Greek Food Fest

And after much delay, I have returned to bring you pictures and videos from the Greek Food Fest at the local Orthodox church the fourth weekend in May.

While I do look forward to the yummy gyros, lamb, souvlaki k-bobs, and baklava, the dancing entertainment is probably the highlight of this festival for our family. The Micro (pronounced "mee-crow") Greek dancers were adorable:

Bella danced along with the Greek circle-dances:

Gabi especially liked the Dabkeh (Middle Eastern) dancers (which she called the "duckie dancers"). I don't think I took a still photo of the Dabkeh dancers, but you can see a short clip at the beginning of the first video below. Here she posed with a young Indian dancer:

Of course, we loved the Irish dancing!

Even Katarina enjoyed the costumes, music, and dancing:

The kids wanted to go back all three hot days to see more dancing! They were hoping to get to dance in the free style dance at the end of the third day, but the official dancers were too exhausted to lead the free style and concluded early.

For your enjoyment, here are a few videos of the dancing that we saw. The first is a compilation of various Greek, Indian, and Middle-Eastern (Turkish, etc.) dances. I have more footage of these dances, but for some reason I put this together before copying all the clips from the new video camera.



The second video is a soft-shoe Irish dance, and the final one is a hard-shoe Irish dance.

Jewish Food Fest

I love this picture of my baby holding her head up!

After church on May 16th, we headed downtown to the River Market for the Jewish Food Fest. I ate a yummy kabob lunch, plus a bagel, and strudel for dessert. We bought some hamentashen from the bakery to bring home.

We checked out the Jewish religious items on display and shopped at the Jewish artist tent.

The girls danced to some Jewish music. The lyrics (when in English) were familiar since they were generally taken from the Psalms.

We enjoyed a short afternoon before the heat sapped the girls' energy.

Territorial Fair

On May 8th, the Historic Arkansas Museum held their annual Territorial Fair to commemorate when Arkansas became a US territory. The kids had a blast learning about pioneer life and dancing with Daddy. We encountered a balloon artist on our way from the parking lot to the museum grounds, which was exciting even though it didn't fit with the pioneer theme.

We listened to music played on instruments from the early 1800s, including a gourd banjo.

The girls played with old-time toys, including these stilts and a "running man" toy.

Gabi had a chance to grind some corn kernels into flour, and nearby museum volunteers in period costume were baking hand-rolled biscuits in dutch ovens and hand-churning butter, which we tasted - Yum! We also saw women spinning cotton into thread and weaving.

All the children participated in a Maypole dance and several other dances.

Gabi loved being Daddy's partner, especially when it came their turn to sashay down the middle of the two lines.