During the tree decorating and opening of the gifts on Christmas day I took a few short video clips and strung them together for the following program. It is about 6-7 minutes long. (If you are on a slow connection I suggest that you start the video and right away pause it (not stop it) by clicking on the button with two vertical bars. That will cause the player to continue downloading the content which you can view a few minutes later by clicking on the play button.)

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Mina has many interesting things in her neighborhood. Yesterday we visited the community garden where she shares the responsibility to feed some chickens and several goats. Next year, she will have a chicken of her own and she is very excited about that. The chickens are rather cute with their long feathers and the goats are very playful as you can see. They even climbed the roof of their house.

A little further down is a playground, they call it the slide park. There are two slides for kids to go down. Today, it was mainly for Mina’s new doll as she did not want to go down the slide. The weather was very cooperative, sunny and unexpectedly warm. Kids of the neighborhood were enjoying the swings and the slides with their families. It was a nice outing just before lunch.

After some relaxation, Mina took a bath (her beauty bath you might say) and it was time for some portrait shoot. Mina both enjoys and avoids photo sessions. But nothing like a couple of Hershey’s Kisses (chocolate drops) for sweet bribes for her to cooperate.  Even Cemal Dede managed to get in one of these (wrong side of the camera, I know!)

For breakfast we had pancakes by Nana sprinkled with color jimmies by Mina. After breakfast everyone relaxed. Later I took pictures of the girls, coming on the next post.

After the gifts that Santa brought, it was time to open gifts from the family. Mina needed all the help she could to open the packages and remove their contents. Some boxes challenged even adults as they were packed very sturdily. Next will be the breakfast …