when I saw this one for 99 cents I couldn't pass it up. It has some olive brand advertisement on it. It's all written in Greek, but I thought it was fun.

We heard lots of OPA's!!! and had lots Fun!

Buster even missed an afternoon of College Football on TV to go. He wasn't real happy about that. But we went to Pappa's Burger on our way home after the festival and the Houston Texan's cheerleaders were there. So that made up for it I guess haha.

Trust me he wouldn't have been shouting "Opa" if he stayed home and watched his team play. Let's just say the Georgia Bulldogs were........the ηττημένος. *

* loser

September Memories

Last September we experienced our first major hurricane. It was quite an event for me even though I grew up on the west coast of Florida. Hurricane Ike came ashore in Texas and boy did things look different around here after he left. Thankfully, we were only without power four days at our house. A little cool front came and kept us cool. Each night we had 12-15 people at our house to eat. I had a generator keeping one of our refrigerators going so neighbors would bring me food from their freezers. We all ate really good.

This is how things normally look around here:

After Ike this is what we saw when we walked out side:

The park near our house looked like this:

Another Memory:

I know we all thought back to the day of September 11, 2001...where we were and what were were doing. I remember seeing something briefly on the TV about the World Trade Center being hit by the first plane. I turned off the TV so it wouldn't scare my daughter and we rushed on out the door to go to school. I drove across the street to pick up my neighbor's son who carpooled with us. She walked out and asked me if I saw the Pentagon had been hit by a plane. I told her "No, it was the WTC. Not the Pentagon." Sadly we were both right.

Speaking of Memory:

I received this from our Community Association Office last week.

They forwarded this man's picture. He has amnesia. He was found beaten up and left for dead in Richmond, Georgia. He has very little recollection of his past and no idea who he is. Linguist have determined from his accent that he could possibly be from Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana or Colorado. Someone out there has to be looking for him. I felt sad for him and decided to post him on my blog. You never know.

Here is the link for more information regarding him:

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1007umga.html

~~~

Lastly, I wanted to share with you about Dr. Margaret Nikol. Paige and I heard her speak today and share memories of her life growing up as a Christian in Communist Bulgaria. Her mother, father and brother were all martyred for their faith. I wish you could hear her story in person. She has speaking engagements all over the U.S. Check out her website http://www.intl-impact.org/. She will be in California, Oklahoma, Texas and Illinois between now and the end of the year. You have to see her if you can.

She still has such a burden and a heart for Bulgaria. She translated the entire Bible into the Bulgarian language and in 1993 took over the first copies of the Bible that those churches have had in years. She's has since provided Bulgarian believers with over 600,000 copies of the Bible in their language. One memory that she shared touched me so much. She told of her mother's death. The Communist had poisoned her and brought her home to die. As she lay dying, Margaret and her younger brother were with her and she told them that the prayers she had prayed for them would follow them their entire lives. They did. She prayed that Margaret would be a musician and she was. By the time she was four years old she was playing organ and piano in their church. She prayed her brother would be a Pastor and he was. He was martyred two weeks before the Berlin Wall crumbled. Both of his sons are still pastors in Bulgaria. The story is incredible. I wish she would write a book. I'm glad Paige could go with me to see this Hero of the Faith and hear her memories.

Iced Coffee and other News

Coming to you live from Joyintheburbs:

Weather Report:

Here in Texas it is already H.O.T. so drinking hot coffee is not advisable.

I'm getting my coffee fix with this recipe for Easy Iced Coffee on Allrecipes. It is soooooo good. It can be made for so much less $$ then Starb*cks or even McD*nalds Cafe coffees.

A few simple ingredients are all you need:

2 teaspoons instant coffee granules
1 teaspoon sugar
3 tablespoons warm water
6 fluid ounces cold milk

1 tablespoon of your favorite flavored creamer (not in original recipe...I added that)

In a sealable jar, combine instant coffee, sugar and warm water.

Cover the jar and shake until it is foamy.

Pour into a glass full of ice.

Fill the glass with milk and creamer and enjoy this yummy concoction.

Adjust to taste if necessary.

In other news, Leah is sporting a new shorter "do" this summer. I'm loving it on her.

The Agricultural report:

Here are 3 little potatoes I harvested. Aren't they cute. That is all I got from my potato planting experiment. I'm going to plant a lot more this fall and see what happens. But hey, I got one small serving from it.

In Fashion news today we have this:

The model (aka me) is wearing a first attempt to make an article of clothing since Home Economics class over 25 years ago. I realize it is not the most fashionable skirt. But the pattern did not call for a zipper so it suckered me in.

When I started cutting the pattern out I realized it had "godets" (lots of them). Silly me didn't know what a godet was. The dictionary definition is: A triangular piece of fabric usually set into the hem of a garment to add fullness.

My definition: LOTS AND LOTS OF EXTRA UNWANTED FABRIC THAT HAS TO BE CUT OUT AND THEN SEWN INTO SAID SKIRT RENDERING IT VERY HEAVY. Who knew. I learned my lesson. Also learned that I need to keep my drawstring tied nice and tight.

In closing I leave you with this:

One of those little dots on the beach will be me in the near future. I'll be away from the computer on and off for the next few weeks. I'll try and keep up with your blogs as best I can. Don't think I forgot you.

As soon as I'm back I will return to regularly scheduled blogging. :)


That is the news from the home front. Thank you for joining me.


Good night.

♥

The Garden Center

There is a very inspirational garden center in nearby Tomball, Texas. They offer classes on a variety of topics. A few weeks ago they had a class on garden photography so I headed over. I'm really a point and shoot kind of gal and don't understand half the functions my camera is capable of. But I believe it is hard to take a bad picture at The Arbor Gate. They have beautiful vignettes all throughout the property. You just go there and dream your own garden could look like that.
Here are few pictures I took that day.

It is a very peaceful place out in the country. There is a pasture next door with horses grazing and galloping around. I could just live there I believe.

Tea Party Texas Style

April 15, 2009

The Woodlands Tax Day Tea Party

Every year Americans are well aware of the date April 15th. We must file and pay any tax balance to the federal government by this day. This year was different. Yes, we mailed our tax forms and payments but also many people across the nation came together for Tax Day Tea Parties. We had one in our area north of Houston. This was definitely a grassroots effort by everyday citizens who are concerned with the direction that our government is going and all the wasteful spending we see happening. Capitalist and people who are hard working and trying to get ahead and provide for their families are made out to be villains for some reason. The philosophy of 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.' and a "spread the wealth" mentality is starting to invade the thinking of some in this country.

The Tea Party organizers anticipated between 500 - 1000 people would attend this event. We were blown away by the numbers of people that attended. There were an estimated 6000 people that attended throughout the course of the event. Here are a few pictures I took with my phone. They aren't great quality. There is also a Youtube link that has great pictures also.

This was a peaceful protest.

I was really proud to be a part of American history. I'm sad it has come to this though. We only pray that Washington is listening.

This picture was earlier in the event:

There were homemade signs everywhere. The Youtube videos features many:

There were different citizens and business owners who spoke at the event. A bluegrass band entertained. A sign parade went across the stage. Our Congressman did attend the event, but was only allowed to speak for a few minutes. This was the citizens opportunity to speak and Washington to listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX89ZZmTfF0&feature=channel_page

Wanted to give you an idea of what went on in our little corner of the world. Only one local news channel showed up via helicopter to film the event for a couple of minutes before flying off.

Wordless Wednesday (almost)

Sorry, had to comment that yes, I took this picture here in Texas.
We drove by this sign and I'm thinking to myself..... "I didn't just see what I thought I saw".
I asked Buster to turn around so I could take a picture. Yes, I did read it correctly. Ok. That's just gross.