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.

Our Changing Neighborhood: The opening of Mega Silkway

When we moved into our apartment on the campus at Nazarbayev University 2.5 years ago, we were living in the middle of nowhere.  The nearest stores were downtown, or at least four bus stops and a long walk. However, the plan was to build up around the university - and one of the main building projects is the expo plaza which is being built directly to the East of campus.

March 2015: nothing is out there except a bunch of cranes

East of NU campus. Nothing is out there either!

In addition to the expo, there is a great deal of other development going on - including large numbers of apartment buildings, and a new mall.  The new Mall is a "Mega" a chain mall that has a number of locations in Kazakhstan.  This mall is called the Mega Silkway and is the largest retail establishment in Central Asia.  It is huge.

March 2016 - the skeleton of the new Mega Mall

And a bunch of apartment buildings growing like mushrooms after rain.

What is amazing, is that the entire building has been built since we arrived.  In fact, the fencing was around the project when we arrived, but there was no visible construction until we returned from our first leave home in July 2015.

May 2016 - it is not just a skeleton anymore!

And the apartment buildings look like they are almost ready!

The ball in the center of the picture is the main Expo building.

The outside of the building has been looking done since late fall (October or so) and we heard a number of rumors about when the mall would open.  One rumor was that it would open in December, but that date came and went [1].  The last few weeks, activity has been even higher.  We heard another rumor that it would open on 6 March, and Yulia looked it up online and found that it would have its technical opening on 6 March with a Grand opening around 23 March.

February 2017 - the first fence came down.

And a week later the second fence came down. The funny thing is that they planted the trees upfront before they even leveled the ground!

Monday I had a faculty meeting, and afterward, we walked across the street to see the mall.  The food court was still mostly not open, but we bought some Asian food from a little place - one of three open fast food places.  I called Yulia and she couldn't wait to see it, so we walked over with the twins and met Nika and Lina on their way home from guitar lessons.  One of the features is a trampoline park that also has climbing walls and other activities.  We signed the kids up to jump for half an hour.  (it's about $6.00 for half an hour - so pricey here - but the kids had a great time and were exhausted.  The owner and founder is an American kid (about 30 or so) who grew up in one of the cities in the West.  His dad worked for an oil company there.

March 6 2017 - the Mall is opened to public!

The kids had a blast at Kango. The guys in yellow are professional gymnasts and circus acrobats working on the Kango team.

Lexa is trying the rings

The guys from the team were showing to our kids how to do some tricks.

Rock climbing area

Food court: really bright and happy!

Love these fountains. They change color every 20 seconds or so.

Kids relaxing in "flower" chairs

Assalting a poor lego man outside of their favorite store in town.

At the end of the day they got pin wheels which is a Mega's logo.

The best thing about the technical opening is that the grocery store - Ramstor, a Turkish chain - was opened.  Now we have a grocery store (besides our little mini-market on campus) that is within walking distance, which is tremendous.

Wednesday was the 8th of March - International Women's Day - and so school was out.  I worked in the morning and Yulia gave the kids a light day of school, and then we went back to the mall.  We bought the kids tickets to see the movie "Sing!" and some slushies to each while they watched.  Yulia and I ate lunch to celebrate the day and our anniversary (March 12th).  We ate at the Korea House Restaurant.  It is pricier than most places here, but the food we had was excellent and the atmosphere was amazing.

While the kids are at the movies, we are on a date at the Korean House

We also bought tickets to the Expo for August when we are back from our vacation in Utah and my Mom and Yulia's mom will be here visiting.

The main Expo building, view from Mega Mall

The mall is still not fully functional, but it is mostly functional, and a tremendous boost to our quality of life.  We are no longer at the edge of nowhere.  Soon we will be in the middle of everything.

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[1] There was a fun article in the local news in December that the Mall was "completely launched" in December. We laughed because they had put up vinyl signs for the main stores on the main sign for a few days and then they had disappeared.  Basically they put together a photo op in December and called it "fully launched."  It only took another 3 months to get it partially off the ground.  By May all of the tenants should be online.

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.

Astana Days

We returned to Astana from our vacation in Utah (which we still need to do a lot of writing about) at the end of June.  July 6 is President Nazarbayev's birthday, and it is also a holiday (The Day of the Capital).  We missed the celebration last year because we were in the US.  We decided to go to the festivities that were held near Khan Shatyr (the giant tent mall that is one of the famous landmarks of the city).  We went with our friends the Petersons who were getting ready to leave the next day for the US where they took a new job.  We also met our friends the Stice family, so it was a good time.

The kids posing with an eagle used for hunting.

The square across from Khan Shatyr and the Opera theater was set up with tents, yurts, and stadium seating.  There was a lot on display - local crafts, local dances and singing, and eagles (for hunting) and horsemanship displays.  We looked around at what was going on for a few minutes, and then went and took seats for the horse show. We picked seats on the front row, and that ended up being a problem because it filled up and people stood, making our seats the worst ones.

The horse show was amazing - lots of acrobatics, shooting, and trick riding.  We really enjoyed it.  After the show, we wandered around and looked at the other displays for another 90 minutes and ended our day with a meal at Khan Shatyr.

It was a fun day and a nice way to spend our last day with our good friends.

And this post is mostly about the fun pictures below!

Kazakh folk dance on the main tent stage - we peaked in.

Women riders. They were part of a chase game traditional among Kazakhs.  If the boy wins he gets a kiss.  If he loses, the girl gets to whip him the next time around. Fun!!!

Demonstrating Falconry

Horse game traditionally played with a goat carcass.  This was a bundle of wool.

Taking turns attacking using spears and bows.  Thinking about Ghengis Khan sweeping across the Steppe with his cavalry.

One more with the lady riders.

Nika was interviewed for the local news.  She did well - her first television appearance.

Alexandra poses in front of some Yurts.

Lexa with her Mama - her favorite person in the world.

A booth with crafts - leather and wood.