Family Holidays 2018

Half of this year is over but I still had a lot of pictures from 2018 that I wanted to share first, so the next couple of posts will be a sort of collage of things and activities we had going at the end of last year. 

Halloween was just as exciting this year as it was in the years to pass. I do not know what it is about kids, monsters, and candy but ... I love this holiday. This year the kids went all out in decorating our front door (in our apartment building, people who want to receive trick-or-treaters have to put some sort of Halloween decoration on their door). This is our front door from the outside.

Think twice before ringing our door bell!!!

And here is our front door from the inside. So, if you did dare to come in... you might never come out!

 This year the twins invited two of their friends, April and Angelina, to join them for trick-or-treating in our apartment complex. I planned a few "mostreous" snacks before they would go out to scare the poor inhabitants of our building. Thank you, Pinterest, for some great ideas!

Our scary crew! Yuki wanted to join them but didn't have any costume to wear, so she had to stay home and enjoy the festivities from the inside.

Counting their loot!

Judging by the amount of candy, Lina was the first one to hit every apartment in the building!

 Our next big family holiday was Thanksgiving but here in Kazakhstan we celebrate it on a small scale. Since it is not a Kazakh holiday, Spencer has to work every Thanksgiving but since we homeschool, we have this day off. To find a whole turkey is near to impossible here, and then it costs about $50 but we still manage to get one almost every year. This is our traditional Thanksgiving dinner - roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, 24-hour salad (Spencer's grandma's recipe), coleslaw, and homemade rolls. Yumm!

Winter comes in early here; usually we would have some snow by the first week in October. I love winter, I love all the snow, and cold, and sweaters I can wear, and all the comfort food that comes with winter season. But most of all I love the family holidays!

I snapped this picture on our campus during one of our evening walks with Yuki. To some it might be just an ordinary tree but to me it is magical!

Ahh, ... snow, pine tree, and my beautiful daughter!

Since we moved here, babushka came to visit us every winter (and most of summers). Babushka means a lot of hugs and kisses as well as tons of candy, pancakes, cheese bread, and pelmeni and varenniki (Russian and Ukrainian dumplings). Here the girls and she are making a supply of pelmeni and varenniki for the winter.

 
We usually spend our Christmas and New Year in Kazakhstan. Only once we went to America during the winter holidays. It is usually very quite on campus because all of the students and faculty go home for the holidays. It is very ... peaceful. We love it!

Our Christmas Tree on New Year's Eve (here the biggest holiday of the year with all of the presents and festivities is New Year's Celebration; we do celebrate Christmas but all of the presents come on New Year). That peanut butter jar is for Lina who is a true peanut butter lover!

Opening presents on New Year's morning.

One of our beloved New Year's traditions is that we have cake for breakfast!

Kids are working on their craft kits that they got for New Year.

Sophie and Lina are working on their project - picture by numbers done with beads.

Utah Trip Christmas 2017 - Part 6 - Coming Home

We loved our Christmas in Utah and had a lot of fun with our family, immediate and extended! But we also like coming home, though to be fair, some of us would have loved staying longer. Well, that is what summer breaks are for!

The day before we were flying back to Kazakhstan, we had a visit from Max and Danielle (Max is our kids' second cousin) during which we realized that we had three mothers of twins under one roof: Oma's twin boys are a little over 40 now, my twin girls are almost 10 years old, and Danielle is pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl!

Mothers of twins!

On Sunday, December 31st we woke up early to catch a flight to San Francisco, and then to Frankfurt, Germany and Astana, Kazakhstan. We were wondering where exactly we will be when the clock strikes 12 and rings the New Year in. I think we were somewhere over Greenland but I am not sure because most people were asleep on the plane, and the captain wasn't going to get the party going. The benefit of flying internationally over the New Year is that the flights are half empty. Some of our kids had a chance to spread out, and the flight to Astana was almost completely empty (maybe around 20-25 passengers), so each one of us took a whole row! Nice!

Lina at the Salt Lake City Airport, ready (or not) to embark on the long journey.

This is what happens when you are bothering your mother, and your mother just happened to have a very cool phone that she knows how to use to her advantage

At the San Francisco Airport we decided to celebrate New Years with some yummy Vietnamese food. We are so looking forward to going to Vietnam for our spring break!

Frankfurt Airport was so empty!

Flying to Astana

While flying over New Years was quiet pleasant, arriving to Astana on the night of the 1st of January was not. No taxis! No buses! Everybody was celebrating! We did manage to finally find two taxis that charged us double the price. Tired but happy we arrived at our home, sweet home! Back to our not so regular lives!

Winter Holidays 2016

New Year has come and gone, and January is almost over! Where does the time go? Please, let me know if you find the answer! Time. Time is an interesting concept. I hope one day I can have some understanding of it, for now I am just grateful we have time together as a family wherever we are, wherever we live. And now we live in Kazakhstan!

Our winter holidays were calm and crazy at the same time. Most importantly we had time together as a family. Christmas was crazy because of all of the concerts and shows kids had to participate in on that day, so we decided to have our Christmas Eve tradition on Monday, December 26. Spencer stayed home from work, and we all spent the day together relaxing and playing Monopoly. We usually have Russian pelmeni (meat filled dumplings) for our Christmas Eve dinner, and then we talk about the birth of Christ and sing Christmas songs. This year we added a music talent show since we love music so much in our family and all four girls play some music instruments. We had a lot of fun!

Decorating our apartment for Christmas

Making paper snowflakes to hang on our ceiling.

Sophie and Lexa are playing duet during our Christmas Eve music show.

Nika and Lina are performing a song

We do all of the presents on New Year because it is when Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) delivers presents to the kids in this part of the world and because in the past couple of years our kids always had to go to school on Christmas anyway. It actually works out quite nicely. We usually spend the day playing games, cooking, making cookies for Ded Moroz (just like Santa, he also has a sweet tooth!), have our big feast and then have a “moviethon” when we watch Christmas movies both in Russian and English as long as we can stay up with a little break at midnight when we go outside and light sparkles to meet the New Year. This year the New Year Day was on Sunday and so we didn't stay up too late because we had to go to church the very next morning.  The time we spend together is precious and I hope the kids will remember it when they are out of our nest and on their own.

This year we had turkey for New Year's dinner. Turkeys are very hard to find here and when you do find one, it usually costs a fortune! We never had a full roasted turkey even on Thanksgiving here but I was able to find one right before New Years. This baby cost us $50 but it was totally worth it!

Our little Christmas tree after the kids have gone to bed.

New Years morning - always a happy time!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! And may thins year you will have a gift of time, time with your loved ones, time with your family!
These candles were a present to Nika.  She made them out of a kit.

Nauryz 2016

The last three day all Kazakh people are celebration Nauryz (Kazakh new year). Last year I wrote a post about it here. We were going to Thailand then. This year we are going to Sri Lanka. I guess we are making it a tradition! :)

On Monday we got together with some friends and went to aul (ethnic village that was set up specifically for the celebration of Nauryz just down the road from Nazarbayev University). It was a sunny day, but was only 32F. The main celebration was happening the next day but we had packing to do for our trip, so we opted for the earlier time.

We met our friends and went into the village. We were surprised with all of the security around, we had to go through a check point and a body search. There were a lot of police around the perimeter of the village and inside. We didn't think much of it. We looked around the village. There were vendors selling different crafts and art. There were yurts set up as little dining places. There was a big outdoor stage with a lot of different performers. There was a wrestling rink, and also places where kids could play a tug-of-war games. There were also traditional Kazakh swings.

Lots of people dressed in the national costumes.

More costumes

Some of our crew

Lina and Lexa

Kazakh wrestling match

Weight lifting competition

Kazakh swings

Our kids really wanted to get on one of those, so we stood around waiting for our turn. Apparently there is no line, the kids just stay around the swing set and as soon as the swing stops, they rush to it trying to be the first one to jump on, cutting each other off and even wrestling. Anyway, our kids were way too polite to do that, so finally we, the parents just had to take a matter into our own hands.

Some of our kids finally managed to get on the swing.

While on the swings, Taraz (the daughter of one of our friends) was up in the air and yelled that she thinks that someone famous is coming. When she was up again the next time, she frantically screamed: “It's the President!”. 

Here is Taraz up in the air when she spoted the President!

We looked around and saw a huge crowd moving just 20 feet from us. It turns out

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of the country was visiting the village! The crowd was so big, so we couldn't see him but I managed to snap a photo of him by lifting up my camera as high as I could.

Can you spot the President? He is the white haired guy you can see right off the left shoulder of the girl dressed on the left who is dressed in white.

These girls really had a good view!

He went into the golden yurt, so we decided to stick around to see him when he will be leaving. We waited, and waited, and waited. The kids were getting restless. I just knew that as soon as we left our spot, he would come out. So we waited, and waited, and waited again. Finally we decided to go eat some food, and as soon as we left, he came out from the yurt. We missed him once again. After that the village emptied until only half as many people were there. I was wondering if the people came there just to see the president, or if half of the people in the village were the security agents, because we did spot quite a few of them running around in normal clothes but with ear pieces in their ears.

The President went into that second yurt from the right. 

Loaded on cotton candy

Overall we had a good time, but now we are ready to go to a sunny and warm Sri Lanka for a week to thaw! We love Kazakhstan but the winter is a bit too long for my liking!

Happy bunch!

New Year 2016

It is hard to believe that it is already 2016 and that it is our second winter here in Kazakhstan. Everything is so quiet here on campus: students are gone for the holidays, and most of the professors and their families are also gone home. We are just about the only ones left here.

We spent New Years at home celebrating it the Russian style: having a big feast, watching Russian classic New Year's movies and lighting up some sparklers at midnight. At midnight the whole city erupted in fireworks but this year we couldn't see much because the built two new buildings that obstruct our view of the city. We did have a very nice celebration with my mom, and we also called Spencer's mom to wish her a Happy New Year in America.

Girls are making peppermint sugar cookies for Ded Moroz on New Year's Eve

New Year's Feast

 In the morning the kids didn't get up until 7:30 am or so and were so polite that they patiently waited for another 30 minutes to come and wake us up. 

They found the presents!

Even the dogs got presents!

Lina was very excited to receive her own magic set

Nika is opening her presents

Lexa is trying to figure out what she is getting

Babushka is happy with her sweater

Spencer got a present from his mom.

Everybody was happy with the presents, and the day was spent playing with the new toys and watching more movies. It was nice to just stay home because outside was pretty cold!

Spencer is helping Sophie to put together her Lego race car

And now testing them out in the hallways right outside of our apartment.