A Kazakhstan Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! We have a lot to be thankful for this year, not the least of which, are our 2 new wonderful children. It wasn't exactly the first Thanksgiving with Matt we had planned, but at least we were together and the food came out pretty well. I made onion soup (Mike's favorite) which was pretty good, considering I only had one kind of onion to work with. The Thanksgiving chicken was also declared to be very good by everyone. Chicken cooked in a skillet with a pepper and carrot mixture that I found at the Ramstore with a side of peas and mashed potatoes is not exactly the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but at least it tasted good. I bought some fancy cookies at the Ramstore (no, I didn't bake - don't have the equipment here) and a cocunut custard at the little store across the street. The cookies weren't too bad, but the custard, while very festive looking, was dry and not what any of us expected (we actually threw out almost the whole thing because none of us really liked it!).

We visited Hope in the morning and got a special treat - we got to watch her music class. It was a lot of fun. The kids sang some songs as a group and then some of the kids got up and performed a song by themselves, or just stood there looking shy, depending on the child. Hope's caretakers had told us that she is artistic and is a good singer and dancer. She did a great job when she sang by herself - loud and new and the words and gestures. We, of course, took plenty of video. Some of the older kids also recited poems and of course our princess did a great job. The kids also did some dancing, just for fun, I think at the end. When we brought Hope back to her group the caretakers asked if we would still be here December 22 (unfortunately, it looks like we will be) because Hope is supposed to sing some songs and recite some poems at the little show they are doing. I'm sure she'll be great - she's quite a ham!

Here is a picture of Matt on his first Thanksgiving and Tim with marker on his lips (after he had wiped a lot of it off) that he applied like lipstick to be funny.

We ended our Thanksgiving Day by watching a Christmas Story. And yes, Tim still doesn't like the part when Flick puts his tongue on the metal pole, but at least this year he just turned away instead of screaming like someone put his tongue on the pole.