Laughfest, Bowling and Ordering for a Village

What a fantastic afternoon we had with Anelya today. As you can see, she was ALL smiles and boy does she have the best smile ever. Today we played a lot more attachment games and less with the toys, although the stacking cups and rattles still got some good attention. Anelya went through her usual "I HATE POTATOES" routine and at least now the caregivers are blaming it on the food and not on me! When she finally did her Nadia Komanich back bend halfway through the bowl of mashed potatoes, I knew that was it. So, I said "ok all done" and took off her bib and stood her up on my legs and she was all smiles and jumping.

Then we played.

Great picture of Mom and Anelya doing her best impression of a hedge hog.

The caregivers allowed me to take a few pictures of Anelya's crib and nursery.

This is her crib.

Hers is the one in the middle.

All of the cribs in the nursery.
You can imagine how hard the caregivers work.
All of these cribs are full. All of the time.
And this is just one baby group.

After bonding, we went bowling and yes, Mom came along... and played... and came in 2nd place. I think Mom has been moonlighting as a bowler in between Mahjong tournaments. You might be wondering how a Kazakh bowling alley looks. Well, it looks like an American bowling alley with vodka.

Here she is:

Here is the proof of Mom's 2nd place score.

She's the 4th one down with a score of 96.

I had 59. Whatever. I'm so much more of a croquet kind of girl. LOL!

After bowling, we went out for dinner at the adjoining Chinese restaurant which was quite good. Since we could not read the menu, our translator took it and gave us options. It would have been nice of her to tell us when we ordered that what we were ordering cost 3 or 4 times what everything else did and it would therefore probably be HUGE and big enough to feed all of us, but no such luck.

By the way, Chinese food in Kazakhstan involves potatoes and boiled bread, of course.

Here we are, making fun of our ridiculous order. We sent the leftovers home with the large family of 5. It will feed them for two days.

I thought you might like to see the repercussions of my tights binge at the bazaar.

I will leave you with that for today. Tomorrow we should have a firm court date and therefore a date when we are coming HOME! Please, do not show us any bread or potatoes for the next several months. Several of you have been asking what I still need, so I have updated my registry on Babies R Us. Thank you for thinking of us!