Thanksgiving in Baku

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! 
Unlike Halloween where many of the expat families celebrated along with us, Thanksgiving is not a holiday celebrated among the expats at all.  Most of the families here are from London, Canada, Scotland, Africa, etc. Only a few Americans......so......

We have been ordering food via amazon for the past month. And I think you might be amazed to find out how much of the food we eat at a traditional Thanksgiving dinner comes prepackaged! We ordered: green beans, gravy, stuffing, yams, and corn.

The Embassy helped several of us American families order turkeys from Georgia (the country not the state) as they have a commissary (military grocery store) there that we don't have here. 

The kids were so excited about Thanksgiving they woke up at 6:30am!!!!!!!! 

Barry was getting ready to stuff the turkey and realized other than the legs, the turkey had no bones!!!!!!! It is not easy to stuff a turkey with no bones! 

While daddy worked on the turkey, Grace and I walked to the market to get maslo (butter) and milk (moloko: russian)/(azeri:sud) for our potatoes. I found very large potatoes at the market the other day so Grace and I peeled them when we got back from the store.  Grace and I made the mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and green bean casserole. Grace really wanted to "cook" more so we made turkey cupcakes....and the set the table. She was SUCH a great help! We were all ready to go by noon and the turkey was done by then too but our friends who were joining us weren't due to arrive until 3 (their kids went to school that day and we had kept ours home) so we watched a movie called Saving Santa. Dinner was wonderful and the kids had fun running around with their friends afterwards playing hide and seek. It was a great evening and we were sad to see it end....especially knowing the kids had to go back to school the next day....but at least it's Friday and their school is having a winter fair tomorrow where they can go to "santa's secret workshop" and adults will help them buy gifts for their moms and dads and wrap them and make a card. They are looking forward to that then 2 more weeks and they are off school for 3 weeks! 

 Grace with the Keebler elves that sing Jingle Bells. She missed them and made me put new batteries in them right away and tell her the story of where we got them. (Just a Christmas gift exchange.)

 Grace thought it would be cute if she dressed herself as a turkey! LOL!

 Showing off our turkey placemats.

 A selfie during movie time with mommy!

 Grace happy we set out our nativity set.

 Grace set the table.

 Grace and Ty love the Keebler elves singing Jingle Bells.

 Grace told me to take a picture of her holding baby Jesus.

 The meal! We had all the traditional stuff, turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, friend corn, homemade bread from my bread machine, cranberry sauce, stuffing, gravy, etc. And Ty actually ate his turkey (I mean chicken lol) and mashed and sweet potatoes. He said I don't like sweet potatoes. I said sorry I have a 2 bite rule eat them or no cupcake for dessert. Then he took one bite and said what is this? I like it! LOL silly kids....

 Dessert, our turkey cupcakes.....and our friends brought apple and pumpkin pie...yum....