Contests, festivals, tournaments

From November to April our girls had a lot of musical contests in which they participated. The twins were playing flutes with their group of girls and took second place in the international festival .

Here they are goofing around on the piano  in their classroom while waiting for the results.

With their group and their teacher, Bayan Beketovna.

On stage receiving the award.

 Veronika and Polina formed a duet which they called Americano and performed at a Russian Talent Festival where they also took second place in the string instruments category with a Sting's song "Shape of My Heart".

Showing off their certificate

 Later they played and sang the same song at the National Contest for young guitarists and won "Judges' Choice" award.

Polina and Sophia took a carving class for the last two years, and this spring their work ended up at some contest as well.

Polina's spoon in the shape of a parrot.

Sophie's spoon with a tree branch and a ladybug.

 At the beginning of March our figure skating coach texted me that all of our girls are urgently needed for the Opening Ceremony of the International Youth Hockey Tournament. So, our girls and a few others from their synchronized figure skating team went. Some girls were leading teams out on the ice, and others were carrying flags of the countries of the participating teams (there were teams from Belorussia, Slovakia, China, Kazakhstan, and two teams from Russia). The girls only had two practices (just like about everything in Kazakhstan, it was a last minute deal) but did very well.

Waiting for the practice to start.

Getting instructions from the tournament organizers in the biggest hockey areana in the country.

Before the Opening Ceremony. The girls in purple t-shirts were the ones leading the hockey teams on the ice (Sophie is second from the left, Lina is fith, and Lexa is last), and the ones in national costumes were carrying the flags.

Flag bearers. Nika is in the national Slovak costume.

The teams were coming out of this big snow lepard (a mascot for the national hockey team).  You can see Lexa there in a purple shirt who was the first one out with her team from Russia who ended up taking the first place in the tournament.

There is Sophie with her team from Slovakia (in blue) and Nika carrying their flag.

Nika

Lina with her team from Kazakhstan (also in blue)

In front of Barys Hockey Arena

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.

Kids and sport 2018-19

Once again, this post is about athletics. Mostly it is about our athletic kids. Sport was always a big part of my life while growing up and it was a big part of Spencer’s life as well. I was mostly into winter sports (growing up in Siberia does that to you!), he was (and is) into basketball. Our kids chose track and figure skating (the last one made me a very proud mama) as their sport and they have been doing it for the last 4 years.

They run in track meets every couple of months. They have a very good coach now who really cares about the kids. These pictures are from one of their track meets in the fall in which Nika and the twins ran (Lina decided not to for whatever reason). 

Opening ceremony.  Everything here has to have an opening ceremony).

Lexa and Sophie (Sophie injured her leg a bit the day before and wasn't running as she usually does).

Double trouble.

Nika is running with the older group.

After the meet with friends.

In figure skating this year the coach decided to make a synchronizing skating team. The first performance the kids did was at the opening of the skating season at the biggest mall in town. After that they were invited to perform a few times before big hockey games. Lina and Lexa quit figure skating earlier but after seeing the other two perform with their teammates, they decided to join the team.

Nika and Sophie in their Shamany (medicine women) costumes.

Getting ready for the performance.

This performance was shown on the local news. Nika and Sophie are in the first row.

With the young volunteers from our church, Sisters Nelson and Critchfield.

Here are pictures from their other performances, mostly before hockey games.

In December they had a competition and took second place with their Tango Dance.

Getting some encouragement from their coach before the competition.

Nika and Sophie.

Nika

Lina and Lexa.

After the performance.

The team was supposed to go to Russia and to Almaty for competitions but the ice-making machine at the rink where they were training broke down so the team couldn't practice together for 3 weeks (they divided into smaller groups and practiced at other rinks in the city but not all together) which meant they couldn't get ready for the competition. Oh well. They are back to their rink now and are preparing for the individual competitions that are supposed to take place sometime in May.