This week I had my 31st birthday. We (myself, Irina, her Mum and Anna) went out on Tuesday to a TGI Friday, where I thoroughly enjoyed the custom cocktail, fried & bread-crumbed mozerella, a proper bacon cheeseburger with chips and then a delicious chocolate brownie based dessert. Come Friday we had Walton (Assel was away), JohnA and Inessa, DanD and Lara and all the children from the aforementioned families all come over, the idea being that people would be able to relax and drink a little more with a delayed birthday celebration bringing the “morning after” to a Saturday, instead of a work day. Irina went out and bought a couple of kilograms of good meat, and cooked some beautiful home made burgers and other delicious courses. It was good to see everyone, especially in one place.
Apr 23 2010
Anna’s Birthday!
OK, so the next few posts will be of photos (and once YouTube behaves, videos) taken on the 21st February 2010, which was Anna’s 1st birthday. Unless you count the day she was born on. Which would be her birth day.
Anyway, As there are a lot of photos, and I wanted to publish them all, they have been split across posts.
Party Hats And Pears
Only One Of Us Kept The Hat On All Day!
Smoking Smiling Seb (Check Out The Smiley Socks)
Irina And Anna In The Kitchen
Mum And Anna
Dad And Anna
Anna's Birthday Presents Before...
That is it for now, as we have guests arriving soon.
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Apr 20 2010
TGI Friday in Astana,with Anna…
TGI Friday in Astana,with Anna,Irina&her Mum. Birthday meal is delicious so far. Custom cocktail slipped down well http://twitpic.com/1h1dha
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Apr 16 2010
Smaller Screens And Burgers!
On the evening of my upcoming 31st birthday (20th April), I am hoping to head out TGI Friday (Thank God Its Friday) with Irina, Anna and Ira’s Mum – (her Dad will be away on business). At the end of the week, when our friends here in Astana are more likely to be able to meet up and not worry about work the next day, we are planning to invite them around to ours for hamburgers, baked beans and potato wedges/roast potatoes. As some of our friends have children, we wanted to ensure they could bring them along and so hope to keep some sort of entertainment going for them in Anna’s room, as the living room & kitchen/dining room may be filled with “adults”.
Quotations marks, as I’m hoping most won’t want to drive themselves, and so have a drink or three. Does this mean we will be filling Anna’s room with home theater seating? Not necessarily, however I’m hoping to either use this computer’s third monitor, or Irina’s laptop to stream childrens’ cartoon and movies into Anna’s room. This would require the eldest child of one friend of ours to be the nominated supervisor/monitor of children, but she has been an absolute star when required to fill this role in the past, and I’m hoping the menu on offer will go some way to persuading her that the situation would be to everyones’ liking.
Anyway, once I have cleared the backlog of Anna’s photos and videos from our UK trip, I’ll hopefully be able to post some clips of the little angels from that night. Alternatively I may just remember to stream a few clips up onto Qik.com, and have them automatically imported to this site. Whatever the case, I want to say thank you to Irina for her time and effort in organising a Chris/child-friendly menu for the evening.
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Apr 06 2010
Funny Man Isn’t
Dom Joly recently wrote an article on eating horse meat in Kazakhstan. My thanks to Irina for sending me the link. All of the comments there (I see KZBlog got there first!) seem to be defending horse meat dishes, though I feel that spirited1away has slightly overstated his(?) case when claiming that Britain has no dishes to be proud of.
It is true that Dom seems to have slipped into lazy journalism, OR really didn’t have much luck with the choice of restaurant his host selected. I just hope the poor guy doesn’t read the complaints online – it does sound pretty ungrateful, as I imagine Dom would have expressed an interest in finding out what unique experiences Kazakhstan had to offer. Yes, the man is (at least in Britain) known as a comedian, and most people would expect his articles to offer a humorous short story, but as one commenter stated, this just seems like lazy journalism.
Mar 27 2010
Irina and I are on the train d…
Irina and I are on the train down to Falmouth to see Nick (bro) & Roz.
They had a baby boy a couple of days ago!
HUGE congrats to them 🙂
Mar 25 2010
Wrapped Up Furry Well
Just under a week before wel left for Britain, this photo was taken on the 7th of February, with Anna on her sleigh, wrapped up in some old fur coats, as we had not bought the fabric covering that we share between Anna’s sleighs in the in-laws’ house and ours. Irina did tell me a story that involved a small child being wrapped up similarly, but I’ve forgotten the details, and also the Russian term that could be applied to Anna.
Hopefully Irina will leave a comment here sometime, and everyone, as well as me, can be educated 🙂
Wrapped Up Furry Well
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Mar 16 2010
Ira,Ira&Anna @ The Farmers in …
Ira, Ira G & Anna at “The Farmers” in Bishops Cleeve.Huge meringue on the table.Met up with friends in Chelt last night 🙂 http://twitpic.com/18xljk
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Mar 15 2010
Antique Owning Hoodie Wearers!
Whilst waiting for Anna to wake from her lunch time nap, Irina, Dad and I were all watching an episode of Antiques Roadshow on the Yesterday channel. It seems to have moved on a little since I remember it (Sunday evenings when I was a child, with crumpets or savoury muffins for tea!).
Gone were the experts with bow ties on, and in are… well the same experts, but the antique owners seem to be from a wider background now, with hoodie wearing young adults bringing in RAF memorobilia from their Grandad, to a builder who scans the car boot sales at weekends.
The builder did quite well bringing in a hold-all containing lots of things he had bought for less than a fiver – some were worth close to a thousand pounds! Anyway, Anna woke up, so attention switched to feeding her. I’m also arranging meeting up with friends in Cheltenham tonight; it will be great to see them as some I’ve not crossed paths with them in a couple of years…
Mar 14 2010
Happy Mother’s Day Mums!
Mum (mine) – hope you have a great day, and once the day has progressed into a more socialable time, I’ll give you a call 🙂
Irina (Anna’s Mum) – Happy Mother’s Day from Anna. Next year she’ll hopefully be able to say it herself directly, and a few more years after that, be able to write her own post congratulating you 🙂
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