Look out America- Here We Come!

I'm packing us up for the big trip this week! I am ready to be home, but I am really sad to leave Mike behind.  I am looking forward to some conveniences at home, though! 

Things I am looking forward to having again:

 - potable water at all the taps!
 - no more salty hair!
 - being able to drive!
 - wearing what I want!
 - eating something other than chicken and ground beef!
 - real bacon!
 - wine!  (no, wait, I'm nursing.  DARN!)
 - being able to zip to Walmart to get whatever we need!
 - being on the same time zone as the people I want to talk to!
 - using a credit card rather than paper money! (paper money is downright annoying.)
 - TV!

Things I will probably miss:

 - the heat (I am worried that I am so adjusted to the heat that I will be chilly at home.)
 - having somebody who calls me "Madam" come to my house twice a week to clean.
 - Mike (probably) :)  just kidding, honey. 

Be thinking about us on July 2!! We will need all good luck to get us through - it's 26 hours total travel time, and more like 30 if you count when we have to leave to go to the airport. And we leave at the end of the day, too. It's going to be tough, but I know we can do it. Keep your fingers crossed!

Half Baked

Whose half-baked idea was it to have pizza for dinner?!

Allah Forbid We Should Get a Good Picture

I post this with humor! Check out how many shots it took! ALL I WANTED was both boys looking at me and smiling. That's all! Apparently, it was a lot to ask.

The Egyptian Headdress

Catherine got an Egyptian headdress as a present.  Ha!

Smiley Baby!

Heritage House

We went out to dinner the other night with another family that we are friends with. They took us to a restaurant called the Heritage House, which is a traditional Saudi restaurant. You sit in your own little room - the building is full of little rooms rather than lots of tables - and the food is served on the floor over thick camel hair rugs. It is quite the experience!




We got the room in the upstairs of the turrett.



It was really neat, but very hot!  (About 90 degress. Inside.)

The food was ok. It was nice to have our own room so the kids could run around. I am really glad we went! It will be a good place to take visitors.

Embroidery

I've been doing some embroidery, and I think I have finally gotten the hang of my machine. Check this out:

Trip to Abqaiq

We were bored this weekend, so we decided to drive to Abqaiq. Abqaiq is another company compound about an hour south of where we are. It turned out to be a rather uneventful trip - except for a spilled strawberry milk incident - but it was nice to get out of the house.

One big thing that did come with it was that I experienced (as did all three children) the hottest temperature that I have yet to experience ever - 119 degrees! It is hot, but I was not all that uncomfortable. Really, I think I am best suited for the temperatures in this country!

Check out our pictures from the trip below:

On the way there, we repeatedly saw bulldozers on the Interstate and immediately next to the Interstate plowing the sand off of the road.  The sand just blows onto the road all the time, and it would otherwise cover up the road in short order.

You can't read the writing, but I took this because I think it's funny that Arabic does not translate directly into English.  It's phonetic instead.  So the word "Abqaiq" was spelled differently on each and every interstate sign.  This one says "Baqaiq."

Fun in the back seat.  "No!  Don't take my picture, mama!"

The Hungry Bunny?  Hmm, I guess I didn't know bunnies were typically very hungry.  I found out later that this is a fast food chain similar to McDonalds. 

Oh yeah. 

Abqaiq is a lot like Dhahran, except it's smaller and deserted. 

It does have a nice fountain.  If you think that fountains that look like a man peeing is nice.

Very exciting!  We saw a train on the way home! (It was really dusty that day - can you tell?)

This sign is an exit sign.  It says "Junkyard" and underneat that it says "Cattle Market."  Junkyard and cattle market.  Not to be confused!

Dusty Today

It was really dusty when we got up today. Yes, those are my footprints through the dust in our front yard area!

Happy Solstice!

We live almost exactly on the Tropic of Cancer. This means that on the summer solstice, the Sun is amost exactly overhead! (We are a hair north of it, so it Sun is really just a hair south of zenith at midday.) So on June 21st, a pole standing straight up should cast no (or very little) shadow. It's true - check this out!



This is a shadow of a stop sign.  See how it's just a line?  WOW!  The Sun  is directly over it.  I've never lived anywhere else where this can happen. 





Shadow directly over the car! 



Happy Solstice!  Let summer begin!

Everett Turns Four!

Everett is 4!

Everett's birthday was quite the event. We held a party at the house on his actual birthday, and we invited his entire preschool class, plus his friends from next door. It was a lot of people, and it was really hot! We played outside in the water table and the baby pool at first, and then everyone came inside for playing, pizza, and cake at the end.

With the parents and siblings there too, it made for a big party.  The weirdest thing was that I was just meeting almost all of these people for the first time.  Many of his preschool friends do not have their moms taking them to preschool every morning; their families have nannies or drivers who take care of this for them.  (WHY would you not want to drop your child off at preschool?  Or pick them up afterward?  That is one of my favorite parts of being a mom!)  At any rate, I did not know what these people even looked like, so for Everett's party, we were all making new friends.  I think everyone had a good time. 

It was a pool party, so we made a pool cake.  I hollowed out a big rectangle and filled it with blue jello (shipped specially to us from Gramama - thank you Gramama! - they do not sell blue jello here).  I used unidentified Saudi candy rings for the lane ropes and gummi loops for the floats.  The diving board was a stick of gum.  It looked pretty neat when it was all finished:

Everett's big presents included a monogrammed arm chair like Lawrence's and an easel, which he calls a "weasel".  He loves them both! 

Happy birthday, Everett!  You are so grown up at 4! 

Cooking an egg on the sidewalk

How hot is it here?  Today we asked the big question:

               Is it hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk? 

And we got the answer:

               Hmm.  Sort of. 

               Or perhaps I should say, "almost." 

Today I let the boys crack eggs on our backyard sidewalk to see if they would cook.  (We are REALLY bored.  Can you tell?  There is not much to do here when it gets hot outside.)  This was more of an experiement for me and not for them.  For them, it was an adventure in How To Crack An Egg.  After that, they were no longer terribly interested in what happened to the eggs' insides.  But I was!  I was interested enough to go get our digital thermometer in a nerdy attempt to actually get some real data.  Here are our results:

The egg on the sidewalk got hot and dried out.  I don't think it ever actually cooked. 

The egg on the foil congealed, but the white didn't turn white. 

Our digital thermometer maxed out at 149.9 degrees on the sidewalk...yikes, that's hot!  But apparently not QUITE hot enough to really cook something.  Guess I'll stick to the stove.