Hello friends,

Who doesn’t like vacations? Our vacation time has been great so far and I’m thankful for that.

My closest relatives were happy to host us and to take us places.

This time we went to a forest like place for a picnic. We were planning to have a barbecue 🍗.

My brother packed his outdoors barbecue tools and my sister-in-law marinated some meat. On top of that we had hot dogs, veggies, beverages and fruits.

They came to pick us up at 10 am. All of us could fit in two cars. The ride took about 30 minutes. Thankfully it was a day off and there weren’t any traffic jams.

The place is located on the way out of town, closer to Zarechniy village. There is a thin part of Ishim (Esil) river and a lot of trees.

Not many people know about this place yet, but a few families were there already. My brother said it’s better to come earlier in the morning. I think 10.30 am was early enough.

On our way we stopped to get some bread called tandyrnaya lepeshka. It was fresh from the oven. They bake it in a special oven called tandyr. Tandyr is a round almost cylindrical and deep oven. The baker sticks lepeshkas to the walls of the oven and that’s how round breads get baked hanging on the walls. It’s super tasty bread, and it gets eaten fast 😅.

We arrived there and I went to get some beautiful photos of our nature in Kazakhstan 🇰🇿. Love it so much here. Every piece of grass, every tree or a little lady bug are so dear to me. I guess this is how homesickness feels.

We started to get situated. My mom and all the other girls were organizing place for sitting with blankets and rugs. My brother was setting up his barbecue, and kids went to play. Well, I was just taking photos and my relatives were happy that I’m happy, and that’s how we take care of each other. I missed them so much.

My niece told me there was a river right next to us, so I went to check it out. The view was really beautiful. A lot of water lilies were on the water surface and so many dragonflies flying above it. I wish I could come closer, but there was a lot of tall and thick grass to go through. I was able to get some photos anyway.

I’m so glad I packed beach ball when preparing for this trip. I knew we won’t buy toys right away here because it takes time to rest after a long trip. So this is super easy way of having something for kids to have fun worked out great. They played volleyball first, then the meat was ready, and we went to eat, take photos, and relax.

Everyone except of my brother who was cooking hotdogs. My daughter liked watching the fire and smoke going up from barbecue. We don’t do much barbecue ourselves so she was happy to sit by the barbecue.

I played some badminton, it was a bit hard due to a slight wind, but we had still had fun.

After second course kids played soccer, and we started cleaning the eating area, putting away our trash, and the barbecue. We are responsible people, and don’t want to harm our environment.

On our way back I saw a couple of horses being transported somewhere. I love horses, so I got a few photos of them. It’s a bit hard because our car was moving and their truck was moving so the quality of photo was so so.