A Thanksgiving to Remember...

Happy Thanksgiving from snowy Astana!

We are having a great Thanksgiving here- no football games on TV and no Black Friday shopping, but all in all, still a great day with a lot to be thankful for.

We started our morning with our regular trip to the Baby House. Rylie has another cold, so we spent much of our visit just holding her today. She slept on Sara's shoulder for much of the visit, but she managed to get in a little playing at the beginning and the end. She played with her fingerpuppets today for a while. The visit started with Adam's little puppet show with the cow and the chicken- the two happiest animals on Thanksgiving! Rylie was really sleepy and didn't feel well, but she was still pretty intrigued for a while.

After a while, she sat up and preferred to eat the animals.

We tried to explain that it was Thanksgiving, and you eat turkey, not cows and chickens--- as you can see, that didn't go over so well. This is Rylie's pouty face!

Aside from the puppets, today was primarily a sleepy day for Rylie. We got her more medicine yesterday afternoon, so hopefully tomorrow she'll be back to her normal self.

As you probably saw in our previous posting, we had Thanksgiving Dinner at the Intercontinental Hotel tonight with two other couples. So as we had mentioned in our earlier posting, we wandered over to the hotel earlier in the week. It is right behind our apartment, and we figured maybe they would have a nice restaurant where we could have a good dinner for Thanksgiving. So we were ecstatic when we saw something showing a "Traditional American Thanksgiving Meal" in one of the hotel's restaurants. We gathered some of the other families and decided to make a reservation to celebrate the holiday with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, etc. So when we got to the hotel tonight (there were only 6 of us in the end,) we were seated and the waitress brought out the menus. I asked her for the special Thanksgiving menu, and eventually she understood what I was asking for, went into the back, and came out with one copy of it for the table. We found this a bit odd, but we all continued to look at the set Thanksgiving menu and the regular menu in deciding what to order. We called over the manager of the restaurant, a man who speaks English pretty fluently. (Sidenote- he is the same person we spoke with when we came into the hotel to discuss the Thanksgiving meal earlier in the week, and the same person Sara spoke to when she called on Tuesday to make the reservation for 6 people for Thanksgiving dinner at 6pm on Thursday.) Adam asked him if it would be possible to order the Thanksgiving meal, but substitute a few things (ie. Lentil soup for clam chowder and salmon for turkey.) The man explained that he asked the owners of the hotel about substitutions earlier in the week and they stated that "They did not want to break American tradition and re-write American history, so no substitutions." He then walked away and we all decided what we were going to order. Our waitress came back and started with Sara. I ordered the Thanksgiving meal. She kept saying "Nyet" (no.) I couldn't understand, so I looked down at the special Thanksgiving Menu (pictured below) and got a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach.....

We know the picture of the menu isn't completely clear, but it says--- Thanksgiving 2007- November 23rd, 2007.

Right--- November 23rd! So these same people that are so concerned about "breaking American tradition and re-writing American history" by substituting lentil soup for clam chowder decided that Thanksgiving will be celebrated on Friday, instead of the 4th Thursday in November!

Needless to say, we still had a great meal with great company, just no turkey, stuffing, or pumpkin pie. Oh the stories we will have to tell Rylie one day.............

So from snowy Astana, we wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving and a productive Black Friday- for those of you who are hitting the stores.

Love to everyone----