Our Christmas Trip to Utah - Part 3: Christmas with the family

Our last major adventure in Utah was the main one - our family Christmas Eve party.  Mom had the girls make cookies for the party.  Each girl made a big batch of cookies in a marathon of cooking on Monday (December 23).  They made gingersnaps, molasses crinkles, snickerdoodles, and chocolate chip cookies.  It was a cookie fest.  

Oma felt ill when she woke up, so she put Yulia and me in charge of making sloppy joe filling for the party. I took on that responsibility and accomplished the task.  Mican and Roger's family came in the early afternoon and we visited before going over to the church that Mom had reserved so that we could set up and have the party.

Lexa during her cookie shift.

Eating our Christmas meal.  Grown up table and kids table in attendance.

Burl and Shellee and Brennan came and Aubree and Jessen came a bit later.  Mican and Roger and their kids came. Yulia and I and our four girls were there. Oma rounded out the crowd for dinner.  Ben came over in time for the program.  Suzette and her family were in Boise and didn't make it down this year.

Sixty percent of the kids with spouses.

Ben conducted the program and we had some sharing of our blessings for the year, Nika and Lina played a few songs on the guitar, and Ben, Burl, and I sang "We Three Kings" accompanied by Jessen.  Lina was  finishing up all her requirements for the Young Women in Excellence Award that is being discontinued and playing for the family passed her last requirement.  We are very proud of her achievement and the fact that she buckled down and did most of it in four months.

Guitar sisters!

Uncle Ben conducting.

We Three Brothers

It was raining so we didn't stop and look at all the lit graves in the cemetery.  Apparently that is a new tradition.  We did drive by and look at all the pretty lights.

Lights in the cemetery.

Mican and Roger stayed over for Christmas eve and the next morning our stockings were filled and left on the kitchen table.   We opened our presents from Oma and each other.  After Mican and her family left to visit their in-laws, the girls opened up presents that they had gotten for each other. They all gave each other thoughtful gifts. The rain had turned to snow overnight and so we had a white Christmas after all!

Christmas snow!

Sisters!

Mayos and Sophie!

Christmas morning presents.

Yulia and Mican model the aprons that Oma brought them from Italy!

Pancake breakfast!

The girls give their presents.

We had a nice Christmas with the family!

Sunday morning, December 29, we flew home.  Ben came and helped drive us to the airport.  It was nice to spend some time with him in the car since we hadn't seen too much of him during the visit.  We got to the airport early and checked in.  After hanging out for awhile, we ate lunch at Qordoba and then went and boarded our plane.  We flew to Houston, which was fun since we followed a similar route that we'll take when we move to Texas this summer.  In fact Yulia took a picture of the pine forest area that we will be living in as we were descending into Houston.

We had a quick layover in Houston, a long flight to Frankfurt, a short layover there, and then a six hour flight to Nur-Sultan.  We arrived and got taxis and got home safely early in the morning of December 31st.  It was a quick visit to Utah, but a nice one.  We were happy to be here for New Years with Babushka.

Waiting for our flight in SLC.

Lexa and Mama in their Jazz gear!

Lina is super excited to travel!

Lunch!

Looking at our future home.

Some happy campers on the last flight home to Kazakhstan from Utah.

Sadness and joy

At the beginning of June, I with a group of friends went to Alzhir Memorial about 18 miles outside of Astana. Alzhir is one of the main two memorial gulag sites in Kazakhstan. This particular one was a concentration camp for the wives and children (and sisters) of the “betrayers of the homeland” during Stalin’s regime. It served as a political concentration camp for women from all over the Soviet Union. It operated from the1930s to the early 1950s and had several high-profile prisoners including famous artists and actresses. More than 18 thousand women went through this camp. So sad! The museum itself was fairly small but had some interesting artifacts.

The Arch of Sorrow, the entrance to the memorial.

One of the photographs in the museum showing the arriving prisoners.

Depicting a scene of an interrogation by the NKVD.

In the cell.

Map of the Gulag network

The marble wall that goes around the museum with the names of all prisoners that went through this camp.

In the first week of June we also had a party with our friends from church, an embassy family the Holmgrens, since they were moving to their new post in Georgia (the country) this summer. We had a big crew of expats and volunteers. The Holmgrens cooked up a big American breakfast for dinner meal that included waffles with fixings, hash browns, sausage, and real bacon. Bacon is something that you cannot find in Kazakhstan, and Spencer was especially interested in that one. We had a lot of fun and will miss them dearly.

Some of the party goers.

Me with my friend Ramona Stice. They lived in Astana for a couple of years but moved back to the US last summer. They came over for a 2-week visit, and we were very happy to have them even if it was for a short time.

Friends for life!

Grandmas

 One of the good things that came out from us living in this part of the world is that our kids spend a lot of time with their babushka (grandma) who lives just over the border in Russia and who visits us a few times a year. Of course this also means that she spoils our kids and our dog mercilessly. Oh well. I guess it is part of childhood to be spoiled by your grandma (I wouldn't know as I didn't have a grandma growing up). Our kids are also lucky because every summer we get to come to America to see Spencer's family and so they spend a lot of time with their Oma (Spencer's mom) who loves reading to them and playing games with them. And so this post is about their kind, compassionate, caring, funny, story telling, game playing and fun loving grandmas.

                                                                        Babushka...

She'll teach you how to make Russian pirozhki...

She will trust an eight year old with her best sewing machine...

And when it is your turn to do the dishes, she will sneak in and do them for you...

She will cheer for you at the concert at which you are performing together with the "big kids"...

She'll play Dominoes with you...

She'll comfort you when you feel sad...

And at 76 she will start learning English just because you speak it while letting her favorite pup do whatever she wants! Babushka! She is the best babushka in the world!

Oma...

She will teach you any game that she knows...

She will let her granddaughters camp in her living room...

She will throw a birthday party for you, and will even invite some neighborhood kid that she hasn't seen before...

She loves to take you to a museum...

And she will be a good sport when you want to try a new dish from a different country....

She will entertain your moms so you can finally get into that mud pile you were eyeing for eternity....

And she will read a story after story at night, and you will never get tired of it...

Oma! She is the best Oma in the world!

The end of school year

Our girls finished their first year in a public school system here in Kazakhstan. It was a hard year but at the same time a very rewarding one. The girls have adapted to the new school system, language, and culture and absolutely exceeded our expectations. Three of them finished the year with straight As and one had just a couple of Bs and the rest were As. Some of the hard things that we encountered were going to school on Saturdays, having kids in the morning and afternoon shifts, constant change in schedules, dealing with bureaucracy, problems with transportation and others. To be honest once or twice I came very close to taking them out of school and just homeschooling. I am glad I didn’t though. For the girls the first 4 months were the hardest but then something clicked and all of them took off flying. They made new friends and they learned Russian while learning everything else in Russian. Going through these challenges and coming up on top of them gave them an incredible sense of accomplishment. We are very proud of them!

 

First Grade (Class 1"G")

Sophie and Lexa with their teacher. She was AWESOME!

School is over! Sophie, Lexa and James Peterson are on the front steps of the school

The school year ended on May 22 here. And on May 23^rd Veronika had her big graduation ball. She finished elementary school (here it is 1-4 grade) and is moving to the middle school. Here it is almost as big of a deal as graduating from high school. The last week of school they didn’t have any classes but were getting ready for the ball: learning dances, songs, practicing skits.

Generally parents are not invited to the school events but for the graduation an exception was made. Spencer was in Washington DC at the time, so he missed it. The kids did a great job! They put up quite a concert with some of amazing numbers. My favorite ones were Kazakh folk dances. Overall it was a really neat experience and I am glad that Veronika was a part of it!

Nika with her best friend Kate 

Fancy!

Waltz

Singing a good bye song to the teachers

Kazakh dance

I love Kazakh national costumes!

These girls were AMAZING! 

Nika singing "The Rainbow Connection". She sang that song for the contest in March and ever since she was asked to sing it again and again at different school parties.

Getting a certificate for Excellent School Work from assistant principal

Flash mob dance

Fourth grade class with some of the parents

Veronika with her teacher. All of our girls were lucky to get such good teachers.

Nika, Lina, and Kate Peterson in front of their school.