Babies' Trampoline

Here's an overdue update of what the babies have been up to in March. Above is a photo from the beginning of the month when we went downtown. Here the babies are running around chasing the pigeons in the pedestrian area between Aristotle Square and St. Dimitrios'.

A week or so ago we stopped by Beatrix's Farm, which is a working farm near us owned and operated by a women from Belgium and her Greek husband. They enjoy letting kids come by and play with the animals. After feeding various animals, the babies got on the this tire swing for a ride.

Our friend Michael had a couple visitors from the U.S., including one Orthodox young man from Pelagia's home state of Washington (he's from St. Innocent's), so we took them out to Souroti to venerate the grave of Elder Paisios. After the babies venerated, they then took the traditional monastic blessing -- Turkish delight! Here Paul has a whole piece in his mouth. They each ate about three. Below they're playing in one of the monastery's fountains. Some of the sisters were chuckling at this.

On the way back from the monastery, we stopped for a few minutes at the mall so the babies could walk around inside. They fell in love with this toy store, which had huge remote control cars in the window.

The big excitement for the babies is that we set up a trampoline for them on Saturday. Here are some photos of them enjoying it on Saturday afternoon.

On Sunday morning after Liturgy, we went to our friend Angela's house in the mountains in Halkidiki, about one hour east of Thessaloniki. The weather has been beautiful this weekend, and the babies enjoyed sitting out in the grass and playing with bugs. Above, you can see part of the village in the background.

Benjamin is excited as we all watched two bugs walk around on his hand. They looked something like box elder bugs.

Trying to find the bugs.

The bugs were walking on my hand and all the babies wanted a turn holding them.

Here they are crawling on Phoebe's dress.

Part of the village, called Vrastana (near Polygyros), in the background. About 800 people live in that village.

We had lunch outside with some of Angela's friends, including the village priest, Fr. Panteleimon, his presvytera, and their seven kids.

Then in the afternoon, when we got home, it was back to the trampoline. Here's a view of trampoline from our porch.

Pelagia had borrowed a sledgehammer to break up some concrete on the patio, in order to make more room for the trampoline. Paul actually lifted it off the ground and was trying to walk around with it. He also did a lot of work with the electric screwdriver that we had used to put the trampoline together.

For more photos, click here.

For similar trampolines, check out Bounce Inc. here.