Our Saudi Arabian Adventure at KAUST

Summertime!!!

2011-11-19T04:25:00.000-05:00

The kids finished the school year on June 8 and on June 10, the kids and I were off to the states. I probably can't tell you how ready I was to go home. The only sad thing was that we left Mark at KAUST for 8 weeks. This was not the easiest thing for either of us so we will probably re-think how we do this next summer.

The month or so before we left, we had to decide what we were going to do about transportation once we arrived in the states. It was going to cost about $5000 to rent a car for the three months that we would be there so we looked into purchasing a car. Thanks to my wonderful dad, we purchased a 2010 Dodge Grand Caravan from the Chrysler lot. He helped get the transaction done for us too which was so nice of him. The kids and I flew into Washington DC and my dad generously drove down to DC to pick us up. It saved quite a bit of money because the flight from DC to Detroit was going to add up for six people.

The flight to DC was uneventful and my dad and our cousin Lucy met us at the airport. I remember going through immigration and just being so grateful that I could carry on a conversation with the person working there. I promised I wouldn't kiss the ground when I got there, but I sure felt like it!!! For as many problems that there are in the US, I really think we are blessed to have such a wonderful country. You really can't appreciate some of the freedoms you have until you live without them! Not to get all political - but please remember that when you're voting in the elections next year - it is a very important one!!!

So back to our trip....we arrived and got through customs very easily. Found my dad and Lucy - my dad made me cry because he was so happy to see all of us. We hopped into our van and off we went. We decided to stay about an hour outside of the DC and then drive the rest of the way the next day. We got to our hotel and headed out for dinner at Ruby Tuesday. Everyone was pretty exhausted as the flight was all of our "day" time. It was about 9 pm Jeddah time when we landed and by the time we got to dinner it was probably midnight Jeddah time. Lizzie was so tired, she was falling asleep in her macaroni and cheese - poor girl.

Over the summer, we saw lots of friends, ate out a lot and had a great time. Spencer played on a tennis team, attended Youth Conference and High Adventure. Megan attended Girls Camp. Rachel, Alex and Lizzie took tennis lessons and the little girls took some skating lessons too. Alex attended Cub Scout camp. I travelled to Jacksonville and Boston for work and we spent a weekend in Rome, NY for my cousin Stacey's wedding. Here are a bunch of pictures from the summer.

Spencer and Alex enjoying a day out on the boat

Mom and dad and my nephew Nathan

Rachel, Abby, Lizzie, Nathan and Alex

My cousin Stacey and her Groom Steve

The family - except for Mark :-(

Enjoying ice cream at Nicky Doodles

Nicholas and Nathan

Keeping cool on the 4th of July!

Enjoying the pool at my cousin Kristen's house

Kristen's cute daughter Dani

Can't get better than ice cream at the pool!

Enjoying the ward picnic at the Park

Cayenne, Doug and George jamming out

A little tubing at Grandma and Grandpa's house

My babies turned 10 on August 4

Grandma and Grandpa with the triplets

More summer to come....Mark arrived back in the states on Aug 5 and we took our family vacation out to Utah to visit his family.

KAUST Activities

2011-11-19T03:06:00.001-05:00

KAUST offers a variety of activities for families to participate in and there are school activities for the kids also. Megan had enjoyed playing softball when we lived in Lake Orion so she decided to try-out for the softball team here at her school. Here at Harbor Secondary School, the team was co-ed and since we don't have a baseball/softball field, they practiced in an open grassy area behind their school. There aren't any other teams to play in the immediate area so it's mostly just practice and scrimmage games against each other. But the season culminated in a trip to Dhahran to the Aramco compound for a multi-school two-day tournament.

So the question is....do you let your not quite 13 year old daughter travel with her co-ed softball team across Saudia Arabia by herself. Well....I wasn't comfortable with that so we told Megan that she could go if her dad or I went with her. She wasn't thrilled, but we decided to have Mark go with her. The kids stay with host families on the compound but Mark wasn't officially part of the trip so we needed to find someplace to stay. Through our church, we found someone who was willing to let Mark stay the night - which worked out wonderfully. Mark also became the unofficial photographer - or perhaps now it is official, because many of his pictures ended up in the yearbook! Here's a couple that he took of Megan...

The was taken right after Megan avoided being tagged by

3rd baseman. She was pretty proud of herself :-)

KAUST also offers a lot of activities throught the recreation center for families. Last year, there was a family 5 K walk/run, there are "Dive-In" movie nights at the pool, kite flying days, etc. The pictures below are of the go-cart day that they sponsered in the parking lot outside our stadium. Mark and the two older kids went because the little ones were not big enough to drive the carts.

All in all, KAUST is a very nice place to live and it's really a wonderful community!

Disneyland Paris and Interesting Flight to Jeddah

2011-11-19T02:17:00.001-05:00

Well it's at least 6 months since our trip to Paris and I'm finally getting around to finishing up the blog about it. The sad thing is that I can't remember details of the day to day activities - which, of course, isn't really that important. I do remember that we all did enjoy the time we spent at Disneyland Paris. It was definitely different than what we experience at DisneyWorld but it was Disney, so it was great!

We stayed at Hotel Cheyenne which is one of the Disneyland Parks. Some of the interesting things about the hotels are that they are "American" themed...Sequoia Lodge, Santa Fe, Davy Crockett Ranch, Hotel New York. The Disneyland Hotel which is the nicest hotel on the property actually is right at the entrance to the park. Some of the rooms overlook the park.

Disneyland Hotel

Main Street USA in Paris

The Cheyenne Hotel was nice - I would compare it to a Value resort at DisneyWorld. Breakfast was included in the price of the room which meant that the restaurant was always very crowded in the morning. It was your basic continental type breakfast with croissants, rolls, cheese, etc. A couple of funny things compared to staying at Disneyworld - they were very stingy with the pillows, we asked for a couple more and they made sure that they told us that they mark down how many pillows there are in a room. Also, if you wanted a blow dryer, you had to go to the lobby to get it and put a 25 EUR deposit down that you get back when you return it. So from this, I'm wondering if Europeans make a habit of stealing pillows and blow dryers from hotels :-)

There are 2 "parks" at Disneyland Paris - Disneyland and Walt Disney Studios. There are a lot of similar rides and attractions to what is in DisneyWorld but some that are different. There is also a Disney Village which is similar to Downtown Disney. I would say the majority of things are in English but there were some attractions that were done in both French and English. It was very amusing to hear Buzz Lightyear speak in French!! We joked because it sounded like Buzz was talking about sausage - but that could just be because we are pork-deprived while we live in KSA.

Space Mountain is slightly different (called Mission 2), they have a Toy Story "land" in Walt Disney Studios which the kids really enjoyed. Crush's Coaster was probably the favorite "new" attraction of the family, except for me. Now that I'm getting older - spinny rides make me a little sick. Crush's Coaster is a roller coaster that spins also - so I didn't do it twice but everyone else did. They had Michael Jackson's Captain EO playing there also. I think they used to have this playing at DisneyWorld along time ago because I think I've seen it but it was fun to watch it with the kids.

I think the thing that I disliked most was all of the smoking!! There are supposedly designated smoking areas in the park but no one paid attention to these and it seemed like everyone was smoking. The kids and I started counting how many people we saw with cigarettes outside of the designated smoking areas and I think we at least got to 75. The ones that cracked me up the most...Lizzie and I were sitting waiting for the family to ride an attraction and Tigger came out to sign autographs. The kids were just surrounding him (no acutal line) and this guy brings his kid in to get an autograph and is puffing away amongst all the kids. Another time we saw a mom and dad holding hands with their 2 kids walking around - both of them had cigarettes in the other hand. As you can tell...this really bugged me!

So...like I said...I can't remember day to day what we did anymore so here's some pictures to enjoy...

Rachel at the entry to Fantasy land

Headed into Fantasyland

It's A Small World

You have to ride Dumbo!!

Megan is enjoying the ride

Lancelot's Carrousel

Autotopia

Sleeping Beauty's Castle

Outside Pirates of the Carribean

With Walt and Mickey

Toy Story Playland

Singing in the Rain

Just a pretty picture of Megan

Slinky Dog Ride

Hanging out

Mark and Rachel on Slinky Dog

We had the same van service pick us up at Disneyland to take us back to the airport. We had the same driver this day that had taken us into Paris from the airport. We really enjoyed the information he shared with us regarding Paris and the surrounding areas. Instead of taking us on the freeways - which he said were crowded - he took us through some small villages to get to the airport. I felt like this was one of the highlights of our trip and really enjoyed the country scenery. Mark snapped a few pictures on the way.

So we arrived at the airport in plenty of time. We were on a Saudi Arlines flight that went direct from Paris to Jeddah - we didn't leave until pretty late and were supposed to arrive in about 1 am the next day. The flight was pretty full and they really split our family up - I think only Mark was sitting alone but otherwise we were only 2 together with someone else in our row. We got seated and figured we move back once the flight got in the air. It look like we might take off a little early because everyone was boarded but then I noticed the flight attendants talking pretty heatedly with a women the row in front of us. They argued for a while but I couldn't understand what they were saying because they were arguing in both French and Arabic. Finally it seemed like she had calmed down when all of a sudden another lady from the back of the plane got up and started yelling at this first lady. From what I could glean, she wanted to get off the plane because she thought that the first lady was bad luck. So now it was a full blown argument between these two women.

At this point, we had all moved towards the back of the plane so we could sit together and I started talking to one of the flight attendants. This argument had all started because one of the female flight attendants had told this women that she couldn't lift a bag into the overhead compartment. The flight attendant had just returned from sick leave for back issues and this lady was just really ticked that she wouldn't lift the bag for her. So the argument continued and they finally brought security on to try to calm these women down. I couldn't understand why they just didn't remove these women from the plane right away. After about an hour of this, they finallly did remove the two women from the plane and then we had to wait for them to remove their luggage also. Thanks goodness!!! We didn't arrive back in Jeddah until about 2:30 in the morning but at least we did so safely!

Thanks for reading!

Day Trip to Versailles

2011-05-22T07:13:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, we decided to take a day trip out to Versailles. We chose today because it was the first Sunday of the month. On that day, all of the museums in Paris open up for free so they are very crowded - our tour book recommended that you avoid museums on that day if at all possible, so that's what we did.

The weather was not that great today - cloudy, chilly and a little rainy. Some of the kids didn't want to eat at the hotel so we had a quick breakfast at a little restaurant called the Pomme de Pain close to our hotel and then we figured out what train we needed to take out to Versailles. It was about a 40-50 minutes trip out and then a 10 minute walk.

The palace was very beautiful and SOOOO big! So may different rooms with so much artwork. They have an audio tour that you can listen to as you walk through the palace which gave information about each of the rooms you walk through. The Gardens of Versailles are said to be exquisite and we did head out to see them but decided not to walk through because it was extra cost and the weather was not being very cooperative.

Gardens from the window.

The room of mirrors.

We were all pretty hungry after we finished our tour so we walked into the little town to get some lunch. Our problem was that we had no cash so we had to find a restaurant that would take a credit card. We hadn't exchanged Riyals into Euros before we left, thinking we could do it at the airport in Paris (like we did in Athens) but all of he exchange places wanted to charge a lot of money to do that. So we exchanged a little but not very much and at this point we had very little left. We found a cute little diner but they did not take credit cards and nothing else was really open. So we headed back towards the train station where we had a wonderful lunch at McDonald's - yum! Actually, it was something we hadn't eaten in a long time so it was kind of good.

Alex and Rachel playing on the train.

We headed back on the train and to the hotel for a little rest time. After we rested it was time for dinner and we had no idea where to go. We finally looked into our tour book and found a place called Scoops which was supposed to be a little American diner - we figured out what street it was on and headed out. Just as our luck with finding places all week had gone, we could not find this restaurant so as we were walking around and we found a little pizza place. It had long tables that would fit our family and looked pretty cute so we decided to eat there. The waiter was fun and the pizza was great! We don't get great pizza here in Saudi Arabia so it was nice to eat some that was enjoyable.

We all seemed to be a little tired from our travels still so we headed back to the hotel after dinner and off to sleep. Tomorrow morning we had some plans in the city and then we were heading out to Disneyland Paris!!!

Thanks again for reading!

Busy Day in Paris

2011-05-22T06:18:00.000-04:00

Well, it's getting pretty close to the time we'll be heading back to the States for summer break so I decided I better get my blog done about the rest of the trip. The bad thing about waiting so long is that I have a harder time remembering all the details - I think that's my age...so here goes...

Our second full day in Paris, we decided to hit a bunch of the highlights of the city. We had breakfast at the hotel and then took a short train ride/walk to Notre Dame. One of the things that I noticed about Paris was the the tourist areas were always very busy! So many people around. There was again usually some military presence in all of these areas. We walked through Notre Dame - it was very beautiful - especially all of the stained glass.

Megan, Lizzie and Rachel outside of Notre Dame

One of the many stained glass windows in Notre Dame.

Gargoyles

Flying Buttresses

There was a VERY long line to go up and tour the upper part of the church where you could get a closer view of the gargoyles, so we decided to opt out of that part of the tour. We walked around to the back of the church where there was a pretty little park. We enjoyed the beautiful weather for a little while and then headed back towards the train. On the way to the station, we looked through some touristy shops and enjoyed an entertainer keeping the crowds entertained as they waited.

Our next stop the Arc de Triomphe and the Avenue des Champs-Elysées. We got off the train, found our way out (this was another large station) and then found our way to the tunnel that leads under the street to the center circle. There were tons of artists here with their drawings that were lined up along the edge of the tunnel that you could look at and purchase if you were so inclined.

Once we got to the other side of the street, we checked out the Arc de Triomphe and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The Arc de Triomphe has so many beautiful details on it - although as Lizzie liked to point out, there was a lot of nakedness :-) The kids enjoyed checking out all the cars driving around the circle - we saw tons of smart cars - and the little kids enjoyed chasing birds. It was a nice place to sit and relax for a while!

You can see how little we were compared

to the Arc de Triomphe.

Rachel chasing birds.

We decided not to do any shopping - much to Megan's chagrin - on the Champs-Elysées. Shopping with 5 kids and a husband doesn't hold a lot of interest for me and everything is so expensive that I just thought our time could be spent better. So we hopped back on the train and headed to Sacre Coeur. When we arrived at the station, we started to head uphill. There is a funicular to take part of the way up but we decided to do the stairs. It is a very spectacular view of Paris from the top of the hill!

It was very busy around Sacre Coeur! There were tons of people selling things, there were many entertainers and lots of people were just hanging out on the hill taking it all in. We toured the church also which was very beautiful (no picutres were allowed) and found it very interesting the difference between the peaceful quiet in the church and the very touristy loud entertainment outside the church. I actually think that this was my least favorite place that we visited. Maybe the crowds were just very heavy because it was a weekend day but it was hard to get around and just not that enjoyable.

After Sacre Coeur we headed back to the hotel. We decided what trains we needed to take and when we got to the stop where we needed to switch, we found that the train that we needed to get on did not stop there currently because of construction. So we had to find another station that would take us back to the hotel...ahhh the joy of trains in Paris! We had a late lunch/dinner at the hotel and a little bit of a rest.

Our last activity today was to take a river cruise on the Seine. We decided it would be nice to take it in the evening and I think this was a good decision except that it was a bit chilly. Except for the cold and the fumes from the boat, this was our favorite part of the day. It really was beautiful to ride along the river in the evening. It was a Saturday night so there were many people out walking and sitting by the river and it was fun to see that part of the Parisian culture.

This is one of my favorite pictures from our trip. It was on

a bridge near where we boarded the cruise on the Seine.

Starting to get dark and the Eiffel Tower was all lit up.

Periodically little lights would come on the Eiffel Tower

and make it all sparkly. It was just beautiful!

Notre Dame at night.

This second day in Paris was long and very busy - we saw so many beautiful things and enjoyed spending time together as a family! Looking forward to more sightseeing tomorrow.....

Thanks for reading!

The Eiffel Tower and The Louvre

2011-04-16T10:58:00.000-04:00

Well, it's Saturday and taxes are done so now I have some time to blog about our trip. It is April 1, and this is our first full day in Paris. We let the kids sleep a little this morning because of our extremely long travel day. We got up, got dressed and headed out to find some breakfast. We walked across the Ile de Cite over to the Left bank where we were told were lots of restaruants and such. We finally decided on just getting crepes at a little sidewalk shop. We tried all different sorts - nutella, strawberry jam, ham and cheese and just plain cheese. Lizzie decided she didn't want a crepe so she had a ham and cheese sandwich on a baguette. It is a rare treat for us to have ham lately so we truly enjoyed it!

From our hotel window

From here we decided that we were going to head over to the Eiffel Tower. Mark didn't yet have a SIM card for his cell phone (and GPS). We tried to purchase one but his iPhone has a micro-SIM and and the little shop nearby had only regular ones. So we had no idea how to walk there (because who can get anywhere without GPS nowadays) but we did have a nice little app that would help us with the train to get there. We headed to a close train station and purchased our three day city pass. If I remember correctly, we made it to the correct station pretty easily and soon spotted the Eiffel Tower.

We got in line for tickets to go to the top and soon headed up in the elevator. Megan was not excited about going all the way to the highest point, but we convinced her that she needed to go. How many times would we have this opportunity - so up we went. First you head up an inclined elevator to what I think is called the 3rd floor. There is a level below it that connected by stairs that contains stores and a restaurant. Then you head up another elevator to the top.

You are warned at many turns to be aware of pick pockets!

There is an indoor viewing platform and then you can head up the stairs to the highest level which is outside. The view was spectacular even though it was kind of a cloudy day but it was very windy and cold!

Spencer and Alex under the USA flag

Rachel, Alex and Lizzie under the Saudi Arabia flag

Mark and Lizzie trying to stay warm at the top of the

Eiffel Tower

Alex is checking out the sights

Here are some views of Paris from the very top of the Eiffel tower.

So once we had our fill of the view of the city, we headed away from the tower so that we could get some pictures of the kids. When we were making our decision whether we would move to Saudi Arabia or not, travel was probably the main thing that enticed me into making this move. I'm sure I've told many of you that the picture in my head was a picture of my kids in front of the Eiffel Tower. These are some that we took the first day. I think they turned out okay but my favorite is one that we took later in the week.

We didn't think that it was going to be that cold while we were in Paris. The forecast had said that it would be in the low 60s, but without sun and with a little wind, it was very chilly. It could be that we're just getting used to our low 80s always sunny Saudi Arabian weather too. So our next goal was to find some lunch and some jackets for the kids.

We found a little place at the Champs de Mars which was called (surprisingly) Champs de Mars. It was probably a little touristy because it was right on the corner - and when I say touristy, I mean expensive! I think it was our most expensive meal of the trip and the food really wasn't that great. We found a cute souvenir shop after lunch and bought the kids some sweatshirts and some little trinkets.

At this point, we decided it was time to head back to the hotel and get a little rest before we head over to the Louvre. This is where the train fun starts. We have come to find out since we've returned from our vacation that the metro stop near our hotel, the Chatalet - Les Halles station, is the largest station in Europe. We get back to the station, there are 11 exits and we have no idea which one is the closest to our hotel. So basically we pick one, come up onto the street and don't reconize anything. We did happen to see a mobile phone store so we popped in to see if we could get Mark a SIM card and voila! we could get one! We got it installed and with the GPS determined the way back to the hotel. We ended up walking down a street with some very interesting stores so we were happy to make it back to the hotel.

After a little rest, we hopped back on the train and headed over to the Louvre. Anyone who has seen or probably heard of this museum knows how large it is. I don't think that you could possibly see everything without spending a lot of time. These next 2 pictures were taken just outside the "inside" entrance to the Louvre.

So our main goal was to see the Mona Lisa of course. We spend some time looking around just enjoying some of the truly amazing art that is here. Lizzie still pointed out (just like in Athens) the nakedness of many of the statues. But after what seemed like a fairly long walk, we made it to the room that housed the Mona Lisa. Well, it was a little underwhelming....for all the fuss - you'd think that it would have been bigger! It was very cool to see it though!

Megan probably won't like that I posted the picture

but it gives you an idea of how big the Mona Lisa

really is.

Alex was extremely bored during this whole adventure (and really let us know it) so we finished up and headed outside to see the pyramid. We enjoyed watching the people and enjoying the scenery.

We had headed a bit away from the museum and crossed the circle towards the big arch when we noticed that there were these military guys walking around. We came to learn later that they often have military presence at a lot of their monuments because of the happenings in the world. But the odd thing about this that as we started to walk back to the train station, they started blocking off the road and moving people away from certain areas. It was kind of disturbing so we headed off back to our hotel.

Because they headed us off in a different direction, we couldn't get to our original station, so we walked along the Seine River for a while. We passed the Pont des Arts which is a pedestrian bridge across the Seine. If you can see, the side of the bridge has all of these things hanging off of it, these are padlocks - the padlock is hung by sweethearts and it symbolizes their love. Kind of cool!

So it's dinner time and again we're trying to determine what to have for dinner. We opted for an exciting dinner at Pizza Hut near our hotel. Kind of pathetic for Paris but we were tired and hungry and it was close and open. We enjoyed our first day in the City of Lights and are excited for our next one to begin....but first we all need a good night's sleep!

Thanks for reading!

The Longest Day Ever

2011-04-09T13:38:00.001-04:00

We've just returned from a week in Paris and now it's time to blog about it...I sure hope that you enjoy our stories and pictures. Our week was filled with fun and frustration but we enjoyed spending time together as a family in a very beautiful city.

In Saudi Arabia, it seems like the flight times that you can leave or arrive are always very strange. I booked a round-trip direct flight to Paris from Jeddah and the outbound flight left at 3:05 am. So after finishing up our final preparations, we got a little rest and woke the kids up about 11:45 to be ready for the taxi to pick us up at midnight. The ride down to the airport takes about an hour and we arrived in plenty of time, got our luggage from the taxi and in line to check in for our flight. It is amazing to see how much traffic and how many people are at out and about in the city at this time of day.

We approached the ticket counter about 1 am and presented our passports to the agent. He then proceeded to tell us that our flight is overbooked by 50 passengers. FIFTY! I can't imagine how an airline could overbook by that many. It looked like there was no way that we would get on this flight because we were a large group and they were also moving business class people down to economy and bumping the economy passengers. Air France offered us 300 EUR per person and a hotel voucher to give up our seats and after a little discussion we decided to take the offer. We probably wouldn't get seats together which makes travelling with children difficult and the money would be a nice chunk for our next trip. So we stood aside for a little bit until finally someone got to us and took Mark up to write up the vouchers and put us on flights for tomorrow. The kids and I waited in some seats and we were ready to head to the hotel by about 3:00 am. There were many people just sitting around in the chairs by the door - it was interesting to see Security approach a lot of them and ask to see passports. We were never questioned by anyone.

When Mark was done with everything, we checked our luggage for our flight in the morning which was very helpful because we didn't have to drag it to the hotel. They put us on a little shuttle bus with a few other people who had gotten bumped from the flight and we headed out to the hotel. Much to my chagrin, we passed hotel after hotel in this old bus that swayed back and forth and was making me very sick to my stomach. It took us 30 minutes to get to our hotel (so much for close to the airport). The hotel was very nice on the inside and they were nice enough to put us in a large suite so we could all stay together. We rolled into bed about 4:00 am and fell right to sleep. About an hour later, call to prayer started in the many mosques surrounding the hotel, it woke both Mark and I up and I did not sleep well the rest of the night because I was afraid that we would oversleep and miss our flight in the morning.

We got up about 7:00 am, had a quick breakfast and got a taxi to the airport. Now, I've talked about driving in Jeddah before, but I don't think I've ever experienced a taxi driver quite this bad. He was going so fast and if anyone ever was in front of him, he would honk a lot until they got out of our way. I kept saying prayers the whole time that we would make it back to the airport safely! Luckily (and probably with divine intervention), we arrived without incident and it only took us about half the time it took us to get to the hotel the night before!

Our flight left Jeddah a little after 10 am and we had a short hour and a half layover in Milan, Italy where we experienced their airport - how exciting! We boarded our last flight about 4:30 pm and landed in Paris at 6:00 pm - these flights were nice and uneventful although we didn't sleep much.

I had hired a shuttle service (Always Shuttle) to take us from the airport to our hotel in Paris which in hindsight was a great idea. You'll hear more about the Paris train system later ;-) Our driver was great - he was talkative and gave us a great tour of the city as we drove to our hotel. We were so excited to see all the beautiful buildings and places that we would soon get to visit!

We arrived at our hotel - the Novotel Les Halles - at about 8:00. The hotel was nice and very centrally located which is why I picked it. It was a fairly reasonable cost also - everything in the city was very expensive! We thought about heading out for dinner but opted for the hotel restaurant instead where we had a nice meal. We were all so tired so we just turned in for the night. We kept referring to the "start" of our trip as yesterday when it really was the same day - so the kids dubbed this travel day as the "Longest Day Ever" - so forever shall it be known!

We had missed our "first" day in Paris because of our flight changes (originally we should have arrived at 8:30 am) but we were excited for our adventure to begin in the morning. Stay tuned for pictures and the Eiffel tower...

Thanks for reading!

International Week at KAUST Schools

2011-03-11T16:14:00.001-05:00

This past week in the Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary schools here at KAUST, the kids celebrated International Week. Each day, the kids learned about different countries and cultures and experienced different types of food from some countries at lunchtime. One morning they enjoyed a pot luck with foods from all sorts of different cultures around the world. The week culminated in a parade and assembly with all the kids from K1 (preschool) to 12th grade.

The kids gathered by country with their flag and paraded down one of the streets to a courtyard at the Harbor Secondary School. The President of the University was there with other dignitaries from the community. We listened to a couple of nice speeches - one in arabic and one in english - by a couple of students and then the names of all the countries represented were read off.

The parade - just over the barricade is the Red Sea

The United States contingent

I just loved seeing all the different flags!

There were a total of 75 countries represented! It amazes me how that in this small community we can have so many countries and cultures!
I felt very overwhelmed at being such a small little part of it here and how lucky I feel to give my kids the opportunity to associate with so many different people. As hard as it is sometimes for me to be here, it really is a good thing for us.

Spencer carried one of the flags in the parade.

Some of our little preschool friends!

Megan played the drums with some of the other kids

in her class.

Lizzie with her teacher and a couple of her

good friends.

I think this is my favorite picture of the day.

I ran into our little friend Victoria and asked to take

her picture - she posed herself (I didn't ask her to

hold out her skirt) - she's such a cutie!!!

A Night in Jeddah

2011-03-10T04:29:00.001-05:00

When we were contemplating our move here to KAUST, I think we were told that we were about 40 km from Jeddah - at least that's what I remember. In reality, if it is 40 km, that is only to the very northern most part of Jeddah and doesn't really even get you into the city. It takes at least an hour to get there and since traffic is normally busy and I can't drive, getting things we need for the house and kids tends to be a bit of a challenge. Since we go into Jeddah every Friday, about two weeks ago, we decided to go in on Thursday, do our shopping and then stay overnight.

We accomplished much of what we wanted to do for shopping. Our first stop was Saco World which is like a Home Depot type of store with home improvement things and outdoor furnishings. I bought the shower curtain rod which I had forgotten on my last trip in to Jeddah that we needed for the boy's bathroom. The funny thing (or not so funny) was that I bought the wrong size - it's too small. So we are still in need of a shower curtain rod!

After this stop is was prayer time, so we decided to head to the hotel to check in. I have found that travelling with a large family outside of the US is a bit more difficult. A lot of hotel rooms are very small and are set up of 2 or 3 people. So earlier in the week, I had emailed the Sheraton to verify that their rooms would sleep 4 people. It was confirmed and I made the reservation. We got to the hotel where we were checked in and taken to our rooms. Much to my chagrin, they were very small rooms with 2 twin beds in each. Definitely not enough room to sleep 4 people unless you're used to sharing a twin bed! The gentleman that took us to our rooms said that he could bring in a roll away which I didn't find acceptable because we would have had to climb over it to get around the room. So we headed back to the front desk. I explained the situation and that I was told via email that the rooms would sleep 4 and the ones we were given did not. I'm very proud of myself for not getting upset :-)

They were very nice and helpful and finally accomodated with a 4 bedroom apartment (for the same cost as the 2 rooms). If the first 2 rooms were way to small, this apartment was exactly the opposite! It had 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, full kitchen, living and dining room and a maid's quarters with full laundry facilities. We were on the 4th floor of an apartment building next to the hotel and had balconies that had a view of the Red Sea. The apartment had seen better days - I think the decor was circa 1975 but it was clean and we all had a bed to sleep in. I'll post pictures at the end of the blog. They hadn't finished cleaning when we checked in so we decided to head out to finish shopping and get dinner and then we'd come back.

We set out to find a store where my friend Belky had bought a piano. We decided to buy an electronic piano here for a couple of reasons. The kids really want one to play while we are here, they are a bit cheaper here than in the US and there is no sales tax, and we can pack it up and ship it home when we return to the United States. We purchased a Yamaha Clavinova 340 and are very excited about receiving it. Our only problem is that it is 2 weeks later and it still has not been delivered. They say today but they've said that before so we may never receive this piano...I'll keep you updated.

We next headed to Ikea where as we walked in, we realized it was close to prayer time again. The kids were a little hungry so we got a snack in the cafeteria and ate during prayer and then headed in to do our shopping. Nothing exciting here - just stuff for the house. On our way back to the Sheraton, we at Chili's at the Roshan Mall and then headed back to turn in. I am always exhausted after any amount of shopping in Jeddah!

The Sheraton Jeddah Hotel

The dining room in the apartment

The living room(s) in the apartment

A view of the Red Sea

A little store you could see from the balcony

A pretty view of a mosque on the water.

Outdoor landscaping at the hotel

Our New Home at KAUST

2011-02-17T00:33:00.000-05:00

I have only been waiting for this move since we got here! I know I probably sound really spoiled that I wasn't happy with a family of 7 living in a 2000 sq ft, 3 BR townhome and maybe I am :-) But there wasn't truly that much living space and the kids (and the parents) really need a little space of their own so we don't feel like we're on top of each other all the time. So we finally got the keys to our new house. It is a 4 BR home, I think it is about 5800 sq ft - way more than we really need, but I'll take it - and 7 bathrooms (including the one in the maid's quarters).

The two downsides - it's more expensive than our the townhome and I really like the location of the the other house right near the schools. We now live on the "Island" which is a bit further away from the schools, the market and the sports club - although nothing is really that far away.

So here are some pictures that Mark snapped before we acutally moved in.

A view from across the street.

First is the main floor. When you walk in the front door - to your right is an office with a desk and bookshelves in it.

Past the office on the right is the first half bath and then you walk into the first of the living rooms. It's a really good size. The funny thing is that the coffee table is the same one that we had in the other house but there with it in the middle, you could barely walk between it and the couches. It has tons of room here.

Between the living rooms is the dining room - we are excited because now we have chairs for everyone in the family!

On the other side of the dining room is the second living room and then the kitchen. We've debated moving the dining table into the this living room area for a couple of reasons - first, it is next to the kitchen and also because the current dining area is the largest room in the house and would be nice for entertaining. The problem is that the second living room is probably my favorite in the house. It's big enough but still kind of cozy. Note the SMALL round coffee table in this room which would have worked perfectly in the townhome!

This is a view from the living room into the kitchen.

Down the long hall from one end of the house to the other.

The 2nd half bathroom is on the right of this picture.

Near the kitchen, there is another hallway that has a storage room, laundry room, garage entrance and the maid's quarters which has a full bathroom (sort of). Alex actually wanted to sleep in the maid's quarters but we feel like it's too separated from the rest of the house. So....let's go upstairs....

The staircase is one of the prettiest things in the house and you'll see there is lots of room at the base of them where the table is. The kids really want to buy a piano and put it in this area. So right now, that's the plan.

At the top of the stairs is another sitting area. We'll probably put a tv here against the far wall and have the Wii or Playstation up here and the other one downstairs.

A view from over the balcony from the sitting room.

There are two bedrooms on each side of the sitting room. Each one has its own bathroom which is nice because it's eliviated some of the morning stress in the house. We still don't have shower curtains for all of them so we're working on getting into the city to do some shopping to buy them. This is one of the times that I wish there was a Target close by!

The Master Bedroom

One of the kids bedrooms (which are all very similar)

The large balcony off one of the kids rooms. There is a smaller

balcony off the back in the master bedroom.

A view of the Red Sea from the girls' room.

Across the street - you can see the sea through the houses.

All in all - I think we're all very excited to move into our "permanent" home here at KAUST. We're still getting settled and unpacked. There seem to be more of the kid's friends in this area which is really nice and they spend most afternoons outside on their bikes and scooters playing with their friends. It's nice to be able to take a 2 minute walk down to the beach to watch the sunset also.

Thanks for reading!!!

A Day in Cairo

2011-02-04T12:48:00.000-05:00

Well, it has taken me a while to write the last day of our trip for many reasons. First, I hope my blog is somewhat entertaining and I felt like I was getting tired of writing and therefore just getting the facts down. Second, this day in Cairo was not the most pleasant day on our trip so I think I had to give it a little distance to make the memories a little more humerous than I found them at the time. And lastly, just plain laziness :-) Life gets busy and it's hard to find a block of time to write.

Before I start though....with all of the turmoil currently going on in Egypt, my prayers are with the people of that country. While visiting there, you can easily see the poverty and maybe that makes some of what happened to us there make a little more sense. Even though I didn't enjoy this day as much as I had hoped, I'm glad we went because I'm not sure that we'd even think about going there again in the near future.

So...here we go....
Originally, we had a flight scheduled to leave Athens about 1:00 and land in Cairo around 3 pm. The next flight to Jeddah wasn't until 11:30 pm which meant a long layover (but not really enough time to do anything) and getting into Jeddah very late. So we decided to try to switch our flight to fly out the next day. We got to the desk and before I checked in, I asked the woman at the desk if we could change our flight before we checked in. She wasn't very helpful but told us we should check in and then change our flight. Didn't make sense to me, but who am I to question....right? They even ticketed our luggage which made me a little nervous. As we were standing there, there were two young men standing behind us. They heard that we were flying to Jeddah and asked if we were from KAUST. They were students at KAUST, originally from Mexico, and we chatted a while and found out that we had a friend in common.

So once we we were all checked in, we moved down to another person that would help us switch our tickets. I was not impressed at all with this guy's customer service! After a while they said they could change the tickets, told us how much it would cost and we decided to go ahead. Once that happened, we couldn't get any more information out of them. How long will it take? Will we miss our flight? Will our luggage make the change also? The answers...I'm not sure, probably not and most likely - how reassuring! Well, after a LOOOOOONG time, we finally got our tickets in time to make our flight to Athens.

We arrived in Cairo after an uneventful flight and got through immigration. We had no reservations or tour plans so we were quite unprepared. It is Cairo's busy tourist season because it's not so hot at this time of year. Mark soon found someone who directed us to a "Tourist Information" booth which we found out in Cairo is code for "I'll take my cut of your money". The gentleman was very nice and worked with us to get a hotel room and possibly a tour booked for the next day. Then he wanted us to pay cash for the hotel room. Hmmmm....I'm starting to get a little nervous about this. We pay him cash and he would give us a voucher for the hotel room. Not sure I'm feeling the trust so we ask why can't we just pay by credit card at the hotel. When I said we wanted to use our credit card because we didn't have enough cash, he pointed to an ATM machine....uhhhh, noooo....sorry. So we took our laptop and luckily found a wireless connection in the airport and booked a room at the Marriott where we had stayed on our way into Athens.

Next, we go to find a taxi to get all 7 of us and our luggage to the hotel. Again, "taxi" is code word for "selling you a tour". So we have a driver and another guy help us with our luggage and we're off to the Marriott. The other guy is very nice and is trying to sell us the tour. We decided to go ahead and do it. We were told that $300 for the day would take care of everything, transportation, entry into the sights, etc. We were expecting to spend about that with the 7 of us so we decided that would be okay. We paid $50 up front and they would get the rest of the money after the tour. The driver and tour guide would pick us up the next day at 8:30 am. I was a little nervous that they wouldn't show but if they didn't, we were only out $50 - oh well.

A pretty view at the Marriott

We had a wonderful dinner in the Marriott Italian restaurant. The kids ordered a cheese pizza that was so good that we all had to have a piece. It was a very good meal and we turned in afterwards because we were all tired from travelling. We got up in the morning and were eating some pastries from a little coffee shop in the restaurant when our tour guide showed up. We hopped in the van soon afterwards and were off. Now, I'm pretty used to Jeddah traffic now and for most of the ride, I didn't think that Cairo traffic was that bad. Until we got closer to the pyramids - it was way worse. Cars everywhere, people walking and crossing the streets, donkeys pulling carts. Yikes!

Our first stop was the Cairo Papyrus Museum where they showed us how the ancient Egyptians used to make papyrus. It was pretty cool and of course they were trying to sell things. We did end up buying some things and spent a little more than we wanted, but it was ok - we liked what we had bought. Funny thing was that we ran into the same two young men at the museum that we saw in the airport the day before. We chatted with them while we were waiting for our purchases to be packaged up.

We hop back in the van and off we go towards the pyramids. We end up in this section of town where you can hire camels and horses to ride to view the pyramids. So we get out of the van here and they shuffle all 7 of us into this little area that's really stinky from all the animals and then start telling us about going into view the pyramids and asking us whether we wanted to ride a horse or a camel. So our new "friend" (this is not our tour guide who is waiting outside), is telling us there are 3 tours, a short, medium and long one and then he announces the prices. I think he started at like $500 but I can't remember exactly. Now, you may remember yesterday, when the tour guide told us everything was included....well, I sure did and I was starting to get a little mad. Also, if you know me fairly well, you probably know that riding a horse or a camel is not at the top of my list of things to do. You might also know that I have a few 9 year olds and possibly a 12 year old that will probably not want to do this either. Nevertheless, our "friend" is selling hard and is bargaining with Mark. I think he comes down to like $300 for all 7 of which I still think is outrageous. At this point, I stand up from my not so comfy, and very aromatic seat and I'm getting even more mad. So I basically tell Mark that I don't want to do this and I don't want to spend any more money (the guides are always willing to tell us there is ATM close by). Now our "friend" starts trying to convince me....we want to make you happy...how much is your budget...ummmm...nope. So I told Mark and our guide that I was done and wanted to go to the airport. I was not spending any more money because we were told that everything was included. They spent another 10 or so minutes trying to convince me but I was not going to give them a penny more. Finally, our tour guide asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I wanted to drive to the pyramids and walk around or I wanted to go back to the airport. Well, he did as he was asked but immediately the "charm" was turned off because he wasn't getting his camel kick-back.

So, again, we hope back into the van and head off to the pryamids again.

A view on our way to the pyramids.

We arrived and our tour guide purchased the tickets and we headed in. We walked a little bit and our tour guide gave us some advice about handling the vendors at the pyramids. He basically said that everyone is trying to get money from you. Don't get engaged in conversation, they will continue to try to sell you something. If a vendor wants to show you something or give you a gift, they will expect money in return. Don't let anyone take your picture, they will want money (even the police that are guarding the pyramid). At this point, the tour guide kept using the words free and cheap to describe everything - I think he was mad that I didn't want to pay for the camels...oh well :-)

Waiting for our tickets

Heading into the Pyramids at Giza - this was the largest of the three big ones.

The size of the stones are just amazing!

The 2nd largest pyramid.

You can see horses and camels all over the place.

Our tour guide gave us half an our to walk around the largest pyramid which was enough time. Up on the hill above us, someone or something (possibly a horse or donkey) had fallen in a hole and there were a ton of people trying to get it out. We also had a bunch of young arab girls come over and try to shake Lizzie's hand and touch her hair. There seemed to be a lot of groups of teenage students - maybe they were on winter break, but there were a lot of kids around. Lastly, we witnessed a little bit of a scuffle between some police, some men and a horse. They were beating the horse pretty bad and we were a little afraid that the horse would bolt down to where we were standing so we didn't know whether to stop or keep going. Finally, the horse and his driver rode off. We think it may have been a turf war of some time but who knows...just a little disturbing.

When we were done, we got back in the van and headed up to a vantage point where we could see all of the 3 main pyramids. There were lots of vendors there which we didn't stop to look at. Our tour guide took some pictures for us and then tooks us over to place where you could sit on a camel.

Alex and Spencer

Mark and Rachel

We then rode down to the Sphinx but the tour guide only let us get out of the van for about 30 seconds to let us take a picture. He was done being pleasant and at this point, I didn't really care either.

The Sphinx is much smaller than I imagined it would be.

So we headed out of the area and we decided it was just time to head to the airport. About half way back to our airport, the driver stops and our tour guide gets out (we had paid him as we were leaving the pyramids). We actually stopped on the highway and just let him out. There were lots of people along the side of the road so I guess that this is not that odd. Our driver got us to the airport where we had lunch and did a little shopping before we got on our flight back to Jeddah.

We arrived back to Jeddah after a huge storm. Our friend Alex picked us up at the airport and took us back to his house where our car was parked. We had to travel through flooded streets and there were a ton of trees down also before we got back to his home. We then switched cars and drove the hour or so back to KAUST.

All in all, we really enjoyed our first trip. We loved Athens and all it had to offer. Cairo, obviously, was not my favorite but I'm glad we got to visit. Next trip....Paris in 58 days!

Thanks for reading!

Last Day in Athens

2011-01-13T07:47:00.000-05:00

Our trip to Athens is winding down now, we've had a great time seeing all the ruins, eating tons of great food, walking everywhere and spending time together as a family. We've seen most of what we wanted to see but there were a few things left so we headed out in the morning to visit them.

The first place we visited was the Ancient Agora. The Agora was the heart of ancient Athens, the focus of political, commercial, administrative, and social activity, the religious and cultural center and the seat of justice. One of the things that you would notice around Athens was that there are a large amount of dogs that just wander around. They were in Syntagma Square, at the Parthenon and we even saw some sleeping on the side of the road. These dogs would mostly be pretty quiet and just be sleeping but once in a while, one would start barking at something or other. As we walked into the Ancient Agora, there were probably 5 or 6 dogs there and we think that one of them didn't belong because the others just started barking him. This kind of scared the girls a little and we walked quickly away and the lone dog sort of followed right behind us.

Mark snapped a picture of the dogs.

The Stoa of Attalos was the first place that we visited. It has been reconstructed by the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Much of the original architecture was used when doing this. It houses a museum with lots of artifacts found on the site. The kids enjoyed wandering around all of the columns - I think Lizzie and Rachel counted them and if I remember correctly they counted about 47 in each row (we could be wrong but there were a lot of them).

The Stoa of Attalos in the background.

We wandered around the ruins a little bit and walked up to the Temple of Hephaestus. This temple is the most well preserved of all of the temples in Athens. When you are visiting the Acropolis, you can see this temple and it looks so nice among all the trees and green of Athens!

The Temple of Hephaestus is in the background.

There were some very nice views of the Acropolis and the Parthenon from this area also.

Once we were done at the Ancient Agora, we got back on the metro and headed over towards Plaka to see the Tower of the Winds. We were walking past a lot of the restaurants and again, the owners were all out there welcoming you into their restaurant with some bargain or another. One man had just hopped off his motorcycle and asked if all the kids were ours, we responded that they were and he came over to chat with us. He spoke very good English and was nice and friendly with the kids. He owned the last restaurant on the street of course and invited us back after our sightseeing. Then he pointed us in the right direction.

We found the Tower of the Winds and outside of the area, there was an old lady selling tablecloths which she claimed were hand stitched. These street vendors are very savvy and want you to touch their product so they can stay with you and keep selling. She offered a price, we said we weren't interested and continued walking...there will be more to this story a little later.

The Tower of the Winds is an octogonal clocktower which has sundials, a water clock and a wind vane. There is also a beautiful old church on the grounds.

Another view of the Acropolis with the old church in the foreground.

We hadn't eaten lunch yet and the kids decided that they wanted to go the restaurant of the nice man that spoke such good English, so we headed back towards Plaka to eat. On the way out, the old lady with the tableclothes spotted us again and continued to try to sell us one. They were pretty but, honestly, if you know me at all, you probably know that I couldn't tell the difference between handstitched and one that had been done on machine. We really didn't want to carry it around with us either. She though wouldn't take no for an answer (for a long time) and kept lowering her price. I think she started at 50 EUR and by the time we were half way to the restaurant, she was down to 15 EUR. We felt pretty bad not buying one but we just really didn't need/want it.

We had a wonderful lunch at the restaurant that was only marred by the fact that Lizzie lost the necklace from the Barbie doll that she was carrying around. She and I backtracked a little bit and never found it but we didn't want to go back so far that the lady selling the tableclothes would see us. After lunch, we hopped back on the metro again to head to the Acropolis Musem. This museum was huge and we enjoyed it but not quite as much as the museum in Delphi. Maybe the difference was having a tour guide. Also, we were not allowed to take any pictures in the museum. The coolest thing about this museum was that they are still doing active excavations in the area - they have glass in the main floor of the building and outside that when you walk over them you can see the archeological digging going on. There were people down there working when we were at the museum - so that was pretty cool.

You can see below the floor the archeological dig.

A view from inside the museum of the Acropolis -

we cheated and took this picture.

We were all pretty tired at this point so we headed back to the apartment. I had promised Megan that I would take her to do a little shopping so she and I went back out to a street with a lot of shops. We were looking for some short boots that she could wear here but mostly everything was high and very warm - not the best for Saudi Arabia. Whe ended up buying a cute sweater that she could wear to school - it gets chilly in the buildings with the air conditioning. We had decided to pick up some pizza for the family at this place that we had passed a couple times so Megan and I went over and with a little difficulty because no one spoke English, got a couple different kinds of pizza. We also stopped at the grocery to pick up a couple things and then back home to eat.

Mark really wanted to go back to Mars Hill which is the place that Paul preached to the Athenians in Act 17 regarding their Unknown God and also wanted to get some night shots of the Acropolis. Most of us were pretty tired so just Mark and Spencer headed out to do that. I stayed home and started packing :-)

Night view of the Acropolis

Night view of Athens and the Temple of Hephaestus

And so our trip to Athens is almost done. We truly enjoyed our time in this city so full of history!

Tour to Delphi

2011-01-13T02:19:00.001-05:00

I've been a little neglectful in finishing up the posts to our trip because real life has started again. The kids are back to school and I am back to work in full force. I do like having our routine back though....but it's Thursday morning (our Saturday) so I thought I would get another blog entry in this morning.

On Monday (Dec 27, 2010) we had scheduled a tour through Key Tours in Athens to take a day trip to the town of Delphi (pronounced Del-phee). Mark and I have agreed that this was our favorite day on our trip. We were picked up in front of The President Hotel close to our apartment by the tour company at 7:30 am - we were a couple minutes late and I think if we had been any later, we might have missed the pickup. But we caught him and were on our way. We got to their offices and waited with some other families for the tour to start. We met the head of the theatre department from University of Texas - Austin and his wife who is a professor there also. Another family that was there waiting was from the states waiting also - the 20ish something girl had a best friend who was studying in the theatre department there - it's funny what a small world it is sometimes.

We got on the bus about 8:30 and started out on our tour to Delphi. We drove through Athens and our tour guide shared information about some of the things that we saw on our way out of the city. Once we were out of the city, the lanscape changed dramatically - it was very hilly and very green. The trip to Delphi took about 2 1/2 hours and took us on small mountain roads (in a big bus). Dephi is located on on the south-western slope of a large mountain in Greece called Mount Parnassas. We drove through a village called Arahova where many people stay because of the two ski resorts that are fairly close by. We didn't see any snow but I guess about 20 minutes further up in the mountain, they get snow and these resorts are very popular for skiiers in the area. Driving through Arahova was interesting as you wonder how these drivers can get a bus so big through these tiny little streets - you feel like you could reach out and touch all of the buildings.

Approaching Mount Parnassus

Village of Arahova

Driving through Arahova

Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god Apollo after he slew the Python, a deity who lived there and protected the navel of the earth. You can find more information, if your interested, here. People would travel from all over the world to get advice from the oracle - and the oracle was always correct. This was mostly because the answers came in ways that could be interpreted correctly with any outcome. Our tour guide told us of the leader of a great country that wanted to attack another country close by and wanted to make sure that he would win this batter. He asked the oracle and the oracle answered that if he attacked the country a great kingdom would fall. The leader felt that this meant that he would win the battle so he attacked the nearby country. He lost and the great kingdom that fell, was his own.

Delphi was also the sight of the Pythian Games held every 4 years and were a precursor to the current Olympic games. There were musical and poetic competitions along with athletic competitions. The winner of the games would receive a laurel wreath to wear on their head.

The first place that we visited in Delphi was the Delphi Archeological Museum. The museum houses artifacts that were found in the area. The rule in the museum for pictures was no flash and you couldn't take pictures of people standing next to the statues - which we found kind of interesting.

Rachel outside the musem

The Charioteer

Once we were done visiting the museum, we walked out to visit the Temple of Apollo. Of course, there was some uphill walking involved (this is Greece of course). Our tour guide was really good and it was interesting to see how many people "joined" our tour along the way up the path to the Temple.

A treasury where offerings to Apollo were left.

This was usually part of what was won in a battle.

That is our tour guide in the picture.

An olive tree

The family in front of the Temple of Apollo

The kids in front of the stadium.

These next two pictures were taken further up on the path. Mark and Spencer continued on up the path to see another stadium, the rest of the kids and I stayed down. We ended up chatting with a women on the tour with us from Alaska.

Can you see me in the orange sweater?

Headed back down the hill.

A Treasury.

This picture is one of my favorites taken at Delphi.

It is the Gulf of Corinth in the

distance with a little village right at its shores.

The flat land is covered with olive trees.

When we were done with our tour, we headed into the village of Delphi for lunch. We enjoyed a nice meal at a local restaurant that was served family style. We got to sample all sorts of different foods - yum! As we ate, the weather got cloudier and colder. We were very happy that the weather had cooperated while we were sightseeing.

The restaurant we at in Delphi.

We made a short 20 minute stop in Arahova on the way back. It would have been nice to be able to explore the town a little longer but it was not to be. We bought some cheese that the town was famous for and some candy for the trip home. We never actually got to eat the cheese as you had to fry it up to eat it and we forgot to do that the next morning. We didn't think that it would make the trip back to Saudi Arabia very well so it was a little disappointing that we never got to try it.

Walking through the streets of Arahova -

it was getting pretty chilly out now

Alex got to try on a cool hat!

We chatted with the people sitting near us on the way home. There was a dad and his son from Lebanon and another family from Orlando, FL. We made it back to Athens tired and hungry after the rest of the trip back. The bus dropped us off at Syntagma Square, we hopped on the metro and headed home. I said that we ate at TGI Friday's in my last blog but I think I mixed up the nights. This means I should be better about getting blogs written sooner as I am getting older and my memory is going! So I think it was tonight that we ate at Friday's and last night we ate at this little open air restaurant that had the absolute best gyros!!! Mmmmm....I'm hungry now just thinking about them. So either way, we headed back to the apartment where our heads all hit the pillow very quickly. One last picture was snapped on the way back from the metro to the apartment. I just like it because it's kind of Christmasy even though there's no snow.

Thanks for reading!!!

The Day After Christmas - Athens

2011-01-05T03:32:00.000-05:00

Today was a little bit of an uneventful day as we didn't do anything extraordinarily exciting. We hung out at the apartment most of the morning but since all of the major attractions were closed (the 25th and 26th were both National Holidays), we couldn't do any "major" sightseeing. We decided to take the Hop On - Hop Off bus tour around Athens. It was basically a big red bus that drove around Athens, you could get off and back on at any stop on the route. The bus left from Syntagma Square so we hopped on the metro to get there and found the bus. It was an open air bus on the top which is where we sat to get the best view.

Waiting for our tour to start.

Traffic and people near Syntagma Square

Santa was in the Square for all the kids to visit.

We ended up just riding the bus all the way around and not getting off anywhere. It was nice not to have to walk for a while! One of the most intersesting things about this bus tour was how this big huge tour bus got around on the teeny little streets of Athens. We had to be careful sitting on top not to get poked in the eye with a tree branch or maybe have an orange fall on our heads from the trees close to the roads.

Here are a bunch of pictures of what we saw while we were on the tour.

The Temple of Zeus

The entrance to the Temple of Zeus but I can't remember

the name of the arch.

The Acropolis and Parthenon

The Parliment Building - they have the changing of the guards

like London.

The Olympic Stadium - sight of the first modern day Olympics

sometime in the 1800s.

The University of Athens where you can shop and

protest all at the same time.

We returned to Syntagma Square where to the chagrin of some of my children we decided to walk down the street with all the vendors and see what we could see. The most interesting thing was the guy dressed up like Posiden. If someone tried to take his picture but did not put any money in his little gold jug, he would hit the jug with his staff, point at the person trying to take the picture and turn around so his face could not be seen. it was pretty amusing. None of the kids wanted to have their picture taken so Mark put some money in the jar and has his picture taken with this guy.

Everyone was pretty tired by this point so we hopped back on the metro and we decided to have dinner at TGI Fridays. It was very loud and the service was not really extremely fast but we needed to eat so it served its purpose. Mark, Spencer, Alex and Megan headed home but I had promised Lizzie that we would stop at the grocery store (it was like a Walmart) so that she could buy a Barbie with her Christmas money. You can't get "real" Barbie's in Saudi Arabia. They have a similar doll called Fulla - some of them have western style dress or you can buy with her own abaya and head covering. But Lizzie really wanted a new Barbie and Rachel decided she would get one too. We got that and a couple other things at the market and walked home.

I think we just all went to bed then - so like I said, it wasn't a totally eventful day but we did want to make sure we got a good night's rest. We needed to get up early and head out on our adventure to Delphi the next day. More to come soon......

Christmas Day 2010

2011-01-03T10:28:00.001-05:00

It just really didn't seem like Christmas this year - the weather being so warm, not a lot of Christmas decorations around the house, no Christmas music at every turn and not being home with our family. I had a very hard time shopping since it's a pain getting into Jeddah to shop. Mark and I went in one evening and I got a driver to go in another day and that was all the Christmas shopping I did this year. But Christmas did come and even though it was different, it was a nice day - a day to spend with family and to remember the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. Mark and I were talking about how at this time last year, we had no idea what changes would happen to our family in 2010. We had hardship and trials and many blessings and we are grateful for the wonderful family and friends that are in our lives that have supported us through all the decisions and changes that we've gone through this last year.

So, it's Christmas Day in Athens and the kids are looking forward to opening the presents that we did bring them. I only brought small things that we could easily fit in our suitcases. Both Megan and Spencer got Swatch watches - they have Swatch stores in every mall and I have fond memories of these watches from middle school :-) I actually got a new Swatch also - although it's a bit fancier than the plastic type style. All of the kids got a game for their Nintendo DS. Here are a few pictures from Christmas morning.

A notebook for French class

Cooking Mama for the DS

Just being patient...

We enjoyed the very yummy pastries that we bought at the bakery the night before and basically just hung around the apartment all morning playing games and being together. It was very low key, but very nice. We decided to head out to Likavittus Hill - most of the major attractions were closed on the 25th and 26th, but the hill was open. Likavittus Hill is the tallest point in Athens and affords a wonderful view of the whole city.

So we figured out which metro station we needed to get to and headed out early in the afternoon. We knew there was a "funicular" that would take you to the top of the hill, but what we did not realize was that you pretty much walked half way up the hill before you got to this. I have to tell you, that I don't think I have ever walked more stairs at one time. An interesting side note about this trip (for me at least) was that even though we ate tons of good Greek food, I lost 7 pounds when we were on vacation because of all the walking we did. I LOVE that kind of vacation!!! So now I just have to keep it up now that we're back.

Rachel and Lizzie on the stairs up to Lykavittus Hill

A view down one of the city streets that we walked up.

So we walked and walked and walked until we reached the entrance to the "funicular" which is basically a little tram that takes you up the rest of the hill. We rode up and snapped a bunch more pictures.

A gorgeous view of the Acropolis and the Parthenon

with the Mediterranean Sea in the background

The amazing city of Athens

The Temple of Zeus

We met another American family from Kalamazoo while we were enjoying the view and chatted with them for a while. Then it was time to head down the funicular again (I still don't know why that is what it is called). We got over there, put our tickets in and then realized that there wasn't enough room for all 7 of us to head down. So we went back up to the top and this guy came out (the operator) and pretty much yelled at us for making the tram late. I think his words were something like - "Now we're behind schedule and it's all your fault.". Ha - Merry Christmas to the funicular operator! So we waited for the funicular to return, hopped on and headed back down the hill.

Waiting to get on the funicular.

The tracks down the hill.

Smart Cars were everywhere in Athens -

notice how this one is parked

(backed into a spot where you would

normally parallel park)

We headed back to the metro station (the walk down the hill was much more pleasant) and back over to Plaka to find some Christmas dinner. We ended up at a restaurant that we had passed the day before where he told Rachel that she looked like a movie star. He was a nice older man that when he found out that we had triplets, told us he was a twin. It was always very fun talking to all the people that we met! We had a really enjoyable Christmas dinner - Rachel and Alex had pizza, I had some really good roast beef and Mark and the rest of the kids had a turkey dinner.

After dinner, we headed home to talk to our families via Skype and wish them a Merry Christmas. We hope eveyone had a wonderful holiday!

Christmas Eve in Greece

2011-01-01T05:53:00.000-05:00

We got up on Christmas Eve morning ready to start our adventure. We hadn't a chance to go to the grocery store so we all got dressed and decided to find someplace to eat breakfast. We headed towards the metro station and found a much better way to get there (rather than the way we walked to find the apartment). As we were walking we noticed some little girls with triangles (musical instrument) walking around. At first I thought they must be headed to a little concert or something, but as we walked, we saw more and more kids with the same thing. They would walk into a store and sing a Christmas carol and then the listener would give them a coin. We soon found out that this is a tradition in Greece - here's a link with some more information.

http://www.mamalisa.com/blog/the-tradition-of-caroling-in-greece-plus-a-greek-christmas-carol/

We would see children doing the same thing everywhere throughout the city that day - even walking through the metro. It almost seemed like trick-or-treating in the United States.

So...back to breakfast...there were tons of bakeries with pastries that looked so delicious and tempting but the kids wanted something more and then we found a McDonalds. Yes, even in Greece, my kids want to eat at McDonalds. So we walked in to find that this particular place didn't serve breakfast - it was about 10:30 so we decided to stay and have lunch for breakfast. Thankfully, one of the people working spoke English - and we would find over the course of the trip that a lot of people knew English - which was very nice for us! The "toy" in the Happy Meal was a cup with an orange juicer on the top. We thought that this was a little odd but we would soon find how many orange trees are in Athens - they are everywhere! You'll probably see the cups in some of the pictures - all 3 of the triplets carried their cup the whole day and did not lose it - what a feat!

So after breakfast, we hopped on the metro to go to the Acropolis. About 5 stops and one train change later, we arrived at the Akropoli station. Even the metro stations had artifacts in them - a lot of them were found when they were digging for the train lines.

Lizzie soon realized that a lot of the statues were not

clothed appropriately and didn't hesitate to point it

out at first.

Outside the Akropoli metro station - a very pretty street!

We entered the Acropolis on the south side which wasn't the "main" entrance so we walked up the back slope which was pretty interesting. We didn't have a tour guide and we found that the historic sites are not really well marked - not a lot to read or information to gather at the site itself. But we enjoyed looking at the beautiful buildings and the view from the top. We met a woman from Canada and talked to her for a while and exchanged picture taking which was nice so that we could get a picture of the entire family together.

Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus - I believe that the seating

has been restored but the walls at the front are original.

The view from this vantage was truly extrodinary!

Almost at the top!

The Parthenon - I think this is one of our favorite

pictures from the trip.

The Old Temple of Athena

Sanctuary of Zeus Polieus

Lykavittos Hill - the highest hill in Athens

The next few pictures are just some pictures of the kids that I really liked.

When we were done touring the Acropolis, we headed downhill. We weren't quite sure of the way to get back so we just started walking around the hill. We ended up walking along the north side of the Acropolis on these little tiny streets. We thought we were lost a little but after a while and quite a few "should we take this street?", we ended up in Plaka which is the "touristy" area of Athens with lots of little shops and restaurants. We headed downhill and found this little family restaurant and decided to eat lunch. It was a nice little open-aired restaurant. The meal was served family style - the owner brought out a tray full of selections and you picked a certain number of items based on the number of people in your party. We had stuffed grape leaves, cheese puffs, meatballs, moussaka, and many other items. It was a wonderful lunch but my kids did say that the meatballs weren't as good as Grandma's.

A view outside the restaurant.

After our late lunch, we walked through Plaka a little and then found the metro station at Syntagma Square (Constitution Square). Syntagma Square was busy with lots of people - there were characters for the kids to see, Santa was there, many people selling things including lottery tickets and all sorts of different pastries and donuts. It was a very loud and interesting place to be. We got on the train, to our station and back to the apartment.

Spencer and Alex wanted to stay at the apartment (yes, mom, we locked the door and they had a cell phone to reach us) and walked up to the local supermarket to pick up some food for the next day. We found lots of items that we knew and then some we didn't. We had a hard time figuring out which carton contained milk and then when we got home, we realized that one side had Greek and the other English - duh! We looked high and low for bacon but didn't find anything that was like American bacon. I took one last look by the butcher where they had full pigs for sale to roast. I did not buy one :-)

We had also bought a Nintendo DS charger because we only had ones that used 120V and Greece uses 220V electricity - we did not have a transformer to use. I had gotten the kids games for Christmas and we knew that it wouldn't be good if they couldn't use them. When we got back to the apartment, we realized they were for Nintendo DSi (not DS) and it didn't fit - why do they continuously need to change things like that? So Mark and Alex headed back to the store to see if they could find anything else and the rest of the kids and I headed to the bakery to get treats for Christmas morning.

We found this charming little bakery where we bought a box full of treats and a few other things for the morning! No one spoke English here and so it was difficult at first until another customer helped us out a little. I bought some baklava which was just so good I can't even describe it! The kids got some cookies and we got a few croissants for the morning too. Then we spotted a little fruit market nearby where be bought 3 oranges for about 40 cents. After my "no speak Greek" to them, they patted the girls heads and wished us Happy New Year.

It was a wonderful first day in Greece - we were pretty much exhausted and headed home to bed looking forward to Christmas morning.

Three Continents in 24 Hours

2010-12-31T05:11:00.002-05:00

Continent #1 - Asia

The kids were done with school, Mark got home from work, I had wrapped presents and packed all day and we were ready to head off on our first adventure from KAUST. We were all excited except for the fact that our plane didn't leave until 11:05 pm. A friend from church had offered to let us park our car near his home because the Jeddah airport doesn't have long term parking - weird but true. So we left somewhere around 6:00 and headed south to Jeddah. I dislike driving in Jeddah because it's so crazy but I particularly disklike it around rush hour. So this was not a pleasant trip and my eyes were closed quite often. But we made it safely!

We were all hungry but thought we'd stop somewhere on the way to get some food. I've probably said this before but it's kind of hard to get around Jeddah and if you want to get to something on the other side of the road, you often have to drive a couple of km to turn around to get there and then do the same thing on your way back. So as we drove, everything of any interest in the food category was on the left hand side of the road. We knew there was a McDonald's close to our friend's home so we decided to just stop there and as we pulled up...guess what time it was....prayer time....and we were sad because we wouldn't be able to get any food for 30-40 minutes. Hungry kids stuffed in a car for 30 minutes was not a good idea so we drove to our friends house, dropped them off and headed back to McDonald's. We waited in the drive thru line until they opened again, got a bunch of cheeseburgers and fries and went back.

Then off to the airport. It was a little later in the evening and our friend Alex, knows better ways to get places since he lives in Jeddah and he got us to the airport easily. We checked in and headed off to wait for our flight.

Continent #2 - Africa

We landed in Cairo about 1:00 am local time (2:00 Jeddah time). Our flight to Athens didn't leave until 10:30 am the next morning so I had booked a night at the Marriott so we could sleep a little better and not be exhausted before we left. Our luggage was checked all the way to Athens, we had gotten a shuttle from the Marriott scheduled, got our VISAs easily and went through immigration quickly. It was probably only about 45 minutes after we landed that we were checking into our hotel!

The hotel was gorgeous - decked out for Christmas. We were sad that we weren't able to enjoy it very long.

Alex at the JW Marriott - Cairo

Christmas tree at the JW Marriott - Cairo

A view from the window in the morning

A funny thing happened, our friends the Ketcheson's ended up being at the same hotel as us in Cairo. They came down in the morning to see us at breakfast. They were headed to Peru for the holidays when their flight through London was cancelled due to the terrible weather that Europe was experiencing. They had to totally refigure out their flights and then ended up still leaving Saudi Arabia on Monday and spending a few days in Cairo before flying out on Christmas Eve on the rest of their journey. We enjoyed seeing them and it was fun to know someone else so far from home!

All of us with the Ketcheson's - David, Belky, Elena and Victoria

We headed back to the airport and boarded our flight to Athens. A few things that I've noticed when we're flying internationally rather than in the states are:

Often there are no jetways - you take a shuttle to the plane and then up the stairs to board.
No fees for luggage
Meals are always served and you don't have to pay for them

Continent #3 - Europe

We arrived in Athens about 12:30 pm local time and got our luggage easily after going through immigration - nice that no VISA is required for US citizens! So the next step was to find our apartment. I rented an apartment though VRBO.com which we always used when going to Florida. This was our first experience using it internationally and it was definitely acceptable. We found our way to the metro station at the airport and got our tickets.

Alex in front of the picture of a "hot dog" plane

near the metro station in Athens airport.

We knew which stop we needed to get off the metro but once we got off we were a little lost. Our street maps never quite matched the street signs because of the Greek letters. We knew we were near the President Hotel and a nice man nearby told us the general direction. We headed that way and were soon walking down tiny little streets with 5 kids, backpacks and 3 pieces of rolling luggage. While we had been at the airport, we decided to buy a couple of SIM cards to use in Mark's and Megan's phone while we were in Athens. It was relatively inexpensive (5 EUR for the sim card and we put 20 EUR credit on each). This was very handy because I ended up calling the gentleman who had rented us the apartment. He came down and met us and we were soon there. In hindsight, it wasn't that bad, but in the middle of all of it after a long trip, we were all a little cranky. We soon got over it though.

The apartment was located in the Ambelokipi area and was fairly close to the metro stations, some shopping and restaurants also. It was a small 3 bedroom apartment and I mean everything was small! There was enough sleeping space, but the dishwasher was tiny with only one rack and there is was a small washer/dryer. I'll tell a little side story now even though it happened later in the week. I always pack for our family like I will be doing laundry somewhere in the middle - it is difficult to pack for 7 people everything you will need for a week without taking tons of luggage which we don't like to do. So I "assumed" that the dryer would actually dry the clothes but our rentor informs me when we get there that the dryer doesn't work very well and he would never use it. Well, when he said it doesn't work very well...he meant that it doesn't work at all. I left clothes in there for maybe 3 hours and they were still very damp. Everyone must hang their clothes out to dry but I was not happy because for a family of 7, that is A LOT of clothes. Plus to really get them dry, it took like 2 days! I'm pretty sure I could not live like that :-) We washed the minimum that we needed and that was that. Most of the light switches were outside of the rooms and there were no electrical outlets in the bathrooms so I had to use my curling iron in the hallway while using the bathroom mirror - kind of amusing. All in all, the apartment was nice enough and had what we needed plus it was less expensive than 2 hotel rooms in Athens - so I would do it again but I would pack more clothes!

Here are some views from our apartment balconies (there were 2 balconies)

Our first night in Athens, we headed out to find some good food for dinner. We headed up to the shopping area near our apartment and we were finally invited in to a restaurant (we would soon find that is standard practice in Greece). Neither of the two men working there spoke english, but luckily the menu had english information on it so we communicated well enough. We ordered many things, Megan really enjoyed the french fries with cheese and BACON on it :-) The little kids ordered hamburgers which were nothing like hamburgers in the states and they didn't really like them. I had souvlaki which was awesome and I can't remember what Mark and Spencer ordered. The funniest thing was that we were sitting waiting for our food in this little restaurant and all of a sudden the waiter walks in the front door from outside and brings in the salad. All of the food ended up coming in that way and we finally figured out that the kitchen for this restaurant was actually next door.

For those of you who have been to a Greek restaurant in the Detroit area or in Greektown, you probably have experienced saganaki where they light the cheese on fire and yell "OPA!". Well, we asked about saganaki here and they do have it but it's basically just fried cheese (which is still very tasty) but no fire and no "OPA!". They looked at us like we were a little crazy when we asked about it - hahaha!

Greek salads in Greece do not have lettuce -

veggies and a big chunk of feta - YUM!

Rachel and the hamburgers she didn't like

but the fries were good!

The sign outside the first Greek restaurant we ate at -

we have no idea what it says!

Well, that was the end of the first 24 hours....more to come soon....thanks for reading!

Al Balad

2010-12-07T06:32:00.000-05:00

Last night Mark, Megan and I, along with our friend Belky, headed into Jeddah tonight to go shopping at Al Balad. This section of Jeddah is near the city center and contains lots of these little shops called "souks". Mark left work early at about 4 pm so he could drive us down to the city. This shopping area is only open late in the day so there is no point to head down there any earlier than this. In general, it is not acceptable to take pictures with people in them unless you have permission to take them so we don't take a lot of pictures when we go into Jeddah. So here is a little blurb and a picture from a publication here at KAUST about this area.

Known by many as a shopper's paradise, the various souks of Al Balad ("the town" in Arabic) offer the adventurer everything from gold to frankincense and electronics to abayas. Starting at Nassief House, look beyond the shops and meander through the narrow alleyways lined with three- to five-story buildings harking back to the days when Jeddah was a walled city and just four gates allowing restricted access. Constructed of coral and clay, the height of the centuries-old buildings provided the residents daytime shade on the ground and rooftop breezes in the evenings. Unique wooden shades on the balconies provided ventilation and privacy while still affording those inside a good view of the street.

On the way down, we spotted an On the Border and since there is not a lot of Mexican food here, we had to stop and have dinner. We arrived right at the end of prayer time which was perfect and we were seated and had a really nice dinner.

That's our car in front of the restaurant.

Some of the guys that Mark works with recommended that we park a little ways away from Al Balad and take a taxi in. The streets are very narrow in that section of town and it's hard to find parking. Although Megan really didn't want to take a taxi (even though she had never been in one), we decided that it was the best option. So we asked our very nice Philipino server where was the best place to get a taxi. Next thing we knew, he was out on the street trying to wave one down for us. Although he was not successful (very busy street), we thanked him generously. He recommended that we drive down a little further where there was a mall and we would easily be able to find one there. When you get a taxi in the city, you bargain the price before you leave for your destination. The servers at On the Border told us that they will try to charge you 20 SAR ($5.33) but we should only pay 15 SAR ($4).

So we hopped in the car and drove down the street a little ways to a mall - I can't remember how to pronounce the name of it and definitely wouldn't spell it correctly so I'm not even going to try. We got a taxi and bargained for our ride to Al Balad, hopped in the car and off we went. Our taxi driver was Pakistan and was a very friendly man asking us where we were from. He spoke a little english but not very much. It was a little bit of an exciting ride as it always in Jeddah and he dropped us off in front of the Corniche Building which houses a bunch of shops on the bottom floor. You walk through and you are in this amazing shopping area. It is definitely NOT a mall. The streets and walkways are concrete and very uneven. And all the shop owners are trying to get you to come and look at their wares. They will call out to you "Sister, this one is...." and show you what they are trying to sell.

A rack full of abayas

Our main goal was to purchase Megan an abaya as she has been wearing one that we borrowed from Belky. She wanted something that had tighter sleeves around the wrist and something that looked "young". We must have looked at 9 or 10 different shops until she found one that she liked in a small size. She finally picked one out but it was a little long so the shop owner cut and hemmed it for her while we waited. We paid 80 SAR for her abaya ($21) which was WAY less than what I paid for mine at the mall. I snapped a picture of Lizzie wearing it this morning because Megan wouldn't model it for me. She liked the colors on the sleeves and you can see the sleeves have a sheer black with the pattern continued underneath it. The scarf comes with the abaya and is trimmed in the same colorful fabric although we haven't ever worn the scarf.

After we purchased the abaya, we just did a little more shopping for the holidays. I bought a couple of presents to send back to the states, some additional presents that I can't mention in case my kids read this, a cute yellow pair of shoes for Megan for 35 SAR ($9.33), and tennis shoes for Spencer 45 SAR ($12). We were approached constantly by many different men selling the exact same cologne and many beggar women asking for money. You have to say a firm no when you're not interested in something but the shopkeepers will keep showing you different things they want to sell. And you always need to ask for a discount. If they say no, you can start walking away and they will usually give you one. I'm not that great at the bargaining yet but Belky does really well so she helped us out! I will have to learn this fine art.

So when we were done shopping, we had to find our way back to a place that we could pick up a taxi. We found one and again bargained for our ride back to where we parked our car. At first the driver wanted 30 SAR and we said no and he came down to 20 SAR. This ride back again was interesting. We went on all these backroads to get back to the mall and then had to cross a street with no light and cars coming in all different directions. Thankfully we made it across safely - yikes! We stopped in the restroom at the mall and then got in the car to head back to KAUST. We stopped on the street on the way out to snap a picture of King Fahd's fountain which is the largest fountain in the world. It shoots water 1024 feet above the Red Sea.

Not a great picture because we weren't that close but you can see a couple other pictures on wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Fahd's_Fountain

I hope everyone is enjoying the Christmas season! It still doesn't quite feel like Christmas here. We have a small tree and stockings hung up but no snow or cold weather just is very different (not that I'm complaining). Only a couple more weeks until the kids are out of school for winter break and we head off on our holiday to Athens! Can't wait!

Thanks for reading!!!

Variety Night at KAUST

2010-12-05T13:56:00.001-05:00

Tonight was the 2nd Annual KAUST School Variety Night put on by the Harbor Secondary School here on the KAUST campus. The Secondary School is grade 6 through grade 12 and is the school that Spencer and Megan attend. They didn't participate but we all attended to show support for our school and our community. It was a very nice evening. There were 12 acts - both musical and dance. The kids did wonderfully despite some small problems with the microphones. The kids were from all over the world which made it very interesting - everything from Hip Hop to Indian dancing to lots of songs that you all would probably recognize from current popular music.

I guess the most interesting thing for me tonight wasn't so much the acts - although they were fun and very enjoyable - but it was a nice feeling being part of this community. The Variety Night was held at the cinema on campus which also has a stage. Megan left early, rode her bike and met up with some of her friends to attend. Spencer had Scouts tonight so he met up with them and they rode their bikes up to the cinema. Mark rode his bike over from work and met us and my friend Belky met up with me and the triplets to enjoy the show. I think it's so funny that the triplets seem truly amazed when we are out and about on campus that they know people. "Hey Mom - that's so and so from my class" ...."Hey, I know that guy."...it's pretty funny. Campus is not all that big and you see people you know everywhere you go - the market, Discovery Square (our little "downtown" area), the Sports Club. So for as difficult as it is to live here sometimes, I do really like the small community feel here and the wonderful people that I've met from all over and am really enjoying getting to know!

Hajj / Eid

2010-11-21T02:32:00.000-05:00

Very recently was the Hajj which is the Muslim annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which all Muslims are expected to make at least once in their lifetime. If you are interested in more information about Hajj, Wikipedia has some good info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajj. We are currently located about an hour north of Jeddah and Mecca is a little east of Jeddah. Due to the Hajj and the corresponding Eid holiday, Mark and the kids had the week off of work and school. Since we arrived early in October, we really didn't have time to plan a trip during the holiday so we stayed on campus. Most people left on vacation for the week which I'm sure we'll do next year. It was very quiet here on campus during the week - even quieter than normal.

Our sea shipment arrived on the Monday of our holiday week so that was nice since we got the kids bikes and a lot of their other belongings. We still haven't unpacked everything but I don't have bookshelves or very many places to store things here. I'm glad to finally have my kitchen equipment though (tupperware mostly). Since Rachel's bike didn't get shipped over, we decided to head into Jeddah to get here a bike. Just Mark and I and the girls went since we needed to have room to put the bike in the car. So off we went about 5:00 in the evening. You don't go in during the day when it's a holiday because most stores don't open. The shops and malls are packed and traffic is crazy in the evening with all the visitors to the city. As we were driving into Jeddah, it became prayer time (Muslims are commanded to pray 5 times a day and the times are very specific). One of the most interesting things that we saw was the people that would pull over to the side of the road, get out their prayer mat and say their prayers on the side of the road. Since we're driving through the desert and there aren't a lot of places to stop, you often seen men stopped on the side of the road "using the restroom" also :-)

So we went to the Roshon mall (one of the many malls in Jeddah) because it has a Toys R Us. Before we looked for a bike though, we spotted a Chili's and craving something American, we went in to have dinner. If there weren't women dressed in Abayas, you would have thought you were in the states. The menus were in English - no arabic to be found - and the food was pretty much the same. There was also a Fuddrucker's right next to it. Here's a picture of me and the girls in front of Chili's - Megan and I are wearing our abayas. Mine pretty much looks like a black graduation robe but I've included a picture of the back of it so you'll see that it's not so plain. A lot of abayas are decorated with designs and stones and they now have white abayas that are becoming popular in Jeddah. I think I've said this before, but Jeddah is more liberal than other cities in KSA, such as Riyadh. We still do see women with their faces partially covered (you can see just their eyes) and some even with a full veil where you cannot see any of their face.

We also looked for a dishwashwer that same night. The dishwasher that is provided in the home is really just pathetic. If you talk to pretty much anyone on campus, noone uses it. Now, doing dishes by hand, is probably my least favorite chore in the whole world. And there are 7 of us, so there are a lot of dishes and cups. I think I told Mark that if I didn't have a good dishwasher, I was going to go back to the states :-) So the next night, we went again to Jeddah to look for a dishwasher. This time we took everyone but Spencer - he's not a shopping fan! We were looking for a few other electronic things also - a transformer (convert 220 to 120 so we can use our American applicances) and a mouse for Spencer's MacBook. We did a little shopping and then prayer time started. At this particular store, we did not have to leave, but they dim the lights, you can still shop, but you can't check out during prayer time. We needed to talk to someone about the dishwasher so we waited through prayer time and then got my new Bosch dishwasher!!! Yeah! It even fit well in the car with all of us so we could take it home that night.

After we did that, we headed to the attached mall to get some dinner. We ate in the food court at a place called Al Baik (pronounced al bake I think) - it is a chicken place - comparable to KFC but not really the same. Mark likes to call it "al beak" because it's serves chicken - hahahaha. After dinner we went in search of an iPhone for Megan. We still have yet to track one down - the iPhone 4 is still new here and kind of hard to find. We made one last stop at a place called Ice Land. I was hoping that it would have a nice rink and possibly someone that could work with the girls for skating. I was pretty disappointed - it's another mall type place with an ice rink in the middle - it's not very big and not even as nice as some of the other malls. So I don't think we'll take them there to skate. There are other malls that are closer that have rinks for the girls to try out.

On the drive home, we stopped at what would loosely be called a rest stop near the secuity checkpoint outside of Jeddah. It is really like a shopping area with little restaurants and shops - some open air and some in buildings. I do not like driving past this rest stop in general because there are no on and off ramps for it. You just pull off and on directly from the freeway and when it is crowded, it is absolutely nuts. Well at Ice Land, we had gotten the kids a treat for the ride home and they were all thirsty and I had no water in the car (which I should have all the time). So Mark stopped at this area to get some water bottles. He pulled up to this area that looked like a parking area - there are no lines for parking and people just park anywhere but there were 4 or 5 cars in a line so it looks like a parking spot. We stayed in the car while he got the water. In front of us there was a lane for cars that were leaving to get through. This guy pulls up in front of us in this lane, stops, puts his car in park and gets out of his car to shop, effectively blocking the 2 or 3 cars behind him that were leaving. They all started honking and this guy just totally ignored them. I was just cracking up but what's funny is that kind of behavior doesn't seem to be out of place. Anyways, I could tell tons of driving stories (they have way too many round-abouts here) but I won't bore you with them. In general, if I never had to be in a car in Jeddah, I think I would never miss it.

One morning during the break, Mark got up early and headed out on the road to Madina because he heard that there were baboons out that way and he wanted to get some pictures. Lizzie wasn't feeling well and I didn't want to get her up early and the other kids didn't want to get up early either - although later Spencer said he would have gone - oh well. So here are some of the pictures.

Someone in another car had given this baboon a bag of potato chips. He liked them and was not going to share with the other baboon.

Momma and baby

A baboon crossing sign

Another morning of the holiday, we took a breakfast cruise on the Red Sea from the KAUST marina. We didn't go very far, but it was nice to be out on the water and we got a nice view of the campus and neighboring Thuwal from the boat. I was surprised at how shallow the sea was so far from shore. The boat had to be very careful to go on a specific route to avoid all the sand bars that were in the water.

The KAUST Beacon

A view of our beach

A silly picture of Spencer (he doesn't like to have his picture taken and

he'll probably be mad that I posted this one)

KAUST Campus

The marina building - there is a good restaurant here too!

I think that catches you up on our life over the past month. The kids are back to school and Mark is back to work. We're looking forward to spending our Christmas in Athens, Greece. I am excited to see all the history in that city. Thanks for reading!!

Where to start???

2010-11-21T01:25:00.000-05:00

It's been quite a while since I last posted. I've been extremely busy with work (it's our busy time of year) and I think I'm having a hard time getting adjusted to living here. I'm feeling a bit frustrated with how difficult it is to get things done and to get things I need for the house. The house is another bit of contention as it is way too small for 7 people and we're waiting to move to a bigger home somewhere on campus. No one can give us any idea how long it will be before one is ready and we may be able to move. So I wait patiently (or not so patiently).

But even though there are difficulties, there are some wonderful and interesting things here also. So I will try to share some of our experiences over the last month.

Let's start with Halloween...Halloween is not normally celebrated here in KSA but here at KAUST, there was an organized Halloween party and trick-or-treating for the kids. It's mostly for the younger kids so Spencer and Megan didn't really participate. It's funny because the kids kept asking when we could go "get" their costumes and I had to keep reminding them that there was nowhere to "get" a costume and that we had to be creative. The girls had their skating outfits so they were pretty easy. Alex couldn't think of anything so I suggested he be "static cling". He wasn't really happy about it but it was different and easy so that's what he did. He ended up winning the prize for most creative costume in his age group...I told him that his mom doesn't always make dumb suggestions :-)

One morning I received an email from one of the triplet's teachers requesting parents to help out on a field trip to the KAUST Museum. Since I've never had kids in school before and been on a "real" field trip I offered to go with them. I didn't have high expectations for this museum because the university is so new and still pretty small. I walked away though being highly impressed. It's a small museum that covers the history of Science and Technology in Islam and was very interesting and put together nicely. There were a lot of hands on exhibits and an interesting interactive movie also. Lizzie was in my group with one other little girl named Aya and we walked around and found answers to the questions that the teachers had put together for the kids. It was a very enjoyable morning!

On the day of the field trip, Spencer and Megan had parent/teacher conferences and acutally had the day off. Mark and I headed over to the school that afternoon and got to meet all (or most) of their teachers. They both seem to be adjusting well and are catching up with what they missed at the beginning of the school year.

One of the biggest things that we did this past month was to buy a car - finally! Buying a car here is really an experience. Mark and I had gone down to Jeddah and we visited a couple of dealerships and finally decided to buy a GMC Acadia. We had considered a Suburban but since it was more money, I didn't really want to drive a big huge car around campus and we won't be taking many major road trips. It's interesting because the dealerships here are not run on commission so no one is in a huge hurry to sell you a car. We spoke with a salesperson to find the price and then we left. You can do financing through some dealerships but it is not the norm and you usually bring cash or a check before they will order the vehicle. So deciding how to get the money here was difficult - we had thought about transferring money from the states and then when we found out that that took 5-10 business days we thought that was too long and Mark went to the bank here to get a loan. We didn't need to finance a whole lot because we had quite a bit of the amount we needed but we thought, let's get the loan and just pay off in a couple months. Well getting the loan took almost 2 weeks :-) Like I said - nothing is fast here. Finally we had cash in hand and headed to the dealership. We arrived there on Thursday (think Sat) at about 1 pm - right when they close for the afternoon. I was not happy! There were some people still there shopping and talking to salesmen so we waited a little bit and then headed out. As we got into our car, a salesman came out and asked if we needed help! Yeah!!! So we went back in and paid for the car, registration, window tinting and insurance (all to the same person). We walked away with a paper saying that we would have our car on Monday - en shallah (God willing). God must have been willing because Mark went down to Jeddah to pick up our new car on Monday evening!!!

That same evening, Mark decided he wanted to get us some food from this Pakastani restaurant called Zim Zam in the city of Thuwal which is the closest city (if you can call it that) to KAUST. He has gone to this restaurant many times with his coworkers and had really enjoyed it so he wanted to have us try it. We couldn't go to the restaurant because it is not a family restaurant (meaning no women). So he went there to order "take away" (this is what they say for carry out). This place is pretty much a dive and I don't think I would want to eat there anyways - yikes! Note the backhoe at the front of the restaurant which Mark said drove away before they left :-)

We invited our friends David and Belky and their little girls over to eat with us. The bread was incredible when it was warm - not as great after it cools down. The food was really good - I'm not sure exactly what the spices were but it was rice, chicken and lentils mostly. It was very greasy though and I woke up in the middle of the night with heartburn and couldn't sleep. So even though it was tasty, I'm not sure I'll be eating that again or maybe just the yummy bread! Here's a picture of Victoria with the bread that's almost as big as she is!

This is getting long so I'm going to continue on in another post. If you're still reading, I hope you're enjoying because it is fun for me to write and document our experiences on this adventure!

Red Sea and Juice

2010-10-21T09:03:00.000-04:00

First, the Read Sea...it's Thursday (meaning Saturday) and Mark wanted to head over to the beach to do some wind surfing. It ended up to be a little too windy for a beginning wind surfer so Mark and the kids just spent some time in the water. I snapped a few pictures before the battery on my camera went dead.

Mark, Spencer, Megan, Rachel and Alex decided to walk out to this "island" that is really like a large sand bar and not difficult to get to. Lizzie didn't want to go so we were going to start heading home since the wind picked up. Lizzie and I had gotten about 1/2 way back to the scooter when Rachel and Alex came running back to us because it was getting windy and a sand storm was picking up. So I sent them to the car and had to go back to the beach to get our keys. While I was there, one of the Coastline guys (the company that runs the beach) asked me if I needed help because they were getting everyone off the beach. They had told Mark and the kids that they needed to come in. He drove me back to the car where the triplets were hiding their faces against the car to keep out of the sand. They looked so pathetic that it was kind of cute. We hopped in the car and the triplets and I waited for the rest of the family.

Luckily, another nice Coastline guy picked Mark, Spencer and Megan back to the car. It was pretty much full sandstorm winds now and the people that worked there were all wearing face masks so as not to breathe the sand. Since we still have a rental car and it only seats 5, Mark had to ride the scooter back to the house. It was pretty windy and sandy but he made it just fine. The rest of us smushed in the car to get home.

So now on to the juice.....one of our favorite things about moving to Saudi Arabia is all the great juices that you can find her and how inexpensive they are. These are only a few of the juices you can find in our little grocery store on campus. In Jeddah, there are big stores that only sell juice, we've will defintely be visiting one of those soon!

Strawberry and Mango are our favorites and these big bottles cost 9 SAR which is $2.40.

Megan is sad that these are empty :'-(

These little (single serve) bottles are

orange, mango,

mixed berry, mixed fruit

and apple and cost 1 SAR

which is about 27 cents.

Sandstorms and More...

2010-10-20T04:09:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I've posted and a lot has happened and nothing has happened too. We're still getting settled into KAUST and adjusted to our new home. The kids have started school and they are enjoying their new adventure. They seem to be making friends and getting used to being gone all day and then having homework at night. I think I'm having the hardest time adjusting since I'm home by myself most of the day. I've started working out which is good and I'm trying to get used to a new work schedule. Here are some pictures of the first day of school.

Spencer started 8th grade - we weren't extremely about them putting him in 8th grade but they base it only on age and the cutoff is Sept 1. There was no evaluation on where he stood as far as academics so we're just keeping an eye on him so he doesn't get bored. He tells me right now that Science is really easy and Math is review for him right now. After a few more weeks, I'll see where he is doing and then approach the counselors if we think we need to. Megan started 7th grade and is making friends with a lot of the girls. They had a birthday party for a couple of the girls this week at the Rec Center and Megan went and had a great time. Rachel, Alexander and Lizzie started 3rd grade and all have different teachers. So they have time alone but then get to be together during lunch and recess. They seem to like it so far which I'm very happy about.

Mark and I have been shopping for a car. I think we've decided on a GMC Acadia - it will seat all 7 of us but isn't huge for me to drive around campus (and fit in the garage). We're working on getting all the money together since they don't do financing here like they do in the states - it is a very "cash" society. I've barely touched my credit cards since I've been here which is odd because at home I would not carry very much cash, put everything on the card and pay it off at the end of the month. Hopefully, we'll have a car here in the next couple weeks - that's probably wishful thinking on my part as it seems to take twice as long as you would hope it would!

We've been to church twice now. We meet at a home in Jeddah so it is an hour drive there and back. We are allowed to meet here in KSA but we are not allowed to invite non-members to our meetings. There are a list of rules that are read at church every quarter to remind everyone about how we should conduct our meetings here. It is a nice ward - mostly Philipinos but a couple American families also. The first week we went there was a primary activity right after church. The kids baked cookies with their moms and we all had a treat.

Alex, Ethan and Lillibeth

The woman on the right is Belky and she lives on the KAUST campus.

Lizzie and Elena (Belky's daughter) on the right

Rachel, Abby and Erin (I don't know the little girl's name on the left)

Last Friday, we had what is called a Family Day after church which is basically a pot luck. I have never been to a pot luck like this!!! So much food - there was turkey and all sorts of rice and "something" dishes which were probably mostly Philipino. Tons of desserts and Lillibeth made homemade spring rolls that were just so unbelievably good! She is planning to teach my friend Melissa how to make them after she has here baby and they invited me to come!!! I've never seen so much food for the people that were there. It's nice though because a lot of the members of the ward are single men or men here without their families - so they get to fill up a plate and take it home with them. I think they probably could take home 3 or 4 plates!

Today, Lizzie didn't have a great morning before she went to school and Mark was trying to get her to cheer up. He snapped this picture of her on the way to school. She's so cute when she has an attitude - I'm hoping that the attitude cleared up before she got to school!

And now....sandstorms....they are not quite what I imagined. The weather here has been really hot and actually not as humid the past 2 days. That's probably because of all the sand in the air. Yesterday afternoon the kids didn't do some of their outside activities because of the sandstorm. I went to work out this morning and on the way home, I stopped at the grocery store, Tamimi's, to pick up a few things for the day. When I came out, we were in full sandstorm mode. It's not like you can't see anything (and maybe this isn't a real bad one) but it's just kind of creepy looking. It's really hazy and you have to be careful not to get the sand in your eyes. I snapped these pictures when I got home from the store.

I've promised some people pictures of me in my abaya and I promise that I'll post that next time - I don't have any pictures yet. We miss all of our family and friends and hope you are well!

Thanks for reading!

I WANT TARGET!!

2010-10-08T01:28:00.000-04:00

So yesterday was probably one of the most interesting and challenging days we've had since we've moved to Saudi Arabia (of the whole week that we've been here). There are a lot of things that we need for the house and we need to buy a car too. Thursday is our "Saturday" so Mark was not working and he rented a suburban to take the family to Jeddah to do a little shopping.

The day started out nice, the Bishop and his family from our new ward here in Jeddah came to visit. It was really nice to meet them - they are from Ohio and have 4.5 kids - their oldest daughter is Megan's age, they have a 9 yo son that is the triplet's age, 2 younger daughters and a new baby due very soon. We got to spend a little time chatting about living as Americans in KSA which was fun.

So we headed off to Jeddah about 1:30. It takes about an hour to get there and the drive wasn't too bad. Then we got a little lost in the city - it was acutally kind of pretty, we ended up driving along the Red Sea which was really nice. The streets are pretty confusing, they seem to like round-abouts and if you get on a big street, there aren't really a lot of places to turn around. I've heard how terrible the traffic is in Jeddah but right now, I'm thinking people were exaggerating - I will soon learn that they are not :-)

We finally make it to the Red Sea Mall - it doesn't look that big from the outside but it is really large. The shops look much like they would in the states with maybe a little more arabic but there are all sorts of western style clothing for men and women. All of the women there are wearing abayas and a lot (but definitely not all) with head coverings and some with the veil as well. We are looking for an abaya for me - I have borrowed one, but it's a little small and not very comfortable. After searching through practically the whole mall and me getting very frustrated, we finally find one. I spend way too much for an abaya but I have one that fits and that I like - I'll have to get a picture soon. It's interesting how even non-muslim women get into picking out abayas - some are very pretty - they have lots of embellishments and patterns on them now and in this culture, it is very much a status symbol for the women.

The kids are getting hungry so we decide to find a place to eat and head up to the food court. It is basically all craziness up here - totally packed with people, not a table to be found and it close to the 3:15 prayer time which means that a lot of the shops/restaurants shut down. The kids wanted McDonalds, but they were closing down so we head over to KFC where I think probably 4 or 5 people cut in front of me in line. So again, I'm a little frustrated :-) One of the most surprising things that I saw was kids riding around the crowds on scooters and skateboards and heelies all over the place. Seriously, I was very surprised that they let kids do this. In general, I just sense a lack of discipline with the kids here - or maybe it's the same in the states and I just don't go to the mall on Saturdays :-)

Mark and Spencer got some chinese food and I finally just went to a coffee shop to get brownies for rest of the kids. We ate and then decided to try to head out and find Ikea. This is where the adventure begins and I totally see where people say that driving is crazy here. There is like a main street and then along side them there are streets where you would drive to get to the local shops. People are weaving in and out - some are agressive and some are really cautious. We saw people stopped on streets and backing up because they went the wrong way and people going around them because they were in the way. Megan kept saying - "Mom, aren't you glad you can't drive?" and I really kind of am. I liked being in the Suburban because it's big and I felt protected. I think we will probably buy something similar just for that reason.

We made it to Ikea and anyone who has shopped Ikea before knows what an experience it is. It is huge and when it's crowded and you have 5 kids in tow, it really isn't that much fun. Plus wearing an abaya makes everything about 5 times warmer than what I'm used to. We got a lot of what we needed - sheets, towels, hangars but they didn't have some things that I wanted. It was about 6:30 at this point, and me and the kids were done. So we decided to head back to KAUST. On the way back, I just kept thinking how much I wished I had a Target where I could walk in and find everything I needed in one place. I was IM'ing with Belky last night and we decided that we would start a petition to get one - so....maybe in the future KSA will have a Target for all us Americans to shop at! :-)

Thanks for reading! Cindy

Leaving Home - Arrival in KSA - First Impressions

2010-10-06T14:48:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I posted - life got busy wrapping things up at home. It was sure hard to leave everyone - especially my family. I miss my parents and the rest of my family but it's nice to know that we can use skype to talk and see each other so easily. So here is the update...I don't have very many pictures of this time so this will be a lot of words. I hope to follow up with more pictures soon!

We spent our last evening in Michigan with my parents, my brother Rich, Laura and their kids Cameron & Trevor and my brother Russell with his two boys, Nicholas & Nathan. We had our good friends the Lindows and the Johnsons stop by to say good-bye to us also. We were pretty well packed by late in the afternoon so when we got up in the morning to leave, we just had to throw our dirty clothes in a suitcase and say our final farewells. I really tried not to cry but I did - so did the kids. We made it to the airport very easily, turned in the rental car and got on our flight to DC. It was delayed an hour but we had a 6 1/2 hour layover in DC so not that big of a deal. I was so grateful that our luggage got checked all the way from Detroit to Jeddah so I didn't have to deal with getting it to the next airline in DC. My mom's cousin Lucille was nice enough to meet us in DC - she helped us through the airport and we had lunch with her. She hung out with us during our layover and we got to chat and enjoy some time together before our flight left.

Waiting in DTW for flight to DC

More waiting...

Our very large airplane from DC to Jeddah

The flight from DC to Jeddah was uneventful but VERY long - 12 hours. Next time, I won't have the kids pack as much to do because the plane had individual video screens and that kept everyone entertained the entire flight. I don't think anyone opened their backpacks at all. We flew Saudi Airlines and it was interesting how the movies were edited - for example, I watched Music & Lyrics and if Drew Barrymore's top was a little low cut - it was blurred in that area. Hugh Grant had a necklace on that I believe was probably a cross and that was blurred out too. Also, most women were dressed in western dress on the plane and as we got close to landing, changed into their abayas. Alex had to use the bathroom but got frustrated because the line was so long :-) I had worn black pants and top and brought a dark hoodie that I wore so I didn't stand out. It probably wouldn't have mattered, we were in the airport maybe a total of 45 minutes.

Nobody slept very well except for the little girls but we made it and landed in Jeddah about 1:00 pm local time. We did not step right onto a jetway as we do in the states, but you actually take stairs down to the tarmac and then hop onto a bus that takes you into customs. The heat hits you as you exit the plane like a brick wall. On our descent, Megan had some water drip from above her - the flight attendant says that happens all the time because it's so cold up high and then as the plane descends into Jeddah, there is a lot of condensation. You never know where it's going to drip.

Getting through customs was fairly easy - we found the desk for KAUST, filled out some paperwork and got through the first part of customs in about 15 minutes. We picked up our luggage with the help of a KAUST representative and while we were waiting for it, we saw Mark outside the customs area. Our luggage was scanned but not opened at all and off we went. It was good to see Mark! He was there with two cars for us - one for luggage and one for the family. Three KAUST representatives were there to help us...we got to the cars and off we went.

Driving from Jeddah to KAUST was not that interesting - a lot of deserty looking area although we did see camels. The most interesting part was that there were these HUGE homes with big high walls around them. They were gorgeous and then outside of the walls, there were piles of dirt and trash. Most people have told us that it is like that around the world in a lot of places - it's just odd to see such oppulence with such garbage around.

We arrived at our townhome where we will stay until a bigger home is available (hopefully). We are a little tight in this house. It is good size but there are only 2 bedrooms and they are not big enough for 3 beds. Megan is sleeping in the little maid's quarters downstairs. It has it's own bathroom but the shower is just a shower head next to the toilet - no tub or anything - it would make a huge wet mess if she were to use it. Also, to get into the little wardrobe, you have to move the nightstand. So it is not the best situation, but it is working for right now. Mark says I have to traipse into the housing office with all of my 5 kids and ask them when they'll have the bigger house ready for us :-)

We had dinner at the dining hall on campus - where we've had most of our main meals since we don't have a whole ton of groceries yet. There is a supermarket on campus which has a lot of things but there are bigger stores in Jeddah with better selection and prices so I am waiting until we get there to stock up on necessary pantry items. We need lots of things for the house too - laundry baskets, towels, hangars, etc. The dining hall is awesome and has a great selection of food so we haven't been suffering. The prices are great too! Yesterday for a great dinner, we spent 101 Riyals which equals $27. Another interesting thing is that they don't use change here very often. So if I'm at the grocery store and the cost is 141.60 Riyals and I pay 150, they will give me 8 Riyals in change and then some candy or a soda or something. The kids like it because they usually get the treat.

I was hoping to get the kids started in school right away, but they only do intake interviews on Sat and Tues so Tuesday it was. Megan and Spencer will be in the secondary school and the triplets will be in the elementary school. The nice thing about our current home is that it is right across the street from the schools so the kids can walk very easily. They are excited to start and will begin on Saturday. The work week here is Saturday to Wednesday with the weekend on Thursday and Friday so we will go to church in Jeddah on Friday. I'm looking forward to meeting more of our ward. I already have a friend in our ward that lives on campus named Belky - her husband David is a professor here in Applied Mathmatics and they have two adorable daughters named Elena and Victoria. I am very grateful for the church and that it allows me to already know someone anywhere I go. They have been so helpful and welcoming! Belky has driven us all over the place because we are still without a car (we will be buying one soon!).

We've had some little pest problems since we got here :-) We had ants in the kids bedrooms and we had a little mouse visitor that was caught today. Nothing too different than the states but it was nice that I could just call someone up and tell them and they came to take care of it. I think I could get used to that. People are extremely friendly here and very helpful!

So some of the things that we have to get used to:

Heat AND Humidity - we can see the Red Sea from our home and it is very humid. There is always a humid haziness during the day.
The constant hum of air conditioners - we have 4 units in our 3 BR townhome which I would say is probably about 2400 sq ft.
The layout of the homes are set up for maids - the kitchen has a door to close it off from the rest of the house so you have to walk way around to get in there. The rest of the space isn't set up very efficiently either - this seems to be a trend in the design of a lot of their buildings.
Blue sky ALL THE TIME!!! This one won't be hard to get used to - just have to remember the sunscreen.

We are enjoying are new home so far - the kids say it feels like we're on vacation (we're reminded a lot of FL being here). We'll see if that lasts as they start school and get into more of a routine schedule!

Mark on Vacation

2010-09-17T21:56:00.000-04:00

The Holy Month of Ramadan ended last week and after it is over, the Muslim world celebrates with a holiday called Eid. It is actually a longer name, but I'm not sure of it and it seems like it's just shortened to Eid anyways. So the whole kingdom goes on vacation, including Mark after only 2 weeks at his new job (lucky guy). He was feeling kind of sorry for himself that he was by himself and really nothing to do but I couldn't work up a whole lot of sympathy :-) It sounds like he had a good week. He went into the city a couple times with someone else from his group or someone that is in our ward at church. He bowled, played table tennis, went to the beach and rode his scooter around. Not the most exciting vacation I'm sure but I can honestly say that I'm a little jealous - what mom of 5 kids doesn't wish for a week long vacation in a warm climate by herself?

Here are a few pictures that he took of sunset at KAUST. I think they're very pretty.

Only 2 more weeks until the rest of us start our adventure. It's hard to believe that it's so close and still it seems pretty far away also. We are going to miss our family here and all of our friends too!

MMMMMM....love the beach!

2010-09-17T21:49:00.000-04:00

As the weather starts to turn a little colder here in MI - especially after the rainy day we had yesterday, I'm really starting to look forward to the weather in Saudi Arabia. This is the beach on the KAUST campus. You can swim or rent boats to go out on the water too. I know it will be hot but I'm imagining myself sitting right here in January - lounging with a good book and a cold drink....

Still waiting to move....

2010-09-04T12:09:00.000-04:00

It's a little frustrating how everything seems to take so long right now. First the decision to move, and now the wait to get there. Mark got his iqama (his work permit) and once he had that, we can start the process of obtaining VISAs for the kids and I to move over to KAUST to join Mark. The problem is that pretty much everything slows down during Ramadan and then after the month of Ramadan, there is a week long holiday. So we must wait until after the holiday to get our VISAs. We currently have a flight scheduled to leave on October 1 so hopefully we will be able to keep that.

We do get to talk to Mark everyday through skype. The pictures is great and it all works very well. I think that technology is just the coolest thing. I can talk to my husband (and see him) half way around the world pretty much anytime I want and I don't have to pay for it. How cool is that! We are keeping our current home phone number with Vonage so when we move, you just call our current home number and you'll get us in Saudia Arabia! Love it!!!

It's a little hard being out of our home (we're living at my parents in Auburn Hills) because we're a little farther from the kids friends. So I spend a little time driving the kids up to Lake Orion pretty much every day to play and visit. Everyone goes back to school on Tuesday so we'll start up homeschooling again until we move. I'm doing it mostly because the kids would be bored out of their mind if we don't do something. They'll be attending the International School on the KAUST campus when we arrive there. I need to work on getting them all enrolled in the next couple of weeks.

Mark has shared a few more pictures from Campus - notice the blue blue blue sky! It's still very hot there but I am truly looking forward to the warm weather during the winter. Anyone who knows me really well (and probably not even really well) knows that my dream has been to live somewhere warm for a long time. I would prefer Cinderella's Castle at DisneyWorld but I guess this will have to do for a while. So here are the pictures...

A look at the Red Sea from campus

Another building on campus

The IT building where Mark works

I think this is the IT building in the background

Mark's new scooter to cruise around campus

The scooter's view of the playground and pool nearby

Dinner in Jeddah

2010-08-24T22:26:00.000-04:00

Mark headed off to the city of Jeddah with some of his coworkers last night. Here are some of his comments...

We ended up having dinner, shopping and one of the guys really was hoping to be able to find a new tire of a specific brand. We ended up not getting home until about 1am. Sounds really late, but because of Ramadan it was strange. Going into the city arriving around 7pm there was hardly any traffic, but as the evening got later there was more and more traffic. The city lived up to its reputation for driving. The opportunistic driving I feel is a direct result of the challenging road conditions: lack of traffic lights, narrow streets, etc. The evening was enjoyable and profitable. I enjoyed dinner, but wasn't impressed when my dinner came with french fries. Was hoping for a more authentic middle eastern dish according to my preconceived notions.

He also snapped a few pictures....

You've got to love being able to buy gas at $0.46/gallon. For those that would like to check the math: $1 = 3.75 Riyals, 1 gallon = 3.78 liters. So 10.9 gallons was bought for $5.07. Full service too, noone had to even get out of the car.

Applebee's in Arabic

Red Sea Mall

Mark's First Day

2010-08-22T06:05:00.000-04:00

I spoke with Mark a little more yesterday and we shared some emails and he sent a few pictures so I will share what he has told me so far.

When he arrived, he was put into a 3 BR townhouse. We were a little disappointed, because we really would like/need a 4 BR house but it sounds like not all of the homes are complete yet. The good thing is that in the townhouse, there is no outside entrance to the maid's room so even though it is small, one of the kids could use that room. One of the guys that he works with is in a 2 BR house and would like a 3 BR so we'll see how that all works out and if we'll be able to move eventually. He told me that we're right across from the elementary school and just down the street from the grocery store and secondary school also. I think that will be convenient.

We've heard from others that the houses sometimes have issues when you move in. They all are fixed by maintenance eventually so that is good but not always convenient. I guess I'm glad that Mark is there finding these things out before we get there. I think the worst one was that the stove and microwave didn't work so Mark really couldn't prepare food very easily. He also has no bike or car so has to walk everywhere and it is very hot right now!

Mark made a couple trips to the supermarket. Some things are pretty cheap. He spent 2.95SR or about .80 cents for 6 eggs. A box of cereal was expensive! He paid 30SR which is about $8, ouch. Looks like my kids better get used to eating eggs for breakfast!

So now some pictures of the house...

This is looking from the dining room into the living room.

Looking into the kitchen.

Looking into the living room.

The outside of the house - the open garage is ours and the front door is to the right.

At the KAUST marina.

Mark at KAUST

2010-08-20T21:26:00.001-04:00

Yesterday afternoon, we left the kids at my mom's house and headed to the airport for Mark's flight to Jeddah to start his new job at KAUST. We had to drop the van off for brake work (in terrible shape after 4500 miles across the country through mountains and acting as a moving van for 3 weeks) so we couldn't take all the kids with us. We didn't think it was fair to take a couple and leave the rest so Mark said his good-byes at home and I took him to the airport.

The whole way there, I kept telling him he was flying United to Chicago so that's where I dropped him off. Well, I got home, looked at his itinerary and oops, he was flying American. I was all worried so I gave him a quick call and he had figured it all out after he stood in the United line to drop off his luggage. Well...that will teach him to listen to me!

He had to pick up his luggage in Chicago and head to his next flight from Chicago to Amman, Jordan on Royal Jordanian airlines. That was the long 12 hour flight and then a short 2 hour flight to Jeddah on the same airline. He called me about 5:00 pm local time (about midnight in KSA) and told me he had arrived safely in Jeddah and had been met by his KAUST representative. He could only talk a minute because he was using someone else's phone so I'm looking forward to hearing many more details about his trip. I am sure glad that he arrived safely though!

Happy 17th Anniversary!

2010-08-14T17:10:00.000-04:00

Today is Mark and my 17th anniversary. We've spent the majority of today recovering from yesterday. After a quick trip to the house to drop of keys and pick up a few final things, we came home and took the kids to breakfast and then back to the house for a two hour nap. I messed around trying to get a new modem hooked up and after being on the phone for about an hour with Comcast, they told me that they had not taken the account off seasonal hold as my dad requested on the 11th. They told me it would be done tomorrow so I'm borrowing someone else's internet today. I sure hope they don't mind :-) If they did, they would have secured their wireless signal....right?

So, we're off to dinner and a movie after we drop the kids off at the ward picnic. Friends have offered to take them home afterwards and we'll pick them up a little later tonight. Our last day at church as a family for a while will be tomorrow as Mark will be leaving for Saudi on the 19th. Then the girls and I leave for Chicago tomorrow afternoon to visit the American Girl store. This trip is for their birthday and they are very excited! Looking forward to everything but the drive!

So Happy Anniversary to my wonderful husband! I'm looking forward to this adventure and many more years together!

Moving/Closing Days

2010-08-14T15:53:00.001-04:00

I totally intended to take pictures but the day just didn't quite go as well as we had anticipated. On Thursday, we hired a company to move our big furniture to storage and we also had the packers at the house in the afternoon to pack our air and sea shipment to Saudi Arabia. The one thing that they didn't tell us was that besides the weight limit for our shipments (which we were well under) there is a volume limit also. So we were lucky that we got 5 bikes in the shipment. I don't currently have one and one of the little girl's bikes got left behind. I'm not sure whether it was Rachel or Lizzie's bike, but someone is either going to be really sad that their bike didn't make it or really happy that they will get a new one!

I spent the evening with some good friends finishing up the packing - thanks Michelle, Paige, Julie and Emily! By 9:30 pm, I was beat and fell into bed and right to sleep. I was up at 11:30 and could not sleep - my mind was racing with all that we had to get done the next day. I started early with a trip to my mom's house to drop off some things and Mark hit the dumpster with a ton of trash. Julie and Christina came to help me clean the bathrooms and the kitchen and did an awesome job! Darryl and Dennis came and helped mark pack up a truck we rented and take stuff over to the storage place. We have so much stuff that we ended up having to rent a third unit and we're still overflowing. We'll be trying to sort through that over the next few days. We'll give away some things and toss some in the dumpster.

The buyers came buy at about 11:00 for a walkthrough which is required by the mortgage company now. We chatted with them for a little while and then did a little more before we had to head off to closing. Our friends finished up the cleaning and unloaded the truck for us. I'm so grateful for knowing such wonderful people willing to give up their time to help us! Closing took a little bit and Mark and I stopped for a quick bite to eat since we hadn't had anything since breakfast. When we got back to the house we had no power - I had cancelled our account, but the buyer hadn't turned his on yet - so I couldn't finish vacuuming (oh I was so sad). One more trip to the storage unit for Mark and Megan and I tried to gather everything left in the house.

We decided to have a break and took the kids to dinner at Culvers and then dropped them off at my parent's house to go finish getting everything out of the house. By this time, we were pretty much beyond exhausted. We couldn't fit the kayak and a ladder into the unit so we left them for our neighbors hoping they would want them (they did).

All in all, I think it was one of the longest days of my (and probably Mark's) life. We really don't want to do this again for a very long time...well at least a couple of years when we move back.

So we are no longer homeowner's - we are going to miss our home, we brought our triplets home there and have spent the longest part of our married life there. It is a beautiful home and neighborhood and we hope the new owner's enjoy it as much as we did!

The Adventure will soon begin.....

2010-08-04T20:51:00.000-04:00

As long as it had taken us to make the decision to move to KAUST in Saudi Arabia, it now feels like it is approaching so quickly. We have movers coming to itemize and pack our things for shipping to KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) next week, we close on the sale of our home next Friday and Mark will leave on the 19th. We are still not sure when the kids and I will travel but it is fast approaching.

I hope to soon share lots of our adventures and experiences while we are living abroad!

Crazy Morning

2009-03-10T10:20:00.000-04:00

My morning started about 2 am when I hear S* come into our room saying - Fozzie got out. Now this is not the first time this hamster has escaped. He has learned how to open the doors on his cage and I think he really enjoys his freedom.

I honestly don't know how S* realized at 2 in the morning that he had gotten out of his cage. But being the good mom that I am, I went downstairs to help look for him. M* was already down there and was very upset. The boys' door had been open so Fozzie really could have been anywhere. We had all the lights on and A* was whining that he was tired and couldn't sleep - pretty much oblivious to the drama unfolding around him. We searched the basement and after about 15 minutes, M* yells out, I think I hear him. Now again - my kids must have bionic ears because they can really hear this hamster sneezing. We were in the family room and tried to sit quietly for a few minutes to see if we could hear him again. All of a sudden the little rat (my pet name for him) peeks out from behind some toys. We spot him and after a short little chase, we catch him. We've decided that Fozzie knows what he is doing and that he likes to escape, but when he gets hungry, he likes to be found. So, crisis averted...the hamster is found!

So after our little late night escapade, we all sleep a little later than normal. I got school all laid out for the kids and they're finally up and starting to eat breakfast. R* pours a bowl of cereal and I pour the milk because it's a full gallon. She carries it with her to get a spoon and while doing so, proceeds to dump the whole bowl, milk and all, right into the drawer. Now, of course, I'm mad at first, but have to admit that this has totally never happened to us before and I find it very amusing now. I'm not quite sure how she did it. R* was sad, but she helped me clean it up and all is well.

Quite a crazy morning so far...I wonder what will happen next.

Primeval Whirl and Expedition Everest

2009-01-20T20:11:00.000-05:00

The main goal of today was to have the triplets ride Primeval Whirl at Animal Kingdom. They haven't been able to ride this coaster so far because you have to be 48 inches tall - it is the tallest height requirement at Disney World except for driving the Indy Speedway cars. Primeval Whirl is a cute little mouse type roller coaster that spins around too. The older kids really love it and got to ride it about 8 times before having to get off on one trip. So we went to Primeval Whirl first and Lizzie measured tall enough and Rachel measured tall enough. Alex did not - seriously he was probably about 1/8 of an inch too short and you could tell he was seriously disappointed. He was a good sport about it though!

Rachel, Lizzie and I rode one time and that was all Rachel wanted to do. By this time, Mark had returned from getting FastPasses for Expedition Everest so he rode a couple more times with Lizzie, Spencer and Megan. Rachel, Alex and I explored the shop nearby. Afterwards, we spent a little time looking for Hidden Mickey's. The one pictured below is seriously about the size of a quarter on a dinosaur statue nearby. We thought it was pretty cool but it would be very hard to find without a good telephoto lens - thanks Mark!

We had some time to kill before our FastPasses for Everest so we went to visit Pooh Bear, Eyeore and Tigger. This is one of my favorite pictures of the day.

After we left, Eyeore followed us up the path. I think we almost convinced him to come back to Michigan with us, but it turns out that he doesn't like the cold very much!

We headed over to Everest which Alex decided he was going to ride for the first time. The little girls and Megan opted out of the ride so Mark, Spencer, Alex and I rode. It was a lot of fun but Alex was a little white getting off. But now he can say that he rode it - although it might be a while before he rides it again.

My parents decided they wanted to go home at this point and we just hung out on a bench watching the crowds for a while. Actually, we were trying to stay warm! I forgot to mention that it was pretty cool this morning. It was in the 40s when we left this morning and it only got up to about 56 degrees. Plus it was very windy...so the water rides were out today! We watched the Flight of Wonder show which has a bunch of different birds - it is one of the hidden gems of Animal Kingdom. We headed over to the Lion King show which is one of my favorites. We had lunch and then went on Kilamanjaro Safari - Mark got some really cool pictures of all the animals with the telephoto lens.

We were home by about 2:00 and just hung out and relaxed. We're headed to the Magic Kingdom tomorrow! Yeah!

EPCOT Here We Come

2009-01-19T19:28:00.001-05:00

Well - we were all exhausted last night and I was the first one up at about 7:00 am. I decided that no one (including me) were in a hurry to get going this morning so I didn't force my family to get up and be at the parks by opening today. I think they were glad! We ate breakfast at the house and finally rolled out at about 9:30. This is a picture of E* and R* outside the house.

We headed over to Epcot and my parents had to go to MapleLeaf Tickets to pick up their discounted Disney tickets so they were going to meet us there. We arrived at the park and there was a fairly long line to park. We figured today of all days would be a bit more crowded since it's a holiday. We still parked fairly close and the trams weren't even running to the front of the park so we walked in.

We decided to head to Test Track - Mark rode with Spencer and Alex while me and the girls headed into the store to shop and look at the cars. Rachel didn't really want to ride and Megan decided she didn't want to wait in line. My kids are kind of spoiled because we've learned how to use the FastPass system pretty well and we rarely have to wait very long. So the girls pretty much sat in every GM vehicle they have in the showroom area of Test Track. My parents called while we were waiting and had arrived at the park so they met us in the showroom area. Soon Mark and the boys were done with the ride and we headed out.

Mark and Spencer decided to go pick up a set of FastPasses for Soarin while the rest of us rode Journey Into Imagination. My kids still love this simple ride and A* talked my ear off the entire ride - it was very cute. We talked the kids into seeing Honey I Shrunk the Audience (although some of them didn't really want to do it). I hadn't seen this attraction since before the triplets were born - it's cute and a little scary in some parts but I think they all enjoyed it.

It was time for lunch and we decided to head over to the Beach Club (a nearby Disney resort) to have lunch and ice cream. We had hamburgers, hot dogs, turkey sandwiches and ceasar salad and then ice cream for dessert - we were stuffed! We rode the boat back to Epcot and headed over to Soarin. I think that this is one of our favorite rides of all time!

My parents were done for the day so they headed home and took the girls, R* and E*. The rest of us went and rode Test Track again. Test Track has 2 lines - a regular line where your party will ride together and a single rider line where you will be used to "fill in" empty seats. There was a group of four French (we think) tourists that had gotten in the single rider line and were giving the cast member seating people a hard time that they couldn't ride together. Everytime he tried to guide one of them to a car, the girl would be pouty and wouldn't move. They finally could muster up enough English to ask for the word exit :-) It was pretty funny to watch.

After Test Track, we too headed home. The kids of course jumped right into the pool until dinner time.

My fork feels weird!

2009-01-19T18:57:00.000-05:00

Another day for driving. We left Tennessee after eating breakfast at the hotel. The kids love the "free breakfast" when we're staying at a hotel. We tried pretty much everything and when we were done, we got in the car and continued south. The temperature started out pretty much where we left yesterday at 37 degrees.

The trip was pretty uneventful. We stopped at McDonald's for a snack and then went to Kentucky Fried Chicken somewhere in Georgia for lunch. Since there are so many of us, it's financially intelligent to order a bucket of chicken and some sides. The kids favorites are macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes. The quote of the trip (at least so far) was when A* about half way through lunch announced that he couldn't eat anymore because his fork felt weird. I about lost it on that quote. A* is our consummate complainer and this was a good one. Even funnier was that he was really eating with a "spork" that he thought was really cool when he started.

We arrived in Davenport about 6:00 after stopping for some quick groceries. We had a painful pancake cooking experience because the pans were pretty useless. All in all, the house is really pretty nice. There is a master bedroom on the main floor where my parents are staying and the rest of us are upstairs. M* has her own room (which she is really excited about), A* and S* share and so do the little girls.

Looking forward to a fun day at Epcot!

It's COOOLD in Tennesee...

2009-01-17T20:42:00.000-05:00

We headed off for our annual trek to Florida this morning. Many people think that we are pretty crazy for driving from Michigan to Florida, but the kids have gotten pretty good at travelling by car for long distances. We actually enjoy our trips in the car together.

I packed most of the late afternoon and evening yesterday and fell asleep before I could watch Monk and Psych - my favorite shows. After sleeping in my recliner until about 1:00 am (both of us zonked out watching tv). We set the alarm for 6 am and made it up on time. Mark and I put the cartop carrier on the top of the car - boy was that cold!!! The kids got up about 6:30 after hearing all the noise we were making packing up the car. My parents called us about 7:00 to inform us that they were already on their way and were almost to Ann Arbor. We all ate breakfast and were out of the house by about 7:30. It was a little later than I liked, but hey, we're on vacation right?

As we got in the car, the kids noted that it 1 degree BELOW zero - brrrr...the sun was starting to come up and it was really pretty. Our drive was pretty uneventful. It was pretty windy through Ohio and still very cold. We stopped for lunch at Taco Bell and only stopped one other time for a bathroom break. With 5 kids in the back - I think we did really well. We made it a game for the kids to watch for the temperature to rise a degree. The first person to notice that it was one degree higher won - no prizes though :-) The highest temperature we saw all day was 37 degrees, which is probably warmer than Michigan, but really not the immediate benefit that I was looking for.

We arrived in Cleveland, TN (just north of Chattanooga) about 6:15 and checked into the Fairfield Inn. It's really nice except for the lime green/white curtains on the windows. Interesting color choices! My parents were already checked in so we checked into our room and then we all headed over to the Cracker Barrel for dinner. This is a must do when we're traveling for some silly reason. I always have to have breakfast for dinner. The food was good except the triplets didn't eat much - too many snacks in the car.

After dinner, Mark took the triplets down to the pool to expend some energy and here I am, hanging out for a little while. Hopefully the warmth will arrive tomorrow as we travel into Florida.

Better Late than Never and a Fun Week

2009-01-11T19:00:00.000-05:00

First a little more about Bedtime Stories - great movie! I would recommend it even if you don't have little kids to use an excuse. Skeeter is a handy man at a hotel but really wants to be able to run a hotel someday and has been overlooked for many years even though he does a great job. Skeeter has to take care of his niece and nephew for a few days while their mom is interviewing for a job. He starts telling them bedtime stories and the things that the kids say in the stories come true the next day. It's a nice story with a little bit of romance and some good laughs. The good guy wins and the "bedtime stories" are very entertaining.

Ok - now onto the current topic. Mark's parents (my mother and father in-law) were supposed to leave Las Vegas on Tuesday morning at 7:00 am. Due to some parking issues, they arrived a bit late to the airport and were not able to board their flight. So...Northwest booked them on a flight later that afternoon. Originally they were to arrive at around 4:30 and this new flight did not get in until 9:50. Mark and I decided it would be easier for him to just stay at work in Milford and them leave from there to get to the airport and head home. Well, the weather was just awful - very icy and slippery and a lot of accidents. We are grateful that they all arrived at home in one piece about midnight.

On Wednesday, we gave them their Christmas present which was a Digital Frame for all the fun digital pictures that they've been taking. It's pretty cool if I do say so and I think I would like one for myself. They gave Mark and I books - The Last Lecture and The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck. I'm almost done with The Christmas Sweater and I'll review when I'm done. The kids received $20 each to spend as they wished....so on Thursday, we had to head to the mall to spend the money that was burning a hole in their pockets.

First stop was EB Games where M* and R* picked out games for their Nintendo DS. A* was looking for something also but really couldn't find anything that he had enough money for so he whined his way out of the store. Next stop was Bass Pro Shops where S* picked out a pocket knife for Scouting. We spent some time enjoying the fish at this store - the kids really love that. After that we walked around the mall to Justice where L* bought a cute t-shirt and A* decided on a Webkinz. Last stop was the Disney store where each of the kids (except S* because he thinks he's getting too old) picked out a t-shirt for our trip to Florida next week. L* also picked out a Goofy stuffed animal to spend the rest of her money on - like we need more of those :-)

This weekend we celebrated my nephew Cameron's 12th birthday with a family party and my brother's home. Today, Mark was ordained a High Priest by his father at church. He was called as 2nd Counselor in the Bishopric at church and so was also set apart in this calling today. He received a nice blessing from both his father and from President Kaski. The triplets also attended a program at church called Eight is Great which is for the kids that will be baptized this year. It's hard to believe that my little triplet babies are almost 8 years old. Time sure flies!

Back to Homeschool Fun

2009-01-05T22:43:00.000-05:00

Well, the rest of the world went back to school today and we did too. I promised the kids that if they finished their schoolwork this morning, then we would go to see Bedtime Stories today at the movies. They did awesome - all of their schoolwork was finished by noon. Nothing like a little incentive!

We invited one of Megan's friends to go with us and off we went. We loved the movie! It was a fun movie that was great for the kids! When we got home, Megan and her friend baked cupcakes with the help of the triplets. They were thrilled with the product, but needless to say, mom was not thrilled with the mess :-)

We're getting prepared for the arrival of Mark's parents tomorrow - cleaning up the house and deciding what the meals will be for the next week or so. It will be nice to have them here and the kids are especially excited. Rachel's vote for the meal tomorrow is bsketti - I'm still trying to get her to say that word correctly! And of course, the kids all want to take Grandma and Grandpa to Culver's - their favorite restaurant.