Trial and Error That's Life, Though!

 

Last Thursday we decide to hop in a cab and head to Bahrain. It was our first trip out of Saudi! We were excited about getting out and exploring! In hindsight we probably should have just stayed home! Michael had been sick and by the end of the trip he was miserable. Our first stop was the Seef Mall. There they had these decorated camels. We only took one picture but the girls thought they were neat!



 

Our girls now associate shopping with getting doughnuts! Probably not a good thing but we don't get them very often. They sure do love them!!

We were able to pick up a few things, nothing too big. We got Macey her Halloween costume...a witch! B the end of the trip we just wanted to get home. It took over 2 hours to cross back into Saudi. It was a bit strange just sitting there... At times when no one was moving one person would start honking and others would follow. This happened at least 5 different times. I guess it was a way of yelling through the car!!! The funny part of the trip was the girls. Both of them had gas and seemed to have their own little contest going on. I was a bit embarrassed but just laughed it off. The driver kept say. "No problem, mama!" and would giggle.

 

 Sand, Sand and more sand. Over the past week we have been going for walks down at the beach. We always come back full of sand! The weather has gotten to be so nice in the evenings!

 Caley is in heaven. She would play in the sand all day long if we let her!

 As I said the weather has been so nice that the girls are asking to have picnics out on the patio. I wish we had our outdoor furniture! It's on its way!

 

This week has been a trial and error with our food. We are trying new things out. The following is butternut squash with black beans, rice and cilantro. I made homemade tortillas and then we stuffed the mixing inside. So good!!!! Caley liked it and Macey had nothing to do with it! Here is the receipe link.

http://ohsheglows.com/2011/10/24/black-bean-and-butternut-squash-burritos/

 

The next night I made eggplant. I used mayo to coat the eggplant and then coated in a bread crumb mixture that had garlic, Italian seasoning and pepper in it. Macey LOVED this and ate at least 7 slice herself! Caley on the other hand didn't like it so much. 

 On Wednesday we got three boxes from the states! Inside it was Caley's Halloween costume. She was so excited to see her Doc McStuffins outfit!

 

 

 

Wednesday night I refused to cook dinner and wanted to eat out! We went to the dinning hall and picked up two budget meals, some fried fish for the girls, hummus and pita bread, drinks for everyone and it only cost 40 riyal (about $11). We then took the food out to the patio and had a nice dinner outside listening to the waves crash into the shore. So blessed!! By the way I was wearing jeans and a 3/4 sleeve shirt and was a bit chilled!

 



 Macey had an ice cream and them started making silly faces.

 Today I used the other butternut squash and made this yummy soup. I didn't follow the recipe to the T, one because I didn't have all the ingredients but it was still yummy. Here is the link for this recipe!

http://www.chow.com/recipes/30466-roasted-butternut-squash-soup

 

 

 

As’salam Alikum ~ Peace be with you!

The Myers



Quack, Quack

Well first I must apologize for not posting to the blog last week. I don’t even have a good excuse, I was being lazy! I guess we all need that from time to time. Speaking about being lazy, Michael has this week off because of Eid (Muslim celebration) and we haven’t done much of anything. Poor Michael has dealing with being sick, more allergies than anything else but he is also having lots of sinus pressure which is no fun! We’ve stayed inside for the most part playing with the girls, watching movies and relaxing!

I'll go back to last week and talk about some of the week’s activities. The girls and I took a stroll not to far from our house to feed the ducks! That’s right you read that correctly! We have ducks here on camp. They are very friendly and are not aggressive at all. They loved us feeding them!  Here are some pics. 

 

On the way back we took some pictures in front of the Golf House where there is a huge golf ball! The girls loved it!

 

I did some baking last week. I made oatmeal raisin cookies that were the bomb! I mean they were great! So much so I ended up making them again to take to a dinner at a friend’s house. I didn’t eat too many! Michael took some to school as well! Here is the recipe: http://www.quakeroats.com/cooking-and-recipe/vanishing-oatmeal-raisin-cookies.aspx

 

While we were at our friend’s house for dinner the girls and Liam decided to play with the doggie door! It was so funny watching them go back and forth through the doggie door!

 

We celebrated Macey’s adoption day October 12, by going to the Hobby Farm for breakfast. The girls love going there. One, because sometimes they get to see horses but mostly because they get to watch a movie in front of a TV (which is in one room and the adults can sit in the other and watch through a window) and eat their food! Both kids and parents are both happy!!! When then ventured back to the house to watch another movie and just relax the rest of the day!

 

On Tuesday the girls and I did some crafting! Well since we only have some paper, glue and scissors we made a pumpkin and a multi-eyed monster for Halloween! We don’t have any real pumpkins that I know of around here so these pumpkins will have to do!

 

Tomorrow we will travel to Bahrain for the day! We are excited about this since we didn’t think we would get to go. We originally thought about going to Paris over this break which we thankfully didn’t book any tickets for because we hadn’t gotten our visas yet. On Thursday, last week Michael got word that no more visas would be processed because it was too close to Eid (that was from the person in charge of processes them at 1:00 Wednesday). So we just sucked up and said we will do things around here. On Sunday, when Michael went to work, he got a call saying that his visa was on it’s way from Dhahran and would arrive around 2:30 in the afternoon! YEA!!!!!! So tomorrow we will just take a day trip there and take in Bahrain!

Just have to brag a little on Caley. She has turned a corner in the potty training world and is now asking or telling us that she needs to go to the bathroom. Major improvement from where we were when got to Saudi. Which I understand was a huge change for her plus we were being a little lazy and putting her in pull-up. But is so proud of herself and I just pray that we soon will have two potty trained girls. Caley had her first accident in three days so that is pretty good!

Other pictures I took this week:

Sandy faced girl. A day we went to the park!

Sister Love, Melts my heart!!!

Macey has become quite good at making faces!

As’salam Alikum ~ Peace be with you!

The Myers

 

It's a Learning Game

On Saturday, Caley and I took the shoppers bus to the mall. We really didn’t need much but it was Mommy and Caley time. I didn’t take the stroller because I had taken a big bag and a little trolley for the bag to put the stuff in so that I didn’t have to carry it all. At first we hung out with Miguel, Sarah and Liam. Ikea has breakfast so a lot of people eat at Ikea while they wait for other stores to open. We sat with our friends while they ate breakfast (we had already eaten, but next time we will try the Ikea breakfast! I helped out our friends while they shopped for a couch at Ikea. Then Caley and I ventured off and did some shopping at the grocery store and office supply store. Caley was a trooper and did all the walking with hardly any complaints! Although bribery with a doughnut sure does work!!! We had a great time together and enjoyed our alone time!

Caley eating her pizza!

Caley and Liam watching the IPad

On Sunday I started taking an Arabic conversational class. Interesting to say the least and I have a few things down but with my Texan twang I’m sure I’m saying things wrong!!! Sabah Alkhair means “Good Moring” and you reply Sabah AlNour… Keef Halic means, “How are you” But the best part is learning that if you speak to a lady you say it this way, to a man another way and yet to a group another way! YIKES!!!! I have my notes in my purse so that I can check before I decide to try something out! I attended two classes and will attend two more next week. It’s been fun so far. Although you don’t need to know much Arabic here because most people speak English!

I also decided Sunday that Caley and I would head to the grocery story (to get things I couldn’t get on Saturday) after I took Macey to school. I went to the commissary to check mail first and was going to call a taxi only to find out that the phone I had didn’t have the number in it. So I drove back home looked all over for the number at the house plus also look for my iPhone which had the number in it. Well never found my phone till later in the day which one of the girls had put it in one of my dresser drawers….Finally find the number, called it and then they said there is no taxi…..should have stopped right there but he said to call in 10 minutes so I did. They sent one out and Caley and I were on a mission to get food! We go in start in the produce section get lots of fruits and veggies. Got some bread and then headed to the deli counter. While we were there the lights went off. No big deal, nobody said anything and we continue our shopping. I go to check out, called the taxi to come and get me thinking that when I’m finished checking out they would be there. BUT…there was no one at the registers…. A guy comes up and says It is break time and it would be at least 15 minutes. What??? I didn’t have that kind of time, I needed to get back unload groceries and then run and pick up Macey from school. So the guy then tells me 10 minutes. I told him I couldn’t wait and that my taxi was on the way. He then says 5 minutes. I said no again and left to leave the store only to find the door locked and my taxi outside. The same guy gets the keys and we see the taxi leave but was able to get out to wave the taxi down. I apologized to him because I left a very full cart of groceries sitting at the counter. Needless to say I need to check the prayer times although I was in that store for some time and nobody said anything but the lights did go off (should have been my clue). Oh the joy of living in the land of sand!!!!

Our car is defiantly testing us. It died on me after my second Arabic class and luckily it was close to lunch time so Michael’s principal drove him over to jump the car. We know that there is something draining the battery but Michael can’t really test it out because he doesn’t have his stuff here. So in the mean time we were pulling a fuse in and out to stop a fan that was coming on when the car was shut off. But we stopped doing that after it died on us again and now we are just disconnecting the battery. Oh the car saga but hey we paid cash for the car and will be able to do repairs as soon as Michael’s tools come in!

We keep learning the process of how things work around here. We have to just bite the bullet and realize that things happen in their own time and not in our time! “In Shalala! As they say here, “God willing!” Our most recent issue is getting the girl’s and I’s igamas  (residence cards). We have to have these items before we can submit our multi entry/exit visas. So, we were hoping to be able to go to Bahrain over the next break which is on Thursday October 10^th and goes until October 19^th. It looks like we will be stuck here! Boo!!!! Unless a miracle happens! But we won’t be the only ones left behind because it seems that half of the new hire families got their stuff and the rest didn’t. And because I am not working I am not at the top of the priority…We will wait and see!

The mom and tots group went well this week. I read The Very Hungary Caterpillar then we made caterpillars. We will read the story again next week and make butterflies! Overall it was fun and the Mom’s enjoyed it to!

The girls got invited to their first birthday party this week and had a blast playing with the other kids, eating pizza, popcorn and cake! They even bobbed for apples which didn’t really turn out very well so they just picked up the apple instead of getting it in their mouth.  The party was a Halloween themed party. I wished I would have gotten a picture of the girls in their outfits. I told them to pick something from their dress-up box. Both pick out their Superman/girl cape. Macey chose to wear her cowboy boots and Caley chose her Minnie Mouse dress-up shoes/heals! They were a sight but cute!

A funny story from Caley…She has this little toy, I think it goes to a Minnie Mouse toy, smaller than a dime purse looking thing. Any ways she tells Michael and I that she can’t find it in her bed. She went to sleep with it during nap time, don’t worry I was laying with her. Any ways she tells us it is her Pixie Dust! I found it in her bed and Michael tells her to put some on her head. She looked at Michael and said in her very sweet voice, “It’s only for emergencies, Daddy!”  Oh she is so serious sometimes!!! But makes us laugh!

Bonus:

Michael thinks that this must be a baby snake, looks like a worm, but moves like a snake. Girls got a kick out of watching it!

 

 



Until next time be blessed!

As’salam Alikum ~ Peace be with you!

The Myers