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 :)