Last night, the power went out.  It was good and bad at the same time.

We've had a few power outages before.  One occurred about a month after living here, right after getting up.  It was out for only a half hour.   Our neighbor downstairs assured us that outages were somewhat typical and as long as the school wasn't affected, the power should be on shortly.  If the school is affected, it might be awhile.  Since then, the other outages have occurred when we weren't home.  We would just come back to find out clocks flashing.

We've also lost power due to using too much power.  I've blown the circuit a few times.  Proudly, as a "know-how wife" (well, I like to think of myself this way), I opened the fuse box and fixed the switches.  One time we kept losing power because we had an electrical short in our water heater so anytime we turned it on, all our power went out. 

Well, last night, the power went out around 6:00.  And it stayed out.  Then we heard the school was affected.  Not good news.  So, we decided to take a walk and hoped it would come back on soon.  We stopped at the Herrera's and played until 7:30.  By that time, it was dark out so the houses were also dark.  The kids played by candle light.  Aberly and I finally headed home.  Colin had our camping lantern on and we lit all our candles.  We got Aberly ready for bed but the reality was settling in.  This might be while and it was getting uncomfortably warm in our house.

I began to worry about our fridge.  We moved some things to the freezer, gave Aberly more bedtime milk than usual, and ate the last Popsicle.  Colin and I each mixed up a cocktail to enjoy with our slowly melting ice cubes.  We put Aberly to bed and got out the cribbage set.  Aberly quickly got back up to hang on the couch with us.  She is used to sleeping with her AC on and I think it threw her for a loop to have that soft sound missing.  Plus she was focused on the idea that the workers were going to fix the lights and I think that meant in her mind that they were coming to our house, so she was waiting for them to show up. 

Colin and I started out game.  Aberly got out her flashcards to "play cards" too.  We lounged in our underwear in the ever increasing heat, fantasizing of when the power would come back on.  We put Aberly to bed once more as her yawns increased.  We gave her a sippy cup with water that had an ice cube in it (her request) and she stayed in bed. 

After I handily won our game of cribbage (I admittedly got a disproportionate amount of good hands compared to Colin), we sat down next to each other on the couch.  Cuddle?  No way, it was too hot. "Don't touch me" Colin warned, when I poked his hand.  I looked up at the wall scone and was  literally thinking, "The power better come on soon or we won't be sleeping well at all tonight" and the power came back on.  We heard Aberly yell from her room "AC on!".  We went in to give her last kisses ("my AC on, Daddy Mommy AC on, living room AC on!") and she was out like a light (har har). 

Yeah, so the bad part of the power being out was the heat.  It was very uncomfortable.   May is a hot time of the year.  It was 91 outside at 8:30 PM and it stays that way all night.  Our walls radiate that heat.  You can touch the walls and it's warm. 

But the good part of it was that we had no electronics to distract us.  No Facebook or email to steal our attentions.  Colin and I tend to zone out after Aberly goes to bed at night so this forced us to find other entertainment.  Well, Colin may not agree that it was that entertaining since he got smacked at Cribbage.  In his words, "it's good this board doesn't have a skunk line".  But all in all, it was a fun night.  And it also gave me something to blog about. 

Here are a few fun pictures from the past couple of weeks:

 Taking a dip in her little pool outside.  She loves her goggles!

 Relaxing with a snack with Isla after school pool swimming.

 Playing in the ball pit at Adventure Zone with a little girl.

 Riding the big slide with daddy.  She quickly started doing it on her own.

 Watching the hot air balloon display at the Children's Museum.

 Trying to jump as swiftly as a cat...

 Aberly's FAVORITE display at the Children's Museum.  Wind tunnel!

Cheers and Jeers!

Life has been rolling along as usual since our last blog post with a few things to share.   For a change of style, we'll do a "cheers and jeers".

Cheers!  We got to do another house tour to look for any issues that needed attention before moving in June.  We should be able to do the move before we come back home since the lease starts June 1st which will be so nice to have all that done and out of the way before coming back in August.  Our neighbors-to-be are all excited like us to get moved in and start living together in our "compound".  We are thinking of calling it "The Hills".  I was able to get a few pictures of it for your viewing pleasure:

 Entry into living room with lovely chandeliers (one on front end too)

 LARGE kitchen with great lighting and view to patio

 Don't you wish you had these light fixtures (luckily just in two bedrooms)?

 Master bedroom with a view!

 Master bath.  A bathtub.  I am so very happy.

 One of six bathrooms in our house (counting master).

 View off roof patio towards the mountains

View straight off patio towards city.  The view at night will be beautiful!

Jeers...  The "heat" has decended in the last week and with the temperature hovering right at 100 F and 50%+ humidity, it feels a bit uncomfortable to be outside too long.  Today at the pool, I laid in the sun for a few minutes and it quickly felt like someone was pressing hot planks along my legs, and that was the side facing up, I add!  Not the side down on the ground.  Our car feels like a sauna each time we open it and we have to be careful where we touch so we don't burn ourselves on a red-hot buckle or surface.  We definitely need to get a window shade.

Cheers!  Colin and I got out for a date night last night at the MEA (American club) where they were throwing a 70's and 80's party.  Some people got pretty decked out in costume and it was fun to see.  It was fun to spend time with friends from work and have a night out.

Jeers...  Our wonderful nanny will not be continuing on with us next year.  As much as she would like to stay with us, our new location makes things a bit harder for her and her daughters also want her to continue working part time jobs so she can be more flexible in her travel, especially with grandchildren and her own aging mother back in the Philippines.  We absolutely understand but will miss her.  Aberly loves her and she is amazing with all of her skills and abilities.  We hope to find someone close to as good as her!

Cheers!  While we slept, literally, our house was packed up and moved into storage this past weekend.  With time on his hands in the retired life, my dad helped to organize it all and find out all the information we needed.  We were blessed by other family members and friends who pitched in to get the job done while we were over here in Oman.  Our wonderful tenants, Jon and LaDessa, will be moving in on the 19th of this month, and we are so happy to have them in our home.

Jeers...  After getting the sprinkler system pipes open and running after the move, our valves decided to be naughty and stayed open in the back preventing the sprinklers from shutting off when the timer went off, flooding our back neighbor's yard.  Oops.  Luckily that has all been fixed now.

Cheers!  To our smarty pants daughter's ever learning brain and amazing us with all her antics.  She is pretty much speaking in full sentences and can count to twenty (most of the time).  She likes singing songs and has a new toy microphone to amplify her voice.  She also has become a little fish and loves swimming with her water wings and goggles.  We were amazed today to watch her put her face under for at least 5 seconds at a time while she picked up toys from the pool floor.  We also went under water together and looked at each other through goggles.  We have no doubt she'll be close to swimming on her own by the end of the summer.

Jeers...  Oman traffic and road construction.  A never ending issue and bane of our driving existence.  You would think that having four lanes suddenly go down to two lanes, or two lanes turning at an intersection go into a one lane on the other side, would be an obvious thing to try to avoid.  Not so much.


Cheers!  To Colin's healed eye (pretty much).  Since he didn't end up blogging about it despite his promise (tsk, tsk), the summary is that he got something in his eye during Spring Break and in a freak chance, the item got stuck under his contact and lodged into the membrane of the eye slowly getting absorbed in and got infected around it.  He got an abscess in his eye.  As that happened, his defenses sprung into action to attack the foreign object but in doing so, caused a small scar in his cornea.  The side effects of this was terrible sensitivity to light, burning/stinging, and blurred visions (from the infected spot inside his eye).  We were lucky to get into a local eye clinic when we did.  He was quickly put on over 5 different eye drops, each doing a different thing, to heal the infection.  Although he is essentially healed and his vision went back to what it was, he still has a very small spot in his eye where the scar is that causes a tiny spot in his vision.  There is the small chance it could be permanent but hopefully it will go away.

Jeers....  Because chronic contact use tends to be the trigger for this type of eye event, freak of an event as it is, wearing contacts daily is not recommended for Colin any longer.   With his activities, sports, exercise, and outdoor recreation, Colin can't really wear glasses all the time so he is leaning towards getting lasik done sometime before the end of this year. 

Cheers!  To the amazing life after Lasik!  There are lots of teachers here who have had it done and rave about it.

Jeers...  To this cold that has settled in my nose and lungs. 


Cheers!  35 days till coming home and seeing everyone!  A very big cheer!  We sure miss you all and Oregon!

Movin' on up!

Up on the hill, that is!  Next year, we will be living in a five bedroom home in the 4-plex on the other side of the highway on the hill.  We are blessed to be able to live in this 4-plex with three other TAISM families, two who are already good friends of ours.  The third family is a new family with a 5 year old girl. 

This house is a HUGE step up from our single level, two-bedroom apartment.  Three floors, 5 bedrooms (two with private bathroom, and that doesn't include the master), a master bathroom WITH A BATHTUB AND HUGE SHOWER AND CLOSETS, a roof top patio with views of the city and a sink so I can have a bunch of plants up there, a guest room, a playroom, a nannies room, safe and shared patio around the unit for all kids to play, a kitchen that is the size of three of our current kitchens... you get the picture.  I think we also have 5 or 6 bathrooms in total.  It's crazy. 

The main downside is the hill that will make the road difficult for our nanny to take Aberly to the school park and being further away from Aberly's closest friends.  That will be something we'll have to figure out so Aberly can get there during the day at least once a week to see Isla.  The other downside is the Grandma print accent tiles in the kitchen and crazy light fixtures throughout the house (gold and crystal chandeliers in the living and master, clear plastic with colored flower ends in some of the bedrooms).  And as much as the space is great, we will have to invest in some more furniture to fill some of the spaces! 

I think we can deal with it.

And I know, some of you are thinking, "Well, you could have another kid and fill up some space".  But, no, not happening!  Not right now.

Moving on.

Another great possibility we found out about is that the lease officially starts in June, so I think we could move into our new place in June before we come back to the states.  That would be awesome so we could get everything moved and taken care of so we don't have to have it moved during July when we aren't here to oversee it.  And everything would be in its place how we want it.  We are really hoping this will be the case!

I'm not sure if we'll be able to go into it again soon, but as soon as we can, we hope to get some pictures up for everyone to see.  We definitely want to share it!

And I do kind want to share it with a kitty...  A pretty Persian kitty...  We shall see!