Happy New Year! I know I am a bit behind on my blog but we have been having so much fun over here! Well, some fun! I'll take you back to just before our shipment arrived, which arrived on December 10th. (Warning this is a long post, sorry)
The girls and I made salt dough handprints...I always like to have a new ornament for the girls each year so that when they are older and want to move on, I can pass down their ornaments for their own tree. I painted them and the girls really loved them. I am going to put a clear coat on them so hopefully they'll stay good and solid and won't break.
Macey got her first busted lip! She fell at school, outside just running I think but it looked pretty bad for a couple of days. This picture was taken to show the flower from our Jasmine tree in her hair, you can see her busted lip, too!
Daddy and his girls, last time they sat in the Aramco chair before it was taken away in preparation of the arrival of our shipment! I have to say a huge thank you to our friends on camp who helped us out watching the girls so that we could get unpacked without them in the way of us or the movers!
This is the Aramco furniture being taken away! Happy to see it go and glad it was here for us to use!
The long awaited shipment has arrived!!! We had 10 crates to unpack. This truck has 2 crates on it.
This was my position for the first part of the unpacking. The guys would walk by, say a number from the box, they were carrying, and I would mark it off the list. This was a way to make sure we had everything that we had shipped! By the way, we were very lucky in two ways. One, the weather was great, windy a little chilly but not steaming hot! Second, we had about 8 or 9 guys to unload us. There is normally 6-7. Which made the unloading and unpack go pretty fast. They arrived at 10:30 and left at 2:30!
The unpacking trash!
The other trucks with more crates!
The workers work really hard and clean up too! This is a roll of trash/packaging materials that they have made a roll out of.
I was eager to get the girls rooms set up so that when they came home they could see their new room! Boy they were so excited to see their room and immediately started jumping on their beds!!!
The day after our shipment arrived we scheduled to have this play set installed in the backyard for the girls. I think we were a little crazy to have this delivered after the exhausting day we had before but luckily we didn't have to put it together! The girls were excited to have their new playground as Caley calls it!
I managed to get a Mommy day in Bahrain without Michael or the girls! I had fun walking around the mall seeing all the Christmas decorations up and hearing Christmas music...something you don't see or hear at the malls in Saudi. I did manage to find these stockings at Pottery Barn, and they were already on sale!!! So I came home and quickly embroidered them! They turned out pretty cute!
In the midst of getting our shipment, unpacking, trying to figure out where things were going to go, Michael's Mom was to arrive. The only problem was that she didn't have her visa and without it she cannot get into Saudi! Well, we managed to get the paperwork to her for her to fill out only to find out that her passport was going expire in eight months! Well a visa cannot be issued if the passport is going to expire in less than nine months. So she found herself at the passport office getting a new passport. Luckily she was able to go to the Dallas office and get one in the same day! She sent off all the paperwork and her new passport to Houston with crossed fingers hoping she would get it in time for her departure! Well miracles happened and she got her passport and her visa with about 48 hours to spare before she left the US! It was a crazy and frantic moment not knowing if she was going to get to come or not!
Sandy arrived at our house at 4 in the morning. We quickly exchanged hugs and went back to bed until the girls woke up. Macey ran straight to her, hugging her and screaming "Gammy, Gammy!" Caley on the other hand wasn't so sure as to what was going on but quickly warmed up to her.
We took Gammy to visit Michael's classroom since he still had to work. Macey is getting better at drawing and writing her name.
Aramco had a Family night at the surf house that we decided to go to. It was fun! They had face painting, henna, hair coloring, music, food...lots of stuff. Here is Macey with her face done!
She also did the henna! She sat so still for this!
Both Sandy and I did the henna, too! This is all three of us!
The night before Christmas we watched Polar Express, hung Santa's magic key, and put cookies, milk and reindeer food out!
Christmas Eve gift, always pajamas just like when I was gowing up!
Santa came!!!
After Christmas we took a little trip to Bahrain. We stayed a couple of nights and are starting to learn our ways around there! They have a yogurt place that is yummy. Here is Caley eating her yogurt!
This girl wakes up with the craziest hair!!!
For some reason I didn't take a lot of pictures in Bahrain guess I was just enjoying myself! We did go see the movie Frozen (AWESOME)! The girls loved the music so much that Daddy download the music from ITunes. Now they can hear the music when ever they want!
We returned home and the girls resumed their normal day of swinging! Gammy did a lot a pushing for them!
Both girls have learned how to ride their bikes! I'm excited to start taking biking trips with them!
We took Gammy to see the ducks!
And then there was New Years! Michael and I stayed up but Gammy just couldn't hang in there and passed out before midnight!
Michael and I managed to squeeze in a trip to Dubai while Sandy was here. She stayed in Saudi with the girls while Michael and I had some away time! I was great to see a new city together! We did a lot while we were there...
Michael with Superman! at the Mall of Emirates.
There happened to be a magazine in our room that had things that were going on in Dubai and I found of that the Michael Jackson Immortal Cirque show was in town. It was 6:20..there was a show at 6:30 and 10:30 so we decide to buy ticket and go! I'm glad we did. Sure cost us a little bit but we would never get to do this if we had the girls with us!
Picture from our seats! Perfect!
This was the VIP seats just in front of us!
The next day we decide to head to the Dubai Mall (World's largest mall!). Our goal was to see Catching Fire! I loved the movie!!! Oh, I do have to say this mall is large that I don't think we saw half of it!
Huge waterfall!
Suzie this is for you! They had a Disney Fashion store. There were no kids sizes only adults!
This mall had a HUGE aquarium in it! This is a panoramic picture but doesn't do justice to the size!
Just outside the mall is the world's tallest building the Burj Khalifa!
We ended up eating near the Burj Khalifa where they had a water fountain show...world's largest water show! It was done by the same person that did the Bellagio water show in Vegas but he did this one bigger! The fountain below can reach 50 stories high! We saw at least 6 of the shows, none of them repeating!
Dubai skyline...
One of the gift's the girls got a Christmas was dance clothes and shoes. Macey is so ready to go back to class!
A little sister love!
We are so blessed to have had Sandy join us this Christmas and New Years! I hope we can do more together here or in another city!
We pray that you 2014 will be one full of memories, great health and lots of love!
The Myers
