Tonight, St. Basil the Great Greek Orthodox Church had their 13th annual Greek Festival.  The festival runs Thursday through Sunday but on Thursday the admission was free.  I thought it would be fun and a sort of "intro" into some new world history/geography that we'll be starting soon.  Xavier liked the "free" part so we loaded up the two youngest and headed off.

Of course when we got there, we had to eat!  The smells were wonderful! The menu sounded yummy!  Even my picky eaters were game to try these new foods....I was amazed!  We opted for some "samplers"....The Pastichio (we made our first goof and asked for the Pistachio ) plate had several great things to try, including a Greek salad (MY FAV), Pastichio (like a Greek lasagna), Spanakopita (spinach and cheese filled pastry), Tiropita (cheese filled pastry), Keftedes (Greek meatballs), Dolmathes (grape leaves stuffed with a meat and rice filling), Greek olives and a dinner roll. Xavier's favorite was the Pastichio and the Souvlaki (Charbroiled, seasoned, marinated tenderloin beef cubes on a stick with pita bread).  The boys opted for pizza but did try some of the different foods.  I had some red Greek wine and a OPArita (an interesting "greek" margarita which had something like anise or licorice added to it....quite an interesting flavor......

Then we had the DESSERT sampler!!!  It was called a Pastry Box and had 6 different desserts in it.  We had Baklava (nuts, butter, and spices in layers of fillo topped with a honey mixture...yum), Finikia (home made spice cookie), Kataifi (shredded fillo with nuts and honey...Cameron's FAV), Flogeres (Baklava drizzled with chocolate...MY FAV....omg that was SO good!), Amigdaloto(almond cookie), and Kourambiethes (butter cookie with toasted almonds and coated...about 1/2 inch thick with powdered sugar!...Isaac's FAV)....

The boys had fun in the children's zone playing on all the "bouncy" things.  I looked through the bookshop...it was quite interesting.  Unfortunately, we missed the tour of the church......., but we'll know to look for it next time.  The music was awesome...the kids couldn't keep still and we had fun trying to guess the different instruments that we heard in the music.  Then they had a children's dance group perform some Russian and Greek traditional dances.  Cameron was captivated and Isaac had so much fun dancing!  The MC came on in between dances to give some announcements he asked for some cheers.....in Greek you cheer by saying OPA!  So we OPA'd our hearts out....except for our little Texan...Isaac refused to say OPA!  He responded everytime "EEE-HAW".....we were all laughing....he was so adamant about it!

The crowds were starting to thicken and we didn't have Isaac in a stroller so we decided it was time to head out.  We stopped in the gift shop for some souveniers from our "trip".  We got a small Greek flag and some playing cards with Greek sites on them.  Cameron got a wooden bracelet with pictures of the saints on it like Alex usually wears.  It sparked lots of discussion on the differences and similarities of our two religions....Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox.....all good stuff

I leave you with this, if you live in an area where there are lots of different  ethnic groups (Houston is truly a melting pot....so full of different nationalities), find their festivals and attend them...they make for great field trips and make history and geography come alive.....why just this weekend very close to us is the Greek Festival and the Celtic Games and Festival!  How cool is that?!?

OPA!