This week

Audrey finished up AWANA – she was in Cubbies and loved every minute of it.  She had a closing ceremony that we went to last Sunday.  It was so precious!

didn’t realize how tall she was compared to others her age ^^

Audrey is still taking swimming lessons twice a week, but lately she has been SO exhausted afterwards.  Her teacher has her swimming the entire 45 minutes and has started introducing the butterfly stroke and back stroke.  She’s my little fishy girl.  She is doing great in swimming lessons and at school.  she brought her BOB books to show and tell and read to the class.  Her teacher loved how intrigued the other kids were at this – she said they watched with dropped jaws.  The principle is coming in the class tomorrow to hear Audrey and her friend Hamad read the BOB books to the class so he can determine whether to purchase sets for the KG1 classes.  I have been giving the teacher stuff weekly to use since she complains that the stuff they have is from like the 80’s and is so outdated.  Since  I have been talking about what most preschoolers are doing back in the States, she wants to raise the bar with the KG1 expectations.

He’s been having a blast lately..   Charles and I agree that overall his behavior has improved tremendously lately. {Compared to the rest of his life}.

I’ve been diving into learning how to prepare other dishes from Middle Eastern countries.  This one is called Shish Taouk and you put your selection of these ingredients inside a pita (similar to filling a soft taco)… chicken is marinated in plain yogurt and Shish Taouk spices and the two side containers are garlic paste (it is amazing) and hummus.  This is Charles’ and my favorite Lebanese dish.  {other stuff in the platter is bell peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, red onion, pickled peppers and pickles}

We made a quick overnight trip to Dubai with my friend Brenda, her husband Tamer, their twin boys and helper: Gina.  Since they have traveled to Dubai many more times than us, they suggested a Hotel/Apartment there and it was amazing!  4 bedrooms, 4 1/2 bathrooms and a huge kitchen, living room and dining room… all for the equivalent of just under $400 US dollars/night – and then we split it.   {We totally could have added even another family comfortably since it was so huge}.  We will definitely plan on returning there again and again.   We had big plans to do Atlantis waterpark and by the time we arrived we simplified down to just the aquarium and no water park – we thought we would do a different (more kid friendly) water park the next morning… we were both super flexible and switched gears again after we saw how kid friendly the hotel pool was and decided that would do just fine, the kids would never know what they missed and we could avoid the INTENSE heat and the headache of the waterpark with 4 kids under 5 years old. smart, very smart.   So we started out at Atlantis, Dubai: The Lost Chambers Aquarium

my sweet sweet sweet little girl… WHEN oh when did she get this old?!  She is doing so well here and has made some precious friends in the neighborhood. She has hit the stage where she will sit and color and draw for hours and hours. She is such a good girl!

Me and Brenda ^  she is just great! I’m so thankful for her friendship!  We get together a few times a week – I love the fact I can call her up and say, “I’m bored, we’re coming over” and it is fine… It doesn’t hurt either that she always has some yummy Egyptian dish in the fridge! 

The aquarium was really great – the kids loved it!  Will hadn’t napped yet at this point, so we headed to the hotel where he napped and we gawked over the views, threw in a Jack Johnson CD and just hung out and relaxed.. Charles, Tamer, Brenda and I went out to eat with Tamer’s friends that live here… no pictures :(  We enjoyed a great dinner at an Argentina Restaurant – I had the most fabulous steak… first one since we’ve been here and it was incredible. they put all these different salts and sauces on our plates for us to dip the meat into.. I even had volcano salt – which was black.  however, they had entire goats on the menu which made me want to gag since they were spinning around on a giant rotisserie inside the glassed in kitchen.. yuck.  even still, the place was amazing, great low key live music and atmosphere.. We had a ball and can’t believe how good the kids were the entire time– they all played wonderfully together.. it was truly awesome.

This was the living room view of the water

I would be willing to wash dishes here ^

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Audrey and Will sliding in the hotel pool this morning

Will is about to take over this blog post.. he is just so delicious!

look how white the bottoms of his feet are compared to his legs.. LOL

Still cute when he is grumpy ^  Props to Will for being such a trooper!  We didn’t put him down for a nap either day, we just went until he fell asleep – a risky move with this one, but we took our chances and he surprised us and hung in there really well.

We had to sneak him in to Ski Dubai as a three year old – no one asked questions and he LOVED the snow and all the fun bobsled and inner tube rides they had  - I decided not to take the camera in so that I could just play mom and not photographer for once. ha.  This was Espy’s very first time to see snow and I loved that we could provide that experience for her.  She was so appreciative and told me that she saw snow on the TV before, but didn’t believe it was real until now.  This was also only her 2nd hotel stay. ever. the last one was in 2006 and it was in a regular standard hotel room.  We tried to explain to her that we don’t normally stay in fancy places like this... She and the other helper, Gina were so funny, you could tell they felt special and as they said, “we are so very social in this nice hotel room.”  I think that means “high class??” LOL… priceless.  We were so happy to have her there to help out with the kids! 

just after we left the Mall of the Emirates..  

This is proof we had LOTS of fun!  They slept the entire way and when we got home, Audrey and Will transferred to their beds and napped another hour or so and I even snuck in a nap too!