April Celebrations!

Well, the big 30 has come. The twenties were a great decade - went to photography school, met a cute painter, got married, had Ezra and have another sweet baby on the way! I'm looking forward to what is in store for the next 10 years. It's interesting to think that my mom was the same age as I am now when she was pregnant with me. I don't feel mature enough yet to be 30 and a mom. :) I asked one of my teammates here when she started to feel like a real adult. She said around 40. So, I guess I have a few more years. :)

For my birthday this year, Matt and I went out to eat at our new favorite Indian Restaurant in town. The owner is Indian and a very nice man. (I really wanted to ask him to say "Camping Cabin" for me, but I didn't!) :) Little family joke there. 

Anyhow...we also had a little party with some friends with pizza, ice cream and Wii. We had a table tennis tournament. I didn't win, but it was a lot of fun!

And uncle Matthew even held Ezra for the first time! They are good buddies, but Matthew's not a big kid person. Ezra likes to sit next to him and watch him play his iPad and try to find the one button that will do the most damage. :) Matthew also taught Ezra how to greet him with a fist bump. :) It's super cute.

I also had to have some fun in the kitchen for my birthday. I attempted making zweiback for the first time and they actually turned out! Except my first pan most of the balls fell off the top and they looked more like turtles. But they still tasted good!

I also tried to make some cinnamon rolls. (Which I have made successfully before, but this was a different recipe.) I didn't read the part about the amount being divided between 2 pans. So I had 2x's the amount in a single pan! They are a little crowded, but look decent here (this is before baking). But after I baked them the middles were all doughy and it didn't turn out very good. I ended up dumping them out onto a cookie sheet and tried baking them longer. They tasted ok, but it was a mess. :) Oh well. One of these days I'll get cinnamon rolls right.

We also took a trip down to the river since it's finally warming up here. It was the first time this year, and the first time Ezra had been down there since he started walking. So that was a lot of fun. We saw the most amazing ice formations we'd ever seen. It's called candle ice and it forms in the spring from the thawing and refreezing of the water. You could pick up a chunk and drop it and it would shatter like glass shards all over. Very cool.

The birthday celebrations continued as our entire team went to Terelj to celebrate Easter again, like we did last year (check out the post from last Easter). Orna, Jennifer and I all have birthdays in the same week, so we celebrated together during our Easter party as well.

And our new teammate Sandi brought her stash of Jelly Belly's to share! Mmmm. It was fun remembering all the different flavors. I picked all the pears out. :) 

Ruth made our birthday cake. She's becoming quite the professional! It was tasty, too!

We saw some camels on the way there that you could pay to ride. Fascinating creatures. But it was like a sandstorm blizzard outside so we stayed in the bus. I still haven't ridden a camel! But I've eaten a few. :)

We brought the sun oven along and I made up some sugar cookies ahead of time to try it out. It was a super windy so we tried to keep it from tipping over, but it still did a couple times.

It worked great! They were a little crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside. Just took about a half hour per batch, but hey, it's free energy!

Last year for Easter, a little sheep gave his life for our meal. The sheep was butchered and then the meat, veggies and hot rocks were put inside a pressure cooker. That was called Hor Hok. This year we had Bauduk which is made with a goat. They kill the goat and then burn all the hair off and clean out the insides and put the meat back inside the goat along with some hot rocks and veggies. Then they sew the goat shut and let it cook, like a crock pot or pressure cooker. The goat was much tastier than the sheep. :) 

Here they are burning the hair off. It made the whole camp stink!

Here is a brief video of the finished goat! Very strange, but it was pretty good.

Hope you all had a very Happy Easter! He is risen indeed!

9th Graders and Skiing

 Ahhhh, the 9th grade, when responsibilities are low and life, when not is school, is just about fun!  I remember my own childhood and the frequent outings to the slopes.  There was little more I ever wanted to do than to go skiing.  To my Dad, Brian, Justin, Larry and the rest...here's one for ol' times!  In fact, I realized on this trip that I haven't been skiing since I met Jessica!  What an odd thing since we both love skiing so much, but we've each been once now in Mongolia, not together, but none the less, skiing has happened!

   Here I am with Dulguunnaran.  He's in both my Business Studies and English classes and an all around nice kid...quite handsome too!  :-)

 In yonder chair is Mr. Kennedy (Matthew) and Zolbayar who I see less often but is a part of the same cohort of boys, half of whom could not join us today.

Here's Duuluu taking his first jump ever...of course it was monkey-see-monkey-do!  Where'd that big monkey come from anyway?!  Well, we spotted the big monkey again, this time going down the hill with a video camera!  It's it two parts...

 

My run was too long to email from my iTouch so you get the first bit and the last bit.  :)

 If you look below, the run right above my head is the last little bit I went down.  It's a black diamond, but a fairly tame one at that.  40 degree slope but totally groomed...no problem, even with a video camera!  :)  WOW, I miss those Colorado slopes of old!

It was a great day with some new friends with lots of good time getting to know each other on the chair.  What a blast to "be young again" and have the body hold up fairly well.