ANOTHER Field Trip

Another field trip!

The kids are learning about the different markets here so this time we went to a grocery store!

Also is a picture of Grace in her new JUDO class!

 Tyler's class at the mall.

 Grace and her mall map by the butter. The grocery store is in the basement of the mall.

 Grace and her friend Madeline at Judo!

 Grace and her friends Madeline and Vivian being silly at the market.

 Grace wanted to buy the smoked fish!

 My group of 4 I was in charge of. Tyler, Grace, Vivian, and Madeline. They had a task to buy cocoa and chocolate bars to make a chocolate pie Monday. Then they will have a bake sale next Wednesday. They also had to estimate and then check the real prices of several items like strawberries, milk, butter, coffee, cereal, and etc and discuss where they think it originated from.

 Grace, Vivian, and Madeline by the soda.

 Ty has the cocoa and he is shocked it is peanut free! Time to celebrate lol!

Ty just being Ty. 



Grace and Tyler's First Play Performance as Singers and a wedding at school?

This has been an incredibly busy week for us. The international school Grace and Ty attend offers several after school activities for kids to take for free. Grace and Tyler along with many other Kindergarten and 1st graders sang about 6 songs for a play called Do Fairies Have Tails? This play was written by older 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders earlier in the year and they had all of the speaking parts. Grace and Tyler will have a chance to do that next year and they are already talking about wanting to. 
Within the first or second class Tyler decided he wanted to write and add his own song to the play and asked the teacher if he could. I was surprised when the teacher said yes. Grace and Tyler were told to choose costumes as a bug or a fairy. Grace picked a fly and Tyler picked a butterfly. Neither one wanted to be a fairy. Here are pics of their performance as well as award they received. 

Meanwhile, Grace's teacher, whom all the kids and parents adore, got married. One of the moms from Grace's class decided to throw him a surprise wedding party. We dressed all of the kids in white this morning and didn't tell the class or the teacher what was going on. We took them on a "field trip" to one of the houses near the school and surprised them all with a wedding party. They had pizza and a cake as well as a bounce house and a trampoline. They all had so much fun. When the kids were talking to each other about why might they all be wearing white, Grace said "it must be international wear white day". 

Too cute and totally spontaneous just like her daddy.

 Grace's teacher and the wedding cake one of the moms made him.

 The nice note the drama teacher gave me for helping out. The PTA gave me chocolate too!

 Class pic

 Grace and friends in front of the bounce house.

 Grace's award.

 Grace on stage.

 Grace and two of her good friends.

 Grace and Tyler on stage.

 Tyler's award.

 Tyler on stage.

 Ty and Grace after the show.

Ty mid song.





Yet Another Field Trip

The kids are now studying about markets at school. So today we went on a field trip to a market called Taza Bazaar and I'm pretty sure I spelled that wrong. 

 When we arrived, I was given a group of 4 kids and $5 manat and told they needed to agree on something to buy for the whole class to share when they got back. My group picked a kilo of strawberries that cost $7 manat! 

We walked around and saw a lot of fruits and vegetables....carrots, kumquats, strawberries, apricots, bananas, potatoes, apples, oranges, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, and eggplant. We also saw a lot of spices, dried fruit, and nuts and lots and lots of bread. We also saw some meat for sale: beef, chicken, pork, and fish.

We saw several pets for sale as well: hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, dogs, cats, turtles, and birds. For the first time in a long time Grace didn't ask for a pet now that she has her own hamsters!

 There were a few vendors that spoke English and those that did kept asking me if all 4 children were mine lol. 

The best part of field trips is that we typically get back to school around 1pm and there is a nice restaurant at the top of the hill behind the school called The Terrace. I went there with several of the other moms and we sat and had a great many laughs while eating lunch and waiting until 3pm to pick up our kids.

It was a really fun day for me but now I am completely exhausted. This old body due to be 41 in July is not used to working and watching kids anymore and I am TIRED!

I enjoyed every minute and here are the pics!

BTW several of the pics look funny like long and tall instead of normal size that is because I had to crop their friends out of the pictures. Sorry.

This is Grace and her beloved Winslow whom she wanted to take on the field trip with her.

This is not from the field trip but we followed this truck home the other day and thought it was cool. Full of cows on the bottom and sheep on the top. Grace was not happy as she knew they were going to get killed and eaten. 

 Grace near the cow meat holding the strawberries we bought.

 The bazaar also had a huge pet area with cats, dogs, rabbits, turtles, birds, and hamsters. Grace is looking at the hamsters here saying how much they look like ours at home.

 Grace by the cow meat being sold raw and skinned.

 This picture cracks me up. It is of Grace checking out the fish's innards while her friend is closing her eyes saying "ew, gross". LOL That is my girl!

 I should have taken more than one pic of everything but you can't see this very well because I had to crop the other kids out. Grace is standing near an enormous fish tank. The fish are swimming around and she is sad as she knows they are to be sold and eaten but she is also fascinated by the tank and fish.

 Grace is pointing to the cow's heart being sold.

 Tyler of course didn't really care for the things being sold at the market as much as all the stairs and places to go.

 Grace found a chicken coop full of live chickens.

 Grace and Ty going up the steps of the fruit/veggie area which you can see behind them.

 At the top of the bazaar....you can see the typical apartment building behind them.

 Same area as above.

 Grace loved this humongous tomatoes!

 This pic is blurry sorry but it is of raw chicken with the feet still on. Can I be the first to say Ewwww?

 Grace very happy to have found hamsters that look just like ours and guinea pigs just below as well.

I wish I didn't have to crop this pic, it is super cute of all of the "girls" from Ty's class and Grace giving one of them bunny ears....lol. 



Spring in Full Swing in Baku

Spring is in full swing here in Baku! 
The kids are so happy to be outside getting fresh air again. Tyler usually has allergies so bad for at least 2 months at home in the U.S. that his eyes get swollen shut and we have to get steroid antibiotics.

 We were very lucky that did not happen here. He had itchy eyes and sneezed a lot for about a week or two then the pollen was gone just like that. Same for me, I usually have at least 3 weeks of horrible itchy eyes, but here in Baku, I was fine after just a few days.

The big news of the house is that Barry came home with new pets the other day. A fellow Embassy family is headed home and couldn't take their beloved hamsters with them so we inherited them. Grace has been begging and begging for a pet for years now and after killing several fish by accident (hey no one told me you were supposed to add some special conditioner to beta fish water) she is over the moon with joy. She loves them so much. Grace's hamster is a bit pudgy and likes to eat and sometimes get a little taste of us as well so she named him Nibbles! Tyler's hamster is much smaller and often picks on Nibbles by biting and scratching him. Tyler named his hamster A.J. after the main character in the My Weird School chapter book series we are currently reading at bedtime.

Grace spends every afternoon making tunnels out of boxes and toilet paper rolls for the hamsters which actually seem to like going through them on their own and often sleeping in there as well. We got them hamster balls to run around the house in and I have to admit I like to watch them as well! They are kinda cute and furry. 

Meanwhile, at school the kids completed their very first research project! They were studying life cycles and had to research an animal's life cycle. Grace picked an elephant and Ty picked a ladybug (they called them ladybirds here). They had an open house and shared their research report with us in their classrooms. Barry and I were both quite proud! The next day was a teacher workday and no school for them so we met daddy for lunch. It took me 8 months to the day but I was finally able to navigate my way to and from Port Baku for lunch on my own without having to look at a map. I was quite proud of myself. 

And last but not least....Daddy has decided to grow mint, tomatoes, and peppers and Grace and Ty brought home bean plants! Daddy found a neat indoor garden called a Aero Garden on amazon where the water and sunlight is all done inside! It is soooo cool! I highly recommend getting one! Here it is:

Daddy's peppers tomatoes, and mint in the Aero Garden and Grace and Tyler's bean plants from school plus a sunflower plant Grace just brought home Wednesday that hasn't started growing yet but I know it will! 

 Grace and the hamster apartment she made! Pretty creative and cool I must say!

The hamsters have 2 different apartments. They fight quite a lot so we try to separate them as much as possible.

 Grace and Ty Port Baku posing with a skateboarder statue.

 My little pumpkin during story time before bed.

 Grace giving us her life cycle of elephants report at school.

 Grace making cool tunnels for the hamsters.

 Grace and her new pets.

 Grace's bean plant report on an ipad at school.

 Grace's life cycle of elephants report.

 Grace showing us her 6th lost tooth.

 Grace posing with the skateboarder statue in Port Baku.

 Grace playing with a sword in the backyard.

 Grace begged for a pic next to this strange tree of pad locks. Seriously....zoom up on the tree....never seen anything like this before.

 Grace and Ty playing tic tac toe with chalk on the patio in our backyard.

 Tic Tac Toe with chalk.

 Posing with the car at Port Baku. We usually eat across the street at Paul. It is a cute little French bakery with fresh bread, soups, and sandwiches and is peanut free for Ty! They also have a bookstore next to it with books in English which makes Mommy quite happy! And now a toy store in the mall next to it as well!

 A cute little bridge in Port Baku near the playground.

 Posing on an interesting bench.

 Grace and Ty are pretending to go down the underground crosswalk. Instead of going on a crosswalk over the road like we do in the states, they have crosswalks that go under the road in Baku. Daddy and Grace always pretend to hold their breath like they are going underwater as we walk below.

 Tyler's ladybug (ladybird) life cycle project.

 Grace and Ty near the little river by the playground in Port Baku.

 Tyler and the skateboarder statue in Port Baku.

 Our new hamsters.....Nibbles and A.J. They are Russian Dwarf hamsters that only live for about 2 years.

 Ty being a ham before bedtime. He decided he doesn't like pajamas anymore so he wears shorts and T-shirts to bed now just like daddy.

 Ty giving us his ladybug life cycle report at school.

 Ty's ladybug life cycle report.

 Ty and his hamster. He is afraid it will bite him so he only holds it in his shirt. Due to his allergies we just don't make a big deal about this.

Amazon had a great deal on kindles so daddy surprised us all with one! Even mommy! :) LOVE!!!!!!