Thursday, October 25, 2007

Mischievous Little Drew

My little Drewster (as I call him) has some favorite pastimes these days, some of which are a little bit mischievous. Here they are:

1. Clearing all of the books off of the shelves. This is a fun game. He does this many times a day, only because I am crazy enough to put the books back on.

2. Climbing the stairs. This is the first time I have had a climber in a house with stairs. Not very fun (for me). I've tried to find a gate, but I haven't found one that will work. At the bottom of the stairs we have a round metal pole on one side and our lovely concrete wall (all of the houses here are solid concrete) on the other. Drilling into the wall to install one of those swinging gates is kind of out of the question. We've tried our putting our kitchen chairs in the way, but he just shoves them aside. Any ideas out there? Let me know.

3. This is Drew's favorite. When Cole is at school, he steals his sacred blanket (or what is left of it) and grabs one of it's "tentacles" to hold while he sucks his thumb. Drew has to have something in his hand while he sucks his thumb. He's not too picky though. I've seen him use toilet paper, paper towels and plastic shopping bags (I know, suffocation hazard), just to name a few.

Even with all of this naughtiness, we still love him tons.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Eid Mubarak

Eid is the celebratory period immediately following Ramadan. The kids got 11 days off school and Nick got a nice 4 day weekend. The holiday is comparable to Thanksgiving in that people generally spend a lot of time with their families and even more time at the malls shopping. Many of the expats use the weekend to explore the coastal resorts or Oman but we were too late in the game to get a reservation anywhere decent so we ended up exploring Al Ain - a small town about 90 minutes from Dubai. Al Ain is a relatively modern town with plenty of western influence but it is more Arab than Dubai. It was much more like the Middle East that we envisioned when we first considered moving over here. There are even a few restaurants in town that serve only Emiratis.

We started off by visiting the Palace Museum...basically an old Arab ranch that has been kept relatively intact. The grounds were really pretty and there was a nice display of paintings of all of the local rulers...or as I call them "Rosy's boyfriends."

The boys had a great time exploring all of the different rooms and trying out the couches on the floor. They were also particularly fond of the gun and sword displays.

Many of the rooms had bars in the windows so the boys had fun pretending to be in jail.

After the museum we drove to the top Jebel Hafeet, at 4,300 ft. it is of one of the UAE's tallest peaks. There were a lot of people at the top and we were lucky enough to park next to a bus full of locals who were proudly dancing to some really bad music. It was quite entertaining. Although it was nothing like the mountains back home it was nice to be at elevation again.

Bret's 7th Birthday


How can we have a 7 year old??? Sadly, the day was very uneventful. Bret took pumpkin shaped sugar cookies to school to share with all of his friends. That night we celebrated as a family with the obligatory cake and presents. He got nearly everything he asked for: an RC helicopter, a game for his Wii, a game for his PS2, a game for his game boy (notice a trend?), and a board game. He really wanted Guitar Hero (thanks Joe) but unfortunately the format of the games here is completely different from those in the States and it is difficult to find the newer ones. So, if anyone is planning a trip to Dubai I'll pay top dollar for a NTSC version of Guitar Hero.


Thursday, October 4, 2007

Drew's First Birthday

Drew is 1! We can't believe it. Our celebration was small. We had cake and presents a couple days early because Nick had to go out of town. That was pretty much it. Here are some pictures.


Drew looking very excited about his presents.



Bret and Cole "help" with opening the presents.



Drew playing with a new toy.



Drew on his new Nemo ride-on toy.


He likes it.



Everyone but Drew blowing out his candle.



Drew is not so sure about this cake thing.




He's still not sure about it.



Drew finally decides that cake really isn't too bad.



Cole and Bret eating their cake.