Catching Up (a post by B)

Well, it's been quite busy the past few weeks.  So, we'll start with Halloween.  It's becoming more of a known holiday here.  I think it's just another excuse to party.  

So, party we did - we invited over our friends in the English club, as they really wanted to see an American-style Halloween.  I even decorated the apartment in a "spooky" theme with "spooky" food and all.  There was quite a turnout and fun was had by all.  An advantage of being here is that they haven't seen the type of food that is typically done for Halloween parties like spider cupcakes, eyeball eggs, and ghost toast.  People even came dressed up which is always fun.

We then had a few weeks when it was a bit slower.  In those weeks, Steven's class had a "mother's" presentation in which some of the students recited poems.  There was one in the local language, one in Russian, and they asked Steven to do one in English.  

We taught him a version of the "Roses are red" poem for mothers but I guessed he had Russian on the brain because when it was his turn, he started reciting something in Russian (still not sure what it was).  So, I had to give him a prompt before he did it, but he did OK in the end.  He even got a certificate for participating.

Sorry about the video, it got cut off a bit short (plus you might hear Matthew getting excited about Steven getting to talk):

We also found that the local meat market was open last week, so we went to stock up for the winter.  This is when all the farmers slaughter their cows and sell the meat at a discount with no middlemen.  They wait until it's freezing, and that way people can buy all the meat they want and just put the extra on their balcony (remember, our balcony is way colder than our freezer).  

Because there's no difference in the price for which cut of meat you get, Jesse was able to get a beef backstrap for the same price as any other meat!  So now we have some nice filet mignon waiting in our "freezer."  The downside of this whole process is that they just cut off the part of the cow you want with an axe, and you have to do the butchering yourself at home.

Then came Steven's birthday.  WOW!  I can't believe he is 5 already.  My beautiful baby boy is growing up. So, we continued with our balloon tradition and hid his presents under balloons so he could find them.  We had several neighbors over to help celebrate the occasion which I think Steven's loved since there were several kids there for him to play with.

Matthew didn't want to be out of the loop for all the excitement, so he snuck in and tried to blow out Steven's candles for him!

Presents from the grandparents far, far away:

He seems to really like both of them!

We'll have to post next time on Thanksgiving, as this post is long enough already!  The short version is that we had friends over and made all the fixings (from scratch, of course) including a goose.  So, today, after I dropped the boys off at school, I spent Black Friday in bed doing nothing.  It was all I hoped it would be!

In other news, our puppy is getting bigger and bigger.  I've never house trained a dog before but he seems to be obeying more and more commands so I think it's working (he still likes to pee on the floor so I'll take suggestions as to how to manage this).  The boys love him but we will wait for a time when we don't have anything to write about to blog on that. 

And with that, I leave you with this thought - HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!