Amazing Adventures

Without further ado, the next great Hamblin adventure, due October 3!!!!! We couldn't be more thrilled!

Master and Commander

For Hailey's birthday, she was excited to go on a boat ride. So Ken, the "maker of dreams come true" found a boat for us to borrow, and took us on a water tour of Abu Dhabi.

The kids were all excited to get going, but anytime Ken remotely sped up, they said it was too fast and asked Ken if he really knew how to work the boat. We decided to stay away from the open water this first time and just go around the island :)

This is Hailey as we started off, ready for her adventure!

This is Hailey 10 minutes into said adventure. She slept the entire rest of the time!

The city we call home.

While I'd like to say that was our gigantic villa there with private docks and beach access, I'd be in trouble when you all came to visit and found out our backyard doesn't 'quite' look like this one...

They have this thing about building new and exciting office buildings here - this one leans :)

That is someone's house. Pretty awesome, right?! We passed several of the royal palaces and "villas" but we weren't supposed to take pictures, so you'll just have to use your imagination. They were MUCH larger than this one.

The Grand Mosque

I was especially excited to come to this little area, where the Maqta Fort is located. It always looks so pretty when we drive by it on our way to church.

You can only get to the tiny little fort from the water here, and it has been under renovation, but it was fun to get a closer look! This is one of the bridges leading on and off the island.

We needed to find a bathroom when we were done, and used this one by the boat dock. Hailey and I were both impressed by how fancy it was (hence Hailey's amazed face :) 

Saturday Stroll

We love our big trip Saturday outings, but this particular Saturday was slower. We had a bunch of errands to do, and afterwards, decided to run to the fish market and pick out some shrimp to have them cook for us. The smell was a little too overwhelming for me, so Tyler volunteered to go in and take pictures. What follows are his photo masterpieces. When he brought the pictures to me, he was excited as he told me, "I think some of these will really gross you out!" Thanks Ty :)

In order to keep the fish smell out of our house, we found a park at the corniche and ate there. The 8 stray cats that joined us were really excited we chose their park. I didn't mind them too much since it meant Owen just watched them and opened his mouth anytime we needed to put food in :)

My big walking boy

Afterwards, we watched the sunset while digging into some Cold Stone ice-cream. It was wonderful :)

Ken thought he got the smoothie for himself. Poor Ken.

Happy Saturday!

Hatta Happiness

We recently took 2 trips to the Hatta Pools and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! We stopped first at the REAL fossil rock, and it was worth making a second trip for :) 

Owen loves rocks, and as soon as he stepped out of the car, he collected two favorites and held onto them.

Looking for treasures - Dan and Jess were the ones who led us to the REAL fossil rock!

Owen and I took a break while the others were working on making important finds.

The view

There were thousands of sea fossils, and Will (with a little help from Jess) even found a dino tooth!

On to the Hatta Pools!

The water has cut these wadis out of the rocks, making really neat designs you can see from the top. Plus, down in there in the water, it doesn't feel like 100 degrees plus:)

On this trip, our friends watched the kids while Ken and I did some swimming and exploring (yeah, our friends are stinking awesome :)

There was a little cavern you had to swim to get to and it had a beautiful waterfall spilling down into it. I thought it was so amazing to find something like this, hidden, down in the middle of a desert! 

Rocks taste better when you pick them up out of the bacteria infested water and suck on them :)

These kids crack me up :)

Everyone make a funny face!

Impromptu slip and slide!

warming up

This is the perfect way to beat the heat!