Wedding? Did someone say wedding?

I have been updating folks that yes, Akis and I will be getting married, and yes, we are planning to do this in Greece. This 'revelation' means that there are going to be some people that will need to visit Greece, and while I know it is a lot to ask my friends and family to travel over the Atlantic to be with Akis and I, I think some of them are taking this as an opportunity to take that 'Greek' vacation.

With a country decided on, Akis and I are now working on some more of the 'specific details' such as when and where. These two items, while very important, also seem to be a bit challenging for us to decide upon. Knowing that folks some of the people coming from Canada are teachers, Akis and I have opted for a Summer wedding to coincide with their vacations. To ensure we have enough time to plan, we figured August would be a good month. I suggested the 15th only to be told that this is 'Maria's name day' for the Virgin Mary and the second largest holiday in Greece. With this being a big celebration, the country would grind to a halt on the 15th, so I figured I won't win if I try to compete with the Virgin. So we are now looking at the 22nd or 23rd of August. Now don't go bookin' airline tickets, as this has yet to be confirmed with something equally important like a church and a place to have the reception, but it is the time that we think would work best for folks if we are able to find somewhere to now hold the wedding.

The search for the church and hall will prove to be a bit more challenging for 2 reasons, a) neither Akis nor I are there and b) I don't know these places in Greece so I am relying on Akis to select the venues. His preference is to see the places, as is mine, however we just don't have the luxury of time so we, the IT gurus are going to need to use the information highway to get the job done.

What baffles me a bit is that this is just the beginning of the decision making that we are going to need to do for this wedding. I tell you, not being efficient at making decisions, we sure are going to need to get much better at it over the next 6 months!

Body work done by the newbies....

Being in desperate need of a hair cut, Krista phoned her Hair Salon and looked to book me an appointment. The girl that she regularly goes to is apparently getting rather popular as she has moved up the ranks from Jr. Stylist to Sr Hair Designer and all of her appointments are full! So that left me with a 'junior' option. It was just a cut and hey, if it goes horribly wrong, it will grow back, right???

The salon itself was very nice and after giving the details on how low maintenance the hairstyle must be ~ no blow drying, no curling, no more than 2 minutes work after getting out of the shower ~ we were ready to go. The cut itself has turned out to be quite good, however as one would expect with a Jr. position, there is an element of 'learning' which is going on. The stylist was very excited to see that new 'round picks' had come in and decided I would be a good candidate to try this new product on. Well, it would seem that the management of the omb, coupled with the diffuser on the hairdryer was a bit much as I came out of the salon with a few picks from the comb and a few bangs from the diffuser. It's a good thing that I have a tough head! See Akis, it does come in handy.

I also wanted to get my nails done. Seeing a place in the mall in the one end of town, so I thought I would deek in and quickly get my nails done then head back home for turkey. I made my way there and was told to come back in 10 minutes. The place was your typical Asian nail salon. The woman who was to do my nails had just come from China 2 weeks ago. She was a bit concerned that she wasn't able to speak enough English, but she did rather well. What wasn't quite so good was the rather large tips she put on my nails for the French manicure. About 90 minutes into the manicure I had my nails under the dryer thinking 'hey in 2 weeks the tips will look like they don't take up half of my nail' when a more senior member of the staff came and asked how I liked my nails. I said that they were OK, but she could tell by my voice that I wasn't in love with them. Within 15 minutes, my nails had the polish stripped off and they were repainted. The total time for a French manicure: 2hrs... Oh well, at least my nails look spectacular!

Miscellaneous Christmas photos

Here are some of the things we got up to over the holidays. The construction of the Gingerbread house was quickly followed by Craig's question of whether or not the deconstruction could begin.

Some of us even had Christmas clothes to show off....

I was also able to help Dad put up the tree at home. It had been a number of years since he had put up a tree as 2 previous years had him travelling to the south to board the ship and the year before that both he and Krista came out to have Christmas with me in Vancouver. We dug into the old Christmas decorations but did make a stop to purchase the new LED lights. I don't know about anyone else, and maybe I'm just getting old, but those Blue lights not not kind to the eyes. When I mentioned this to my friend Liz, she said she was glad to hear that it wasn't only her that had problems with the lights. Which I can understand as I recall in University, while volunteering for the CNIB to drive people to appointments, Liz put on goggles that would alter your vision to that of someonen who was legally blind so they would know what it was like for those who were visually impaired. Well in Liz's case, she put on the goggles and remarked that she was able to see better than she could before putting in her contacts every morning. She then looked around and I'm not sure if folks were as keen to get in the car with her. Anyway, the tree was decked out with new lights, even if there were scary blue ones.

I also have a couple pictures of the snowfall. Akis was on the ship during the holidays and has on many occassions said that he wanted to be here while it was snowing. He may change his mind after he discovers that the cold temperatures accompany the white stuff, but for the time being, here is a photo of the snowfall out the back of Dad's.