Grandma is Great!

We were thrilled to have Ken's mom and his aunt come visit us for a couple weeks. We got the chance to see lots of our favorite sites, as well as do a couple new things. We spent a day in Dubai, riding the water taxis and visiting the souqs. I forgot my camera, and perhaps for the first time truly appreciated how awesome these things called 'smartphones' are! Ken has one from work, so I was still able to get some shots.

Gold souq

Spice souq

Of course, Owen made friends with the first shopowner we stopped at to browse, and walked away with a gift, a container full of camel milk chocolate rocks. He proceeded to guard them jealously the rest of the day, fighting off attempts by his older siblings to eat them. I got an earful about "why does Owen always get free stuff and not us?!" Probably because an 8 year old is just not as cute as a 2 year old, just saying...

We were able to go up to the (almost) top of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. Wow what a sight!

Owen was my self appointed buddy the whole time at the top. I'm not saying I didn't trust those glass windows not to fall out when leaned on by a bouncy little boy, but … we were REALLY high up!

We finished the day with some yummy Mexican food and the fountain show at the mall.

Its nice to be short - you can burrow in between all the crowds of adults, and no one gets mad at you cause you're cute and little!

We also took time to relax at the beach.

We spent one fun day in Al Ain. Here's Owen with his partner in mayhem - well, Owen is the mayhem, she's the disarming face!

At this point, Colby was just starting to get into the whole walking thing. Owen's version of helping Colby walk too often ends with Colby's face meeting the pavement. He's since been relieved of those duties.

As you can see, we hadn't invested in Colby's shoes yet, on account that (a) we weren't sure he was ever going to walk and (b) we were hoping to help him develop the kinds of soles that can walk barefoot on any terrain

The fabulous five

A palm tree oasis is a wonderful place to run loose :)

Balance, careful...

Dr. Suess tree

No shade? No problem!

We stopped at the fort on our way out. Another fun place to run around.

Hailey's favorite part is still the dates. She smiled once, and he kept giving her date after date. At least now, she's old enough to realize you should spit out the pit!

Holding her precious cargo for the drive home.

A visit here wouldn't be complete without a trip to the dunes!

The Sharps also joined us - Colby was trying to debate if it was worth the effort...

Yep! It was :)

We love Grandma! (And Aunt Gene too!)

Dad, making his famous walking tacos

There was also an experiment to see how reheating pizza over the fire would go (it mostly worked!)

Colby was determined to get a closer view, so we decided to help instead of letting him crawl right up to it :)

The night before she left, we opened Grandma's Christmas presents.

Can't wait until we see you again!

A few of my favorite things...

The end of November/beginning of December is a fun time here in the UAE, because of a combination of holidays. We get to celebrate Thanksgiving, then almost immediately jump into National Day celebrations - lots of time off work and school, what's not to like?! As this is my last year celebrating this combo here in country, I thought a lot about things I was grateful for, and tried hard to notice and remember some of the things that make the UAE so, well, UAE… Here's what I came up with:

Thanksgiving - we were lucky enough to have Grandma and Aunt Gene arrive that day, and they got right to work making decorations with the kids. I sure was grateful to have them! Family makes everything better.

We had a lovely dinner full of some of our favorite people, ones who have become our family. This picture cracks me up because everyone looks so natural... [please pay no attention to the fine table settings, I think once I grow up, maybe I will have things like fancy, matching china and serving platters. Until then, ikea paper products rock :)

I'm grateful for the days we have clouds - quite frankly, any change in the weather is a pretty exciting thing around here!

I'm grateful for our health! Just a couple weeks before Thanksgiving, we had a nasty bought of strep run through most of the family. Nothing like a lot of sickness to help you appreciate your health.

I'm thankful for chicken samosas with chocolate milk. Many a day has been saved from utter catastrophe with an 11 pm run to the grocery store behind our house to get our hands on these beauties!

Now for the UAE - there are many things that are different from "home" and they work together to make me smile/sigh in exasperation/laugh/bang my head against the wall. I hope the following pictures are self explanatory - let's say they are things I might not see in Virginia... next to the strawberries

As we were stopped for food at a mall, this band marched right in and started playing the national anthem. Cool.

Why celebrate Black Friday when you can celebrate White Friday?!?

I really have wondered what to call these contraptions - coolest name ever :)

No playing going on here!

I love all of the national pride I see around here during the holiday. I think I need to step up my Fourth of July celebrations!

Happy 44 UAE!

In the Zone

November 19: Each year the local art museum has a few days where they run an art zone for kids. This has quickly become one of our favorite things, so even though Ken wasn't going to be able to come with us, I decided to take the kids. I know, most of you can handle these kinds of things on your own no problem, but I was looking at a day where I: pick the kids up from school (get to the school on time), pump them full of food so they don't complain the whole time (hurriedly eat snacks while sitting in the parked car so it doesn't get too late for us to hit the museum), drive to the museum (if you know me, then you know my sense of direction - hasn't changed. "Mom, are you lost?" is heard on a regular basis in our car). Oh yeah, and make sure there's some fun being had on some level. No problem! This particular day, it seemed to flow just right. I even ran into a friend at the school who was feeling just as wild as I was, so without further ado, the two of us took our 10 kids to the art museum.

I knew it was going to be good when the guy in charge of parking waved me into the special valet lot (super close to the museum) saying "free valet parking if you have children." Check! As we walked in, a swarm of competent women descended on us and quickly tagged each of our children, divided them up by age, then walked them off to different sections of the art zone. EVEN OWEN. That's a big deal folks. (they tried to take Colby, but if I'm not holding a baby in my arms I start to feel a bit naked, so I kept him) When I left, Owen was happily discovering his inner artist, flanked by his own personal assistant ("just to make sure he has help when he needs it," explained the woman in charge. Sweet. Did I mention this is all free??)

My friend and I decided to take the 45 minute guided tour, since it seemed like all the kids were just fine. Ken met up with us (hooray!) and here he is with Colby, where he came to the conclusion that he must be in the wrong business - this piece of art was selling for 3.8 million dollars. All we'd have to do was sell one!

It wasn't too long before I was paged to come rescue a slightly hysterical Owen, who had suddenly realized I left him "alone." I got to see the others in action!

Hailey and Naomi painting their hearts out!

By this point, Colby was playing with dad in the baby corner, surrounded by 6 happy nannies. 

It was then he decided to do something he had been threatening to do for weeks - he took his first steps!  6 of them. Did he take them to his loving mom, or to his encouraging dad? NO! He took them to the nannies, who were singing and cheering him on like you wouldn't believe. This kid is going to have a problem when he comes back to the States and realizes he isn't a rock star… Well, with the attention he gets at home, he may never realize it. I count the outing as a SUCCESS!!