A very sweet jet lag story

It was 3:30 am and I was laying with my oldest daughter who woke up earlier and had just starting falling asleep. I was about to get up and go back to my bed when my middle daughter started singing quietly...Lydia was singing stories...she sang three different ones while I lay there quietly in her sister's bed.  The first few song I barely could hear, one was about her little stuffed lamby that she sleeps with and the other I couldn't really hear until the end where she would end all her stories with "this is my story for the day", repeated by 4 to 10 thank yous following and all this is sung in a sing songy voice.

The last song I was able to hear all the words. "There once was a little boy who liked to dance, who liked to dance, He put on some music and danced his heart out, his heart out. It was funny because he was dancing on a frying pan, and it had butter on it. This is my little story for today. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you." She then fell asleep. :)


This was one of the sweetest jet lag instances ever and I just had to share and record it for later!

We are heading back to Turkey in 7 days, our time here in the States with my mom and family has been invaluable and full of new memories.  

Happy Thanksgiving weekend…I hope it is full of family and tradition and very little shopping.
I look forward to blogging again when we return to our west corner.
Becky 

Austria ~ Part #1 of our Crazy Europe tour

We drove through Bulgaria, stayed a night in Serbia, arrived in Budapest, Hungry in time to eat a famous and delicious Hungarian duck dinner at 9 pm. Then we got up the next day and found ourselves in...

Looking out our bedroom window at the Farmhouse apartment in Austria. 

Austria 

Pristine, full of agriculture, 

sculptured, simple living,

natural

I loved staring out the window at the paths in the distance 

and just thinking. 

I had to put this pic in. 

The colored car Bingo that I printed out for Isaac, was a HIT!! Car Bingo

It was so fun to watch him be so intent on finding that orange or green car.

I had some fun print outs in a 3 ring binder and placed the car bingo in a protective clear sleeve and put sticker dots on the side. It was really a perfect car game.

They have no idea how privileged they are.

This is the farm house we stayed in. It had two small apartments in it. 

We are on the 2nd floor. 

The  Farm house was over 100 euro cheaper than a hotel and the emenities were right up my alley: 

A fresh herb garden

Lavender pillows

Rolling hills

Homemade yogurt and fresh cows milk

Scenery that seems meant for only kings yet God in all His glory allows all to see.

A fresh water spring with water that is crystal clear.
Goats :)
Trampoline and pool

The  fresh spring was about a 5 minute walk from where we were staying. 

The water was so amazing. I had no idea water could be so sweet and refreshing. Super fun. 

There was one other German family staying at the farmhouse as well. 

Lydia enjoyed their littlest girl a lot. 

Camping in Salzburg, Austria. 

It rained the whole time. :) 

The Gazebo from Sound of Music. :) 

We played family Travel Bingo. 

Printed them off put clear contact paper over them and gave everyone a sheet of sticker dots. 

Here we are at one of our border crossings. 

The longest we waited at a border was 2 hours, the shortest was 15 minutes. :)

I considered the word 'wealth' on this trip. We camped often and stayed in unique places in order to save our pennies. We didn't have a luxurious trip to some standards but to me, to us the beauty of Austria was luxurious and we felt wealthy every time we looked out on the green rolling hills. 

I loved Austria!  Even the little bus stops were ladden with fresh flowers.

Well I have finished the first part/post of our trip the 2nd is sure to come soon- Czech Republic. :) 

In my little west corner full of wonder for our world,

Becky

Europe, a van, three kids and a tent.

Oh the places we will go.... Yep one of the perks living here in Turkey is being so close to other countries. We have a conference we need to attend in the middle of August in Europe. So instead of flying we decided to pack up our van, three kiddos, a tent and head out.  We leave tomorrow. :)

We will have a few long days in the car. :) We are planning most of our time in Austria and Germany. We will be doing lots of camping and staying in what they call a "Farm Holiday" in Austria for a few days as well, before our conference begins.  Here are the countries we will be seeing as we drive.
Bulgaria
Serbia
Hungary
Austria
Germany
Czech Republic

Here are the ROAD TIP ideas I am working on for my kids:

diy dvd colouring travel case

Travel Bingo:

Travel Bingo- black and white

Travel Bingo

Guess who littelest pet shop:

Guess who character pages

Just click on the link and then click on the icon of the kind of character you want. 

There is my littlest petshop, silly monsters etc. It prints out two pages. 

Road trip activities for my little boy

I am finishing putting together a 3 Ring binder Activity Book for Isaac. With dot-to-dot pages, mazes and some stickers. I used contact paper on card stock and then put it all in a three ring binder so he can put the stickers on and off.

Also I love this bingo card for a boy...I really think he will get into this. 

Road trip colored car bingo-Oopsey Daisy blog

Road trip activities for my little girls

For the girls I am going to print off paper dolls. Here are a few I am looking at. 

Patty Reed paper dolls

She has a selection of little sister and big sisters. 

These are FREE. 

These are the ones I am leaning towards...and they too are FREE. 

Tipjunkie garden theme paper dolls

This is by far my fav...

Etsy Paperdoll

This adorable little thing is $3.50. You print it out and all you need is a glue stick and scissors.

I love this idea for  long trip...however I think that we will be grabbing the free dolls this time. ;)

Also we downloaded a few more Adventure in Odessey's and bought a Where's Waldo game for $2.99 on my Ipad. 

Of course there is the coloring book/pages and plenty of books for reading and a movie or two.

So there you have it my ideas for traveling across Europe with our kiddos!! 

Who knows, maybe I will post pics along the way??? or maybe I will ignore the computer the whole time. :) We shall see.

wetting your appetite for Greece

Well I have to say that Greece and a string bean budget are very much on opposing teams. However we stayed within our budget!!!!!!!!!!!

Greece is breath takingly beautiful, I had no idea how mountainous it was.  We drove almost the entire length of the country and there were very few moments where the sea or mountain or both were not in plain view.  

Ok family of 5 in Greece.  Here is where we stayed and this is what we did ~ the things we loved and the things we didn't love so much.

We stayed at Kairos Gardens the first 4 days of our trip. It only took us 4 hours to get to our first destination. Here is the website. http://www.kairos-holidays.com/index.html The owners are truly dear.  He is Greek and she is Norwegian and have had this place for 4 years. She gave us a very good deal and I know if anyone else would want to stay you could bargain too. Here are a few of the pics of the place.  It was the best spent money for the amount of space, recreation and beauty.   Plus there are several places to visit all within an hour's drive or less.  It is in a very small village next to Kavala.



The view from our front balcony. We heard the church bells ring every morning.



 

My daughter and I went on a nature walk and within 15 mintues found these five different fruits.  It was fun and fascinating to walk in the orchards and to see the beautiful pomegranate trees with their red flower blossoms.  We learned a lot that day and my daughter had a fabulous time and then took all the unripe harvested fruit and made soup. :)


The great thing was it was so close to the beach in a little town called Nea Peramos. We went everyday and it was free entertainment for the kids and we enjoyed it also. It was very clean and the beach was sandy. 

For the four days we ate all our breakfasts at the villa and took a picnic lunch every afternoon on our trips to the beach or our time in Philipi and for dinner we ate at the villas restaurant.  Truth is the food we were able to eat at the restaurant was the best we had the whole time in Greece.  Also they catered some to the needs of our kids and that was so helpful!! (Little side note here..I ate cereal every day!! Fun little dance was required for the variety of cereals that were availabe in Greece.)


 

From there we traveled to Kastraki which is surrounded by the mountains and the large rock formations of Meteora where there are monasteries carved into the rocks. 

There are lots of camping sites and they are very clean and more than sufficient to meet the needs of a family. The one we stayed at had a wonderful pool with a GREAT view. (great is very understated) Camping was more then we excepted because they charge for your car space too. :(  However it was a beautiful location and I would recommend it to anyone.
It is called Camping Vrachos. www.campingkastraki.gr  It was 25 euro a night. (50 lira or $35)



We camped two nights. It was a riot. We were surrounded by lots of Europeans from Denmark, Germany, Netherlands and Norway. We felt very comfortable to be ourselves and very safe. It was a delightful experience.

The tent only fit three of us so Dave and our little guy slept in our van.

What did I tell you... string bean budget. So many campers came so well equipped with campers and all the fun fineries of camping and then there was us, this crazy American family living in Turkey with our little tent.  LOL. The kids loved it.  One of the first things Autumn did was make us a little broom to sweep out our tent..she used a stick and a bunch of leaves and tied it with a string. :)



On our way to the pool.



Honestly Meteora's views and scenery were spectacular and absolutely breathtaking.  There are 7 monasteries that you can visit and climb up too.  We climbed up to one and toured in our car for the others.  The last one we visited was so majestic, I believe that view will be etched in my mind forever.  Taking pictures of all of it was pointless I didn’t even try. Pictures could not do it justice…especially with our camera.

   

From there we traveled to Athens. We had a day and half there. We left for Turkey the day the protests and riots started. We were so grateful for the timing. Honestly Athens was my least favorite place but we had one of our best family days there. 


We went to the Attica Athens Zoo in the morning and then the Acropolis in the afternoon and ended with a walk along a breezy boardwalk where we got the girls pictures drawn and picnik at the National Gardens. The weather was delightful and the children were amazing and very flexible that day and they had a wonderful time. We ended the night with getting lost driving on the streets of Athens where there is no such thing as a left turn. Athens was a nightmare to drive around in.

While in Athens we stayed in Centro Residence. It is a apartment complex with the individual apartments rented out like hotel rooms. It was sufficient for our family and provided free and secure parking but the neighborhood was a little shady and there were barely any windows in our apartment. However for what we wanted it suited us. We slept great there and there was plenty of room and a kitchen very adequately equipped for our needs. We barely stayed there other than to sleep. However if we wouldn’t have booked so late for our time in Athens we think we could have gotten a hotel. The Centro Residence only had someone there to let us in and show us our room or for emergencies. So we were on our own in Athens and we got lost more times then I care to say.

If you are interested in the prices we paid for each place and the cost of food and restaurants I would be more than happy to give you the info.   Traveling to Greece for us was a wonderful experience.

Our favorite place was the villa and the landscape there is so rich and full.  There was so much for our kids to do there.  Collect sea shells, play in the little park at the villa, collect eggs from the chickens, play with the huge container of legos that was provided, swim, picnic, etc. 

I know that there are several of you that read my blog that live here in Turkey. I am putting together a pdf file of our time in Greece ~ How much we paid for car insurance, gas prices,camping prices, the cost of food and restaurant prices etc. Also our likes and disikes. I hope to have it finished soon and will post it for you all.  However if you have questions before then please e-mail me.
Enjoy, my sweet friends and good night from my west corner in Turkey. It just rained and it feels nice and cozy to me tonight. ~ It is good to be home so we can rest up for another adventure.  Where should we go next?

~Becky (ok I think I will award myself for my longest post yet..ugh)

Hi from Greece on a string bean budget. :)

Just wanted to share a few brief moments of our Greece family vk.

We have been planning this trip for a year now and here it is.  We live close to the Greece border and we were able to attain Greece insurance on our van pretty easily so off we went.

We packed up a small cooler of groceries and off we went. We drove across the border from Edirne, Turkey and headed toward a small little village/town near Kavala. 

Our plan:  4 nights in a villa, 2 nights camping close to Meteora and then 2 nights in an hotel/apartment in Athens.

We are currently in the little town (village) staying at this villa that is family owned. They live downstairs and they rent the entire upstairs out. There is 3 bedrooms, two bathrooms. They also have a little restaurant and two other studio villas on their property. Last night we ate at their restaurant Mythos and WOW the food was amazing!  The villa itself is perfect for families.  I look forward to sharing more and how we have managed to take this trip on a string bean budget :) when we return, until then here are some pics of our first leg of our vk/adventure. 

This is the little restaurant that is on the same property as the Villa  it is open only to their guests. 
It is only outside seating. They even had a bucket of toys for the kids while we waited for the food.

We have feta cheese inTurkey but this was differnt and they made this feta and pepper chees dip that was wonderful.
The other salad shown is a Greek salad. :)

This is an eggplant dish.  It was very tasty. 
David had a Grilled pork chop..of course since we can't get pork in Turkey.
David and I both are both pretty curious about the differences in Turkish and Greek cusine.

The beach is a ten minute drive from where we are staying. 
The views here are full of vineyards and mountains and olive trees.  It is a beautful place. The villa is great and I don't have to clean it when I leave.  (oh the perks to a mommy. :))

Ok my dear blogger freinds off I go, we are going to explore some large caves  this afternoon. :)Thank you for following along, I feel honored to have you with me on this journey.
 Let's see how we do on keeping to our budget on this trip..I'll see you in a week and let you know. :)
~Becky