Oman Part 1

We have been planning this particular trip to Oman for quite a while, so we've really been looking forward to it! The school was nice enough to give the kids almost a week off school between conferences and holidays, so we decided to take advantage of the moment. We also conned Grandpa, Ken's cousin Genevieve, and our friends the Robertsons to come with us, so we had the unprecedented luxury of an almost equal adult to kid ration - 6 adults to 7 kids. Not too shabby!

I knew the trip was going to be awesome when we spotted these camels in the back of a truck - the black camel kept biting the others, so one of them decided to fight back. Beginning of the best road trip ever :)

We left in the early afternoon, and our plan was to camp that night, just past the border. Big mistake - it was still pretty hot, and I forgot what camping with Owen and Colby is like. Let's just say we almost didn't make it through the first night of our "vacation." BUT, as you will see, our accommodations only went uphill from that night…

Looks kind of nice in an African savanna kind of way, right? At least, that is what I told myself. This is right before the sun came up.

This is the face of a man who got 3 hours of sleep all night. I refuse to show what my face looked like after the same amount of sleep, thanks to Owen. It did NOT look this serene though :)

Highlight of camping: we get in the car to leave. Good riddance. When we are just 2 minutes out, Owen says "Shoes mom! No shoes!" Sure enough, the kid's ONLY pair of shoes are not on his feet. So, we find a spot to make a u-turn (Oman, like the UAE, does not believe in left hand turns) and try to find our camping spot. When we find our dirt patch again, Ken heads out (without much optimism) to locate the precious flip flops. I suddenly see Will shoot out of the other car. He runs to a random spot, starts digging, and voila! He holds up the shoes! I'm cheering for him, I'm so happy. When I ask him (in amazement) how he possibly knew where to look, he casually tells me, "Oh, I buried them there." WHAT?!? Why on earth?!? His answer - Owen asked him to. Wonderful.

We decided to check out the sights in Sohar before continuing on to our destination, so we stopped at the fort. (this is Grandpa's picture, but I didn't get one so I'm using his!)

The fort was closed, but that didn't stop the kids from finding things to climb on and see!

This is the face of the child who stayed up all night. Super cute, and super tired!

We took a quick walk along the beach

While we were there, Colby showed us a new talent - standing unassisted! The sheer excitement of what he was doing would always make him fall over after a few seconds.

We pressed onward to Sur, where our hotel was. We stopped to have a campfire dinner along the way. We had forgotten matches, and it was really windy, so the campfire was a bust, but the scenery at the spot we stopped was spectacular. Truly one of the prettiest things I've ever seen. AND, we were there right at sunset, every photographer's dream lighting :)

We arrived at our hotel apartment. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't really be much to write home about. After a night of camping though, it seemed like a luxury hotel! With toilets, hot showers, AC, and separate rooms, we slept much better :)