Nicaea

I love American holiday weekends. They give us time to explore. Over the recent long weekend we had we headed to Nicaea (of Nicaean Creed fame), aka modern day Iznik (famous in it's own rite for Iznik tile). Turkey is amazing. There is so much history here, it is really hard to comprehend.

The drive there was actually quite beautiful, and if I didn't think too hard it was almost as if we were driving up the canyon in Colorado or Utah back home. It was much more mountainous than I had thought. It was pretty foggy that day, so this was the best shot I got. Still, a wonderful break from the hustle and bustle of the city though.

The area is also known for it's olive trees. We drove along a small mountain road that had awesome vineyards (orchards?) as far as the eye could see. They were lovely.

Some older trees

One of my favorite things about the trip was the old city walls. They are still essentially the boundary for the city (town) that they were when they were built in 300 BC by the Greek Lysimachus. They were frequently repaired by the Byzantines, and later the Ottomans so you can see some of their handiwork as well. Much of the original though is intact.

There were 3 gates that were the only entrances into the ancient city. The walls have since been pierced in some spots for new roads, but in large part the walls are still in amazing condition!

A view looking down along the wall to give you an idea of how well they are still in tact.

Nicaea was the location for the first Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church, under the Emperor Constantine in 325 AD. This was when they produced the Nicaean Creed, in which the nature of the Trinity was addressed. The second council was also held here in 787 AD to discuss the issue of iconography and the Christian Church.

Ronan in front of the Archeology Museum.

This building was built in 1388 as a hospice for wandering dervishes.

Speaking of Ronan...he was not a fan of going inside.

Every time we got close, and believe me-we tried for a good 15 minutes to convince him to go in- he refused. I think all the coffins in the yard scared him. Oh well, it was understandable; so we instead took a walk around the perimeter and saw what we could.

Lucky for us, that is where most of the stuff was. Just out in the courtyard, so we could still see a lot.

How's your Greek? Turns out, my Greek is not great!

It is so crazy that there are these villages with so many ancient artifacts just lying around; they just decide to line them up next to each other best they can! ha. if only we all had stuff like this in our yards. Those were some BIG pots too. I wonder what they used them for?

Some empty sarcophagi- long ago raided. Beautifully carved though.

Noah and Miles in front of the "Green Mosque" that Iznik is famous for. It's minaret has the pretty green tiles on it.

Another shot of the Green Mosque.

Iznik is THE place for beautiful tile production in Turkey.

This is where all of the beautiful tiles in all the palaces and mosques in Istanbul came from. They are masters of the art here.

It is a very Turkish thing to have framed tiles for your house, to give as gifts, etc. They also do beautiful bowls, plates, pomegranates, tea sets, etc. in the same style and designs. Iznik is even more famous for their Quartz tile. They can be spendy in the Grand Bazaar, but here we had a fantastic time shopping at all the little shops. We got fantastic deals, getting it straight from the source- and we loved getting to watch them actually hand painting the items.

Some of our treasures for the day! We got everything for about 1/3 the price that we probably would have paid here in Istanbul! We think we need to go back before we leave and get some more! I was especially excited about my little olive tree tile. It was an original design by this cute little old man that we got some of the things from his shop. He was very proud of it, and I loved the colors and the reflection on all of the olive trees in the area. Now we just have to take a trip to the framer soon!

To end our journey we enjoyed seeing this smiley sheppard and his flock crossing the freeway merge. Complete with a staff and a sheep dog! He thought it was funny I think that I was taking pictures of him.

This was just coming off of the mountain road to merge onto the main freeway, so still very much in the mountainous part of our drive. It was awesome to see. Turkey never fails to deliver on being where East meets West and Old meets New.

We had a great time, and hope we can make it back again!

Limonata-A night out with my Main Squeeze

So for Valentine's Day, Noah was a fantastic hubby and took me out to Limonata. It was a place I had been wanting to go for a while. He is the best! This place is a super fun and funky restaurant that specializes in different awesome Lemonades! It was the perfect place to go for V-Day as well because it is all decked out in bright pinks, and red decor! It was such a fun night, and a well deserved night out!

Here is a peek of the menu in Turkish for those of you who have asked for a sample-

also, did I not tell you about the colors?! How fun, and perfect for Valentine's day. Totally puts you in the spirit of things!

Now, Noah got a Strawberry Cinnamon Lemonade (you can see the cinnamon floating on the top). It was really good, but I think we both liked mine even better...

I got the Cheesecake Lemonade!

Yes, that's right. and it was DELICIOUS.

Next time I think I will try the Cupcake lemonade. Oh the choices!

The food was also tasty, including some incredible red pepper Humus that we both agreed was one of our new favorites. However, the one last main draw was the incredible dessert bar at the back!! I had to take a picture (although, the lighting made it hard to get a good one). It was like Willy Wonka's! There were like 10 different kinds of cheesecakes, and yes. Those are giant pink Meringues! It was so cool.

In the end though, Noah settled on this tasty apple-berry tart and I got this "brownie lollipop"! yup. That's a chocolate dipped brownie with sprinkles on a stick! Hmm. I think maybe this year was all about yummy treats. Maybe next year we should have a Vegetable themed V-day to compensate for this years deliciousness!

In any case. We had a wonderful night out, and I loved getting to spend some quality alone time with my husband and best friend! Happy Valentine's Day Sweetie! I love you more everyday. Thank you for always treating me like a queen (and for treating me to lots of treats too:)!

Heavenly

Just had to give a special shout out to our delicious Valentine's Day dessert. We went on our date night the day after V-Day, but to celebrate day of we enjoyed this AMAZING treat from our favorite local Gelato shop. They opened up this last summer, and everything always tastes SO YUMMY! The Gelato chef is straight from Italy, and everything is super fresh! For Valentine's Day they were selling these cool little "ice cream cakes". This is Cheesecake gelato with bits of bitter chocolate mixed in, topped with Pomegranate, chocolate and cinnamon. MMMM. We will definitely be missing this place when we move! Thanks for making our Valentine's Day special Mua!

Annual Valentine's Breakfast

Happy Hearts Day!!

We LOVE Valentine's Day at our house.

We had our annual Valentine's Breakfast, and it was a huge hit as usual!

I decided to go with a red/turquoise/brown theme this year for the decor.

I think it turned out pretty cute!
above: the table before the treats

below: the table after cards and treats were added

We always do homemade Valentines, and this year instead of cards for the two older boys I

re-used these little bins (yummy fruit leather comes in them here). I filled them with M &M's and put a hidden Valentine message on the bottom.
Miles just got a regular card. Sorry buddy. No M&M's for you.

Now, normally we do pink heart pancakes, bacon, etc. This year because of all the snow though, the regular shipments to our little American store got all messed up. Thus meaning we were out of bacon (since they don't sell pork here) and we had just barely run out of syrup. My kids won't eat pancakes without it. So what to do? Instead we settled on some very festive Krispy Kremes! The kids were in heaven! They have these new "glamour glazed" ones here (do they have them in the States too?). Anyway, they are super sparkly and hot pink!

So yes, this morning before school Porter had a sugar cookie, M &M's, and a doughnut! Straight sugar for breakfast! Mom of the Year award right here! He was so excited that apparently he told everyone at school that he got to eat all sugar for breakfast. Nice. I asked him if he made sure to tell them it was a special occasion. He said he did. Hopefully he actually did. Silly boy.
I sure love all my little Valentines!

You are all the loves of my life!

Miles on his first Valentine's Day-

Not quite sure about the whole thing, I guess it was 6:00am.

He warmed up to the idea after he got to play with tissue paper from a gift bag!

Happy Valentine's Day boys!

Snow Much Fun x 9

If you've been reading the news lately, there is a chance you have heard about the record cold snap that has recently hit Europe. Although we haven't gotten the worst of it, we've had a doozy of a winter as far as Istanbul is concerned. LOTS more snow than they are used to, and the recorded coldest day in the last 33 years. I must say it has been beautiful. For nearly a full week straight it was as if we were living in a snowglobe.

Just beautiful, constant, softly falling snow.

The kids benefitted as well, with 9 snow days in the last few weeks!

So, we of course had to do a little playtime

Just incase you were wondering, on this particular day Ronan did not want to come outside-he had had enough earlier at preschool I guess! (I wasn't just playing favorites:) That is why it is only Porter in the pics-

We FINALLY made this little snowman! The snow was SO soft and powdery that we could barely get this little guy put together! He was pretty cute though when we were done.

We love our winter weather, and were thrilled that we didn't miss the only snowfall of the year!

(it snowed on Christmas Eve, when were back in the States)

In Stitches-but he was NOT laughing

So we took another trip to the ER. We are getting to be good buddies. Mark it down for us in Turkey: one broken nose, one broken arm, and now 1 set of stitches at 4am! Yes, I guess my boys can even hurt themselves while sleeping!

Ronan climbed into our bed the other night. He did a huge roll apparently and flung himself right out of bed! His bed has one of those nice side bar things on it, and has no bedside table next to it. Unfortunately, our does. He hit his forehead pretty good, and was not happy to be woken up that way! We knew it would need stitches, and Noah hustled him to the ER.

It took 4 doctors to hold him down!

Eventually they got him all cleaned up though. Poor little guy.

Here he is returning at 5 something am. Not a happy camper.

Here is a nice shot of what was underneath the bandage.

They told us to come back after 5 days to check, but it still needed a bit of time. He was not happy here either. Are we sensing a pattern?

Yup, give it a few more days I think!

They did one of those "inside" cosmetic stitches. So hopefully the scar won't be too bad.

And now, we did finally get them taken out. 3 people needed to hold him down for removal.

Unfortunately I didn't bring the camera for the final time. But let me assure you, it looks MUCH better. Still a good scab on it, but soon enough he will just have a nice little scar.

Chicks dig scars right?!