Fun things....  Life updates...

-  Aberly has decided that Daddy is her new favorite play partner.  Although I feel badly for Colin knowing how tiring it is to be "the one" for your child, I am secretly dancing inside getting a break from being "the one" for so very, very long.

-  As children do, they imitate, and being ever eager to learn, Aberly imitates us quite often.  This past weekend we were driving home from a trip to the souk and heard her talking to her baby.  "B  a  b  y..... (totally annoyed voice), don't do that!"  "Don't bonk me!"  "Time out!"  She was also forehead-to-forehead with her baby giving baby very serious eyes while disciplining baby for her naughty actions.  She has also picked up saying "Darn" when frustrated or dropping something.  She has a very distinct annoyed voice.

-  Aberly LOVES having us read books and is always excited when I bring her new books home from the library.

-  We have been in the process with the school for submitting our requests to move next year.  They finally put out the new available units and we went on a house tour last weekend.  We felt like we were on House Hunters International as we toured three different homes.  I totally regret not realizing the opportunity we had at hand and should've totally filmed it and made a mock House Hunters episode with the footage.  Even the other families on tour joked how much the tour was like the show so I know they would've been great at playing along had we brought a video camera.  Oh well.  Anyways, we are hoping to get to live on campus so Aberly has instant access to the playgrounds she loves and can live closer to her friends.  However, we only think there will be one open unit and most likely that will go to another couple with more seniority than us.  We are crossing our fingers the school decides to let us have it or a second unit opens up with someone surprisingly moving off campus.  If not, we will most likely be living on the other side of the highway in a four-plex, but still very close to the school, up on the hill.  It has great views, 5 bedrooms, three levels, and a large shared patio around the building which is walled in for safe playing for Aberly.  However, being on top of a hill, the walk would be very difficult for our nanny to take Aberly to the park.  We will hope for the best!

-  I joined a private Pilates class with some other teachers and moms.  It's been a great class for me to tone up a bit and get some of my muscles back in shape.  We meet once a week.

-  Despite being in a great school with great benefits, we are still hitting that wall where you start to count down to school being over.  I think it's just an universal thing that all teachers and school workers get no matter how good the school.  We are also starting to miss the comforts and ease of home and are itching to get back.  I installed a little "countdown" app on our laptop today so we could have it ticking away and tracking how many days till we come home.  47!

-  Aberly has once again changed overnight and has started speaking in much more full sentences.  Instead of "mommy work?"  she would now say "mommy going to work now?"  It's been fun to hear all the new things coming out of her mouth.  She also has many "favorites" and lets us know whenever we come across it.  Milk, a certain toy, a certain book, clothing item, and on and on. 


Okay, I think that is about it.  Colin did have a crazy adventure with his eye but I will let him write about that one.  He promises to blog about that within the week.

Oh, P.S.  I broke our camera.  Well, technically, the shutter button popped off on it's own and I did my best to get it back in with a touch of glue but that permanently wrecked it....  So no new pictures at the moment.  We do have some on Colin's smartphone and I'll try to get those loaded soon.

All our best!
 

You are so full of...

Crap! 

Yup, that's what they bad boys are full of!

Okay, so as far as I know, there are no sewer systems in place here in Oman like that in America.  All our sewage and well, crap, goes into big tanks under our homes and when they are full, these trucks come around and suck it up!

It's gross, I know.  Not the kind of blog post you expected from me by any means, but, here it is.  It's a reality of life here in Oman and my job (I'd like to think so) is to continue to educate friends and family back home on how "life" runs here.  (Runs... no pun intended)

Okay, so here in Oman, every building and residence has metal squares around it in the pavers and cement (like manholes in the states).   Underneath these square "lids", as far as I can ascertain, are LARGE pits/tanks that hold all the waste water that come out of the home/building.  Once it's full, the trucks come around and literally suck it out with a big tube.  The tube looks like a vacuum tube only a whole lot bigger.  You can sorta see that in the first picture.  Two guys work the truck.  One drives and positions, the other gets out and opens the manhole, sticks the tube into the muck, and gives the signal to start sucking. 

When a poopy truck is around ( yes, that is what we lovingly call them here), you don't want to be nearby or downwind.  It smells like an outhouse.  Period.  Being a large school, TAISM gets their tanks sucked out a couple times a week, and to my luck, it often is being done around noon when I walk to work.  And in addition to my luck, the wind always seems to be blowing towards me.  It's not a pleasant walk once I get close to the school.  I plug my nose and trudge on.

The kids all know what these trucks are quickly.  The trucks come around frequently enough and they are curious.  "Poopy trucks" is what they learn.  Yellow trucks are poopy trucks.  Blue trucks that look identical are water trucks.  Blue = pure.  Yellow = tainted.

Where all our crap goes after being sucked up, I'm not exactly sure.  Well, I know they go to a sewage treatment plant, but where those are, I don't know.  And with how big this city is and with how many poopy trucks are on the road, I imagine there has to be numerous sewage treatment plants, or a really big one. 

Bleah, I prefer the US method.  However, I recognize that with all the hard ground here full of compacted rocks, a huge sewer system is not an easy thing to install. 

So I will continue to hold my breath and look the other way when the yellow trucks do their duty.  (Okay, that pun was intended!)

Better late than never... Easter!

Of all the holidays we've celebrated here, Easter felt the most "weird".  Not bad weird, just weird.  I have my three reasons I feel like this happened:

1.  We were so blessed to be surrounded by family for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and this holiday, we were not (we didn't expected anyone, of course).  
2.  I had no Easter supplies for decorating.  Not like I did much at home, but the stores didn't carry much and most of their stuff came in right before Easter.  I was able to get Aberly a small Easter basket to fill with a few goodies.
3.   I think it also had to do with the fact that for the first time in my life, I was in charge of Easter.  I've always had my mom or another family member take care of Easter.  Granted I did put together a little Easter basket for Aberly last year, but otherwise, we were at my parents' house along with Colin's family.  Someone else has always made me Easter breakfast or brunch.  Someone else has put on the Easter Egg hunt.  This year, I was in charge. 

With Easter falling during Spring Break here, there weren't as many people around, so we decided to just do Easter morning as a family together.  I put together a brunch menu of Tex-Mex Stratta, blueberry muffins (out of a box, I'll admit, but I needed to use it), and fruit salad.  It turned out pretty good, but comparing my meal to what my own mom or mother-in-law would do, it felt pretty paltry.  My mom makes an amazing coffee cake that was an Easter staple (well, a staple at pretty much any special breakfast) and my mother-in-law can pretty much make any amazing breakfast food.  I am building my experience. 

We were woken up around 6:30 hearing a sweet little voice in the living room saying "Want that one, want that one" over and over.  Aberly, who normally comes in to our room first when she wakes up, had decided to go out to the living room and spotted her basket perched up on the hutch.  So, we rolled out of bed, grabbed the camera, and took down her Easter basket.  We had let her know the day before that Easter was coming and that the Easter Bunny might bring her treats.  This may have played in to her decision to go to the living room that morning.  Her basket contained three eggs with candy, a new spray bottle for playing outside, a stretchy frog, and a toy drill.  Yes, a toy drill.  She always loves playing with them at all her friends' houses. 

After a quick shower and change, we were dressed for church at 8:30.  Since Friday is the holy day here, having a church service on Sunday for the official date of Easter was great.  It was a small service since many people were at work or had attended the 5:30 sunrise service (not something we would've made it to!).  Afterwards, with grumbling stomachs from only having a small breakfast, we headed right home to get the aforementioned brunch prepared.  We did end up sharing our brunch with our neighbor, Robert, who had just gotten back from his Spring Break trip and had no food in his house.  He was thrilled to have a warm meal and listening ears about his trip around Europe.

Aberly headed down for her nap while I did some clean up and then prepped the plastic Easter Eggs for the hunt I had organized with some of the other TAISM teacher families.  It wasn't much, just a get together on campus where we all brought an appetizer to share (we met at 4:00) and eggs to contribute to the hunt, but I got lots of thanks for the other families for putting something together so we could all have fun and let the kids have a real egg hunt.  It felt so nice to know my efforts were appreciated and mostly, it was just so nice to have a little celebration on Easter with friends since we weren't with family.  Our friends here are our extended "family" here!

Overall, Easter was a blessing and we were grateful to still get to celebrate our Savior's resurrection and rejoice in the hope we have in Him.

Spring Break

The last week has been our Spring Break and it has been a well deserved rest.  Well, a rest from work.  Aberly still keeps us working and up.  I think all parents can say how unbelievable it is at times how much energy their children have.  It seems never ending sometimes.  Knowing this energy laden and busy child would go bonkers at home, and in turn making us go bonkers, we decided to take two little family trips.  The first was camping at Fins beach and the second was to a local resort for two nights. 

Camping was pretty good.  Aberly decided going to sleep that night was something to fight tooth and nail, but besides that, it was good.  Our friends Darcy and Ammar joined us with their son Sammie (who I might add has the same personality as Aberly so they drove each other nuts at times) and we had a great evening letting the kids play, having dinner around a charcoal campfire (for BBQing dinner meat) and then a fun morning playing in the ocean.  It ended up being a wildlife adventure as well as we were visited by a donkey, camel, and a couple of Egyptian vultures which are about the size of a hawk and actually kinda pretty.  The weather was beautiful.  Sunny but with a nice ocean breeze so it never felt too hot.  The ocean was calm and the sand filled with shells for me to find.  Yes, another collection to go with my rock collection, of course.  We feared not being able to leave as Darcy and Ammar's battery was dead, but luckily we got them jumped and we all headed out around 10:00.  When you are up at 5:50 (Aberly sees the sun is shining so that must mean it's time to get up), that is long enough to stay in the morning. 

After a day to get cleaned up and re-packed, we headed to a new resort called Millenium about an hour away up the coast.  It was a pretty swanky full service resort.  We ended up there only because they had a buy 1 get 1 free coupon for two nights in the Entertainer (yes, they have those here which is awesome) along with buy 1 get 1 free for their restaurants.  We suddenly could afford this trip!  We stayed in a one bedroom apartment with full living room, kitchen, and two bathrooms.  I also will add that this hotel room was nicer than our current home in decor and design.  It overlooked the ocean and had two private patios.  We spent our days playing on the beach (also loaded with shells for me to find) and swimming in the infinity pools.  Aberly had a blast since she now understands what her water wings do for her.  She swam across the pool like a champ, although it took her a 1/2 hour.  She demanded we did not help or push her, so that impacted her speed just a bit.  But we were pretty darn proud of our big girl being a big swimmer.  The pools also had these "table shelves" off the sides of the pools that came to about a few inches below the water level which made for a perfect play space when she wanted to sit and splash around.  The restaurant buffet dinners were fabulous (Indian and then Southeast Asian nights) and the food quality deserved a higher label than "buffet".  The waitresses were the sweetest and loved Aberly.  They made her straw flowers. 

 

 

And of course, to continue the "getting free things cause I'm cute" streak, Aberly scored a stuffed teddy bear from the gift shop before we left.  Sigh.  What was the funniest about this one is that it was the lady working for the hotel gift shop.  It wasn't even her shop!  Usually it's a gift from the person who owns the shop.  Apparently giving away something free to a cute child is okay with the hotel or else she wouldn't have done so.  Aberly is doing to be darn disappointed when she can't walk about of the store with something for free!  LOL  Actually, this only happens once every few months so I don't think she really thinks it will happen all of the time.  We always try to say no but you know you can't win with the people here, so after a few "oh no's" and "you shouldn't", you secede and say your thank you's and "you're too kind's".  I actually think it would be offensive if we didn't take the gifts. 

Today has been a low-key day.  I shopped to re-stock our near empty fridge while Colin and Aberly went to the park.  Aberly and Colin are now both taking naps while I blog and catch up on emails.  Tonight I do get my last Spring Break hurrah by going to the ballet at the Opera House with a bunch of gals from work.  It is "Cinderella" and I'm pretty jazzed for a fancy night out with the girls. 

After that, we have two more days to relax before school is back in session and we have the long haul till the end of the school year and heading back for the summer.  We know it will fly by.  Oh, before that, we do get to celebrate Easter as a family in the morning and then I have helped organize a small Easter get together in the late afternoon for families to share some appetizers and let the little kids have an egg hunt.  It feels weird to have Easter fall during the work week here (Sunday is like a Tuesday in the states) but at least the school is giving us the day off and there is a special church service that morning at 8:30.  We will do our best to give Aberly a joyful holiday!

Happy Spring Break to you all!