We got back to Kazakhstan from our trip to Utah at the end of June which meant that we had most of the summer here. It was the first time that we spent most of the summer in Astana. We usually would have a trip to Utah and a trip to somewhere else like Russia, but this time we just stayed in Astana. This meant we had to occupy our time with something fun and productive. So, here are some pictures showing what we did this summer after we got back from America.
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| We celebrated 4th of July by going to McDonalds at the Mall across the street. |
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| Our twins put on a fashion show which all of a sudden gave me a scary thought: they are growing up way too fast! |
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| Our summer in Astana was really hot this year but most people were gone on vacations, so it felt like our kids were the only kids on campus. To get them to go outside every day we decided to get them skateboards (they actually paid for half with their own money). It was a great thing but we ran into unexpected problem: when they would skateboard on campus, the guards would often run after them telling them that it is not safe! Really?! |
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| Yuki has been true to herself and enjoyed all of the attention she could get from her fan-club which became even bigger with the new group of students that arrived in August. |
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| We made an outing one Friday night out to the Expo site to see the Musical Fountains. |
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| The fountains were neat but we have seen bigger ones in our life (we did live in Las Vegas after all!) |
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| The neat thing about having the biggest mall in Central Asia just across the street from us is that quite often they do different exhibitions there on weekends. This one was a quilting exhibition (I noticed that most of the quilts were done by Russian artists, it must be not a Kazakh thing) |
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| This one was one of my favorite quilts - an entrance hall in the Opera and Ballet Theater here in Astana. |
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| This summer I decided that I needed a new hobby for myself and decided to try cross-stitching. This was my very first project. I think they turned out cute! |
This summer I had a brilliant idea to challenge all of our kids to really learn cooking, so for a couple of months in the summer each girl took a day of a week (every week for almost two months) when she would be cooking a family dinner. They were to come up with their own menu and do all of the cooking only asking me for an advice when needed. This challenge turned out AWESOME! Each one of our girls took this challenge to heart and cooked extraordinary dinners. Sometimes they even came up with new recipes that were exceptionally tasty! They are much better cooks right now than I was going into college! After this experience we decided to work on a family cookbook which will have all of our favorite recipes and which we are planning to publish before our first daughter goes to college.
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| Sophie is cooking |
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| Lexa is making biscuits |
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| Lina is making garlic toasts for her chicken-n-dumpling soup. |
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| I do not have a good picture of Nika cooking this summer but here is one of her specialties - beignets. It is definitely going into our family cookbook! |
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| Once other American families from our church came back from their vacations, we had a fun family Taco Night together with some games that quickly became a hit! Here is Spencer going against Nika trying to shake out the most beans from his cup with a little hole. |
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| This summer we had to say good-bye to some of our dear friends. Here we are with the young volunteers from our branch, sisters Beagly and Sever who both left to serve in other cities in Russia and Kazakhstan. |
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| And here we are saying good-bye to one of our favorite couples, the Adairs who moved to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to open a humanitarian services office. |
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| At the beginning of September we had a nice development on campus - they brought a mini bazaar to us with all of the fresh fruits and vegetables! I was in heaven! These melons are my favorite! |
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| School started in the middle of August and with that began a new basketball season for Spencer. As our tradition, we had our basketball team over for brunch one Saturday in September. Some of the basketball girls were in America this summer on their work-n-travel visa, and were very excited to see some of the foods they came to love while in America. |
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| And now it is fall! |
