pink flamingos (or is it -oes?)

and i guess i dont care enough to look up the plural of flamingo. here's Zylie clutching one of the softer treasures from my pink flamingo collection...

the guest bathroom is my shrine to the pink flamingo and is adorned with the pink bird!!...pictures, funny looking bobbily ones, tiles, candle holders, caricature types and this one plush beauty. I've found Zylie in the past standing on the counter and reaching for this particular treasure on the top shelf, so when she very sweetly asked if she could please hold "that fagingo", i just couldn't refuse. and to help distract her later from an impending melt-down i suggested that she should take the bird home with her and bring it back next trip. what she doesn't know is that it would hardly be missed here and she can keep it if she bonds with it!

Zylie and Kate were here for the family faux thanksgiving dinner on saturday. Chris and Alex were both sick so didn't make the trip down. and dome central was rockin'!
i think we ended up with about 20 relatives and their friends/spouses. i fixed a ham and salad, both of which were taken care of before anyone arrived... which is a good thing... Dinah and Jonica needed space for creating their greens and feta dish (which was deeelightful) and Jen and Maggie had a huge salad to put together, so the kitchen was buzzin' and ended up (as usual) being the main gathering place. wish i'd taken some pics so i'd have recent family photos to take to Crete. seems people are always interested in seeing family and home surroundings. i got quite a few good ones of the grapes to show our wine-making friends in Vamos! so, why have tgiving in october? well... we won't be back til late night nov. 23, Dinah can't come down, Bud and Lynda will be in Idaho... so it seemed like a grand idea. and, oh baby, was i wiped out on sunday! tho i did need to revive myself for the sunday activities... 3 friends came out to pick grapes with Jim, then crush them... and of course needed refreshment afterward... and i needed to do a hostessy things with wine and cheese and bread and olives. it was tasty. the nap afterward was pretty good, too.

time is getting short before leaving for Italy and Crete, and i feel pretty well organized. hope i'm still feeling that way monday a.m..

we won't have an internet connection at our house this time, so i'll just keep a journal and post it on the travel blog when we return. we have a couple of things sort of planned... Jim wants to hike the Samaria Gorge, which is a long rocky ravine which goes from the north of the island to the southern coast. we also want to spend a couple of days in Rethymnon. there are a couple of museums there that we missed last fall, plus the old town section has lots more to see than we got to. other than that, we hope to go to a raki making party in Vamos again and maybe attend some Greek cooking classes. and visit with friends!! and sit on the Liakota Cafe balcony on a sunny afternoon, sipping raki and admiring the view of the White Mountains. and checking around to find out how we can buy a small house there. we were told that only citizens of an EU country are allowed to purchase property in an EU country. there MUST be a way around this! and who knows what else... will just have to wait and see.

for receiving and sending email, we'll go to the next village where there is an internet cafe.