Al Ain Again

I was about to start off this post saying "we had a beautiful day and wanted to go do something fun," but let's be honest: EVERYDAY right now is beautiful and sunny. Take today for example - mid February, 80 degrees, and I spent it at the beach. Come on, you know I have to rub it in now, because in about 2 months the weather is going to be not so awesome. Anyways, I digress…

So, we had a beautiful day and decided to go to Al Ain to check out the zoo there. You can tell the animals were fascinating, because all I got were the backs of the kids :)

After lots of walking, we stopped for a cool treat. Ken, Tyler, and Hailey opted for fruit slushies, while Owen, Will and I opted for ice cream. Tyler, ever the big brother!

Don't ever get between Owen and his ice-cream. Ever.

Will and Hailey - our bargainers. They shared with each other so they could have both!

And me. Why chose fruit when you can have ice-cream?!?

Then, we went to the fort.

I'm a lucky girl to have so many helpers!

Owen began rock collecting immediately. Here's his pensive pose. Or maybe his "I'm-going-to-pretend-like-I-can't-hear-you-cajoling-and-begging-me-to-look-at-the-camera-and-smile" pose.

Time for an outdoor picnic with his rocks. 

Conquering err climbing the fort!

Pretty sure this kid is going to be lots taller than me - he's growing like a weed!

My hero :)

I love catching Hailey playing her little games and singing to herself. Here she is jumping from shadow to shadow.

The race is on!

I was here - see!

Love this round headed little smiler!

Cooking in the oven - I told them to look sad. Apparently, this is Haliey's sad face...

Pretty designs

Looking for his siblings

Racing through the hallways. We were fortunate enough to be the only ones around … or so we thought until Tyler ran into a guy. Whoops!

Wait for me guys! The amount of dust coating everyone and everything by the time we got into the car was unbelievable. Enough to make the car washing guy in the supermarket parking lot the next day practically beg me to let him wash the car.

Memory Making

Once upon a time, our family had a tradition of picking strawberries every spring, and then making them into yummy things like freezer jam and pies and muffins. See, photographic proof!

But then, we moved to the Middle East. And added two more babies to the mix (well, OK, Owen was a few months old when we got here, but it still kind of applies…) I was pretty excited to realize that while our strawberry picking tradition is on hold for a little while, there is still a season here when the strawberries get ridiculously cheap, and with a little pectin from home ta-da : freezer jam!

At the same time, I have been struggling with feeling like I don't do enough "fun" activities with Owen and Hailey, like I used to do with Tyler and Will, so in one of my jam making sessions I included them. Owen was SUPER enthusiastic and it reminded me why it is so fun (and nerve wracking) to cook with a 2 year old :) His job was to wash strawberries.

They both took the taste testing part of the cooking quite seriously - pretty sure we could have made a whole jar of jam using the berries they "tested"in the name of quality control!

I tried to deafen them with the blender, but Hailey was too smart for me. Owen opted to lose his hearing so that he can now claim not to hear me when I'm frantically hollering things like "stop!", "no that's not food!" and "danger!"

Mix for 3 minutes. After 30 seconds, Hailey claimed her arm was broken and stuck me with the job...

Delicious!

And here it is. A cute little jar of goodness. And here is my photo documentation that one day, one time, I did something "fun" and "educational" with Owen and Hailey, and that we all survived to tell the tale :)