Ring in the New Year

New Year's Eve has finally arrived in Kaz and we're going to whoop it up! Well, not really. In fact not at all. That's not exactly true as we are heading over to Karina's family in a couple of hours for a traditional Muslim feast (New Year's Eve and New Years also happen to fall on the big Muslim holiday). We were invited to go to Uncle Shamrat's this evening but the little guy would be thrown completely out of wack - schedule wise.

Yesterday we, along with the Brabsons, went to the main mosque in Astana (mitchet in kaz/russian). It's relatively new - built around 5 years ago when the capital moved to Astana. It's was interesting to see as we've never been in a mosque. After that we went to the Astana Ball to get pics of us and the kids in front of it - by the time we got there little man had fallen asleep in the car (compared to his meltdown car ride on Friday) and it was so windy that I just had my pic taken there and on the mall. We then went to check out the Astana Ice City. Similar to the St. Paul Winter Carnival Ice Palace except that there are alot more sculptures and several big ice slides that look like Mayan temples. The kids all looked like they were having a blast so I thought I'd give it a whirl. Unfortunately jeans don't slide well on ice and I didn't have one of the little plastic discs or a piece of cardboard to set my bootie on to get cruisin.

Here are some pics from yesterday - will add more of the festivities of tonight and update that later. Happy New Year - S Novim Godom!