Party Time!!

Derin had her birthday party this weekend. She turned 5 and was just so excited about all the festivities. On her actual birthday during the week, we had a mini celebration with just family and one of the fanciest cakes I've ever seen.

Sugar High!!!

The birthday party for all her friends was held at this sports complex. The truly beautiul part about having the party there, was that they had it in this downstairs area where the kids could go wild, fully supervised by the party workers, while the adults enjoyed non-sugar filled food and beverages upstairs. The pary workers were really nice, but when they first showed up, I had my doubts about them. They were dressed up in costumes. Now I know what you're thinking, it's a kids party, people wearing costumes isn't weird. Well it is if the woman is in her 40s and dressed in a princess outfit that is a little too tight. Derin's mom went and told the people they could dress in regular clothes, much to our (and I'm sure their) relief. The rest of the afternoon was spent in playing games, running around and pumping the kids full of sugar. And after another big fancy cake, we sent all the little kids home, happy and hyper.

Mohini

Mohini is a frightening place. It is a mall entirely deovted to children. They pump in child friendly music, have bright, shiny signs everywhere and noisy little computers for the kids to use. I end up here at least three times a week, running different errands for the girls. I'm not sure how much more of this place I can take.

The up side of this horrible place is: 1) All the activities that I can take the girls to. I just drop them off and get an hour and a half all to myself. 2) Some of the child friendly songs are from the musical Newsies, which I LOVE! So I always get excited when I get hear those songs. 3) A child friendly movie theatre. The third one is a good and bad thing. I'm always excited when we decide to go see movies, and then the movie starts and it's in Turkish. Always a let down. We recently saw a movie about crime fighting guinea pigs, that I'm not sure would have been that much better in english, but the girls enjoyed it.

Macro Center Happy Hour

On Friday night, Rebby and I were going to hang out at my new families indoor pool/jacuzzi. We decided to meet up at Akmerkez (the local mall) and get some snacks and things at the groccery store. When we got to the groccery store, there were women greeting the customers dressed as Holly Golightly, handing out chocolate covered strawberries and pink champagne. Odd, you say, well so did we til we found out it was the grand reopening of the groccery story. Not only were these fabulous ladies at the front doors, but they were wandering around inside the store as well handing out wine and other yummy snacks. Throw in the tables they had placed around with nuts on them and the guy playing jazzy little tunes on the piano and we decided we had stumbled upon heaven. Being poor nannies, we forgot all about what we had come to purchase, grabbed a table and stopped every lady with goodies that passed by us. Fastforward two hours and we were drunkity drunk drunk drunk...at a groccery store. Yeah, we're classy ladies. We made our way home, laughing loudly the whole way, and hopped into the hot tub. But for fear of drowning, we didn't stay in long. We decided to go down to Cats, because as happens when we drink, we really needed to dance. The upside of drinking at the groccery store is we didn't need to get any drinks at Cats. We proceeded to spend the rest of the night dancing our little hearts out with our friends at the bar. Good times!!!!

Down at Cats!!!

Marry me, Melos!

Besides me, the new family has a driver and a maid/cook. The maid/cook is named Melos and I am in love with her. She makes the best food e-v-e-r!!!! I wasn't to fond of Turkish food, til I started eating hers. And her soups are amazing. I just want to marry her so she can make me soup for the rest of my life.

now they just need a catchy little tune to play...

As we were taking the back streets on the way home from the girls' school today, I saw a truck whose bed was filled with onions. And there was a man in the back with the onions, talking into a megaphone and selling said onions. It was like an ice-cream truck, except for produce. They just need to come up with a catchy little tune to play..."Mom...Mom, it's the onion truck! Can I have a couple lyra to get something!?"