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 3 - Cousin Time

Whenever we are in Utah, it is time for family reunions. This time wasn’t an exception either. The reunion was held in the basement of Zions Bank in Payson, and we had a lot of fun. First of all a couple of days before the party the girls helped Oma to bake a lot of cookies for the reunion. It is our Christmas family tradition to bake candy cane sugar cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve, so we kind of combined it with the necessity to feed the crowds during the family party. 

The girls in full action.

Oma didn't have any red coloring, so the girls opted for purple.

 The party started with making Christmas cards for the disabled veterans (we delivered those together with Mican’s family on Christmas Eve), and then continued with food and entertainment provided by the kids.

All gathered for the talent show.

Karlie playing Silent Night

Samuel performing his piece.

Luke was doing a stand-up comedy! He was really funny! His brother Liam played the violin but he didn't want to be seen, so I respected his wishes and didn't take a picture of him.

Our crew gave the same concert they gave earlier in the week for the 4th graders,

Romance is in the making! Tess doesn't know yet that a little less than a month later she will be engaged to Nate!

The next day most of us came to Oma’s house after church to play games, watch a movie and just visit. The cousins had a blast as always, and so did we. The next day was Christmas, and everybody was very excited!

Lunch after church with the cousins

Learning to play a new game.

10 of the 18 cousins.

To be continued...

Utah Trip Christmas 2017 Part 2 - Temple Square and Utah Jazz

What Spencer wanted for Christmas this year was to go see Utah Jazz play. He got his wish! But since the girls and I are also Jazz fans, we made sure his Christmas present included our tickets! That’s how we roll! The game we picked was Utah Jazz vs. San Antonio Spurs on December 21^st.

Since the arena where Jazz plays is just a couple of blocks away from the Temple Square, we decided to go there first to look at the Christmas lights. It was majestic! We had a wonderful time, and as a bonus we ran into our friend Svetlana who is serving a mission there.

With Svetlana (in the blue hat) and her companion Sister Deighton, who happened to be the best friend of Sister Dixon who is serving here in Kazakhstan.

We had a question that we needed to ask Family History workers, so we went to the Family History Center. While we were getting our answers,  the kids spent 30 minutes in this awesome interactive room learning about the origins of their names and other great things.

Here is Nika using an app that takes a picture of your face and tries to figure out your what nationality you belong. It put her in the Russian costume! Ha!

An outdoor Nativity

Salt Lake Temple at night.

Looking into the Reflecting Pool.

So magical!

Lina

Lexa

Nika

Sophie

Papa with the girls.

After visiting the Temple Square, we wanted to go eat at the mall across the street but their food court was just crazy with all of the Christmas shoppers, Jazz goers, and the like, so we decided to go eat at the arena. That one decision cost us a lot of money but fun was had by all! Since we showed up a whole hour before the game, Spencer took us to the gift shop just for fun. A couple of hundred dollars later we came out as fierce Jazz fans! Spurs, beware!!! We decided to eat at Papa John’s pizza which was another $90. It’s a good thing we don’t do this very often, otherwise we would have gone bankrupt. We found our seats, and the game began! It was a very intense game (especially because we were sitting right next to a group of Spurs fans) until about the last 6 minutes of the game when it became obvious that Jazz would win! The victory was sweet and a confirmation to me that we didn’t waste our money earlier in the night. As a bonus, we also got free Chick Fillet sandwiches the next day because one of the Spurs players missed both of his free throws in the 4^th quarter. I have never heard so much noise made by excited fans when it happened! It was an awesome game to witness in person!

Spencer wanted a picture in front of the Jazz Note. 

Armored in our Jazz attire, let the battle begin! 

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After witnessing this beginning, I am a true believer that every show should start with fire! Or at least with a cake and ice cream!

Here are two favorite players: Donovan Mitchell (looking up) and Rudy Gobert in his fancy maroon suit. Both of them had injuries and weren't playing. 

Fan zone in action!

The game is getting too intense! Only biting of ones fingers can help to ease the growing anxiety. 

Will he make the basket?

And of course our Jazz Bear is the best!!!

To be continued...