Murjan Goodbye

Living on Murjan Village the last 3 years is one thing that has made living in Saudi bearable, and actually even enjoyable.  The ladies here have been such a wonderful expat family.  We truly take care of each other and help each other out when it comes to living life in this strange land.  On Monday, June 17, these wonderful ladies got together to throw me and two other ladies a going away lunch.  It was so nice to get to sit, eat, talk, and relax with everyone that I have grown to love and cherish. Over the years together we have thrown parties, played cards, worked on the Bazaar, had baby showers and just tried to find ways to make Saudi life more interesting. I will miss the community that Murjan has provided.  A typical parting includes a little gift from the ladies.  I received this beautiful gold necklace with a camel, palm tree, and some Saudi sand.  I LOVE it!  Thanks so much ladies of Murjan.  Hopefully see you all again soon.

New Place for our New Baby

When we first moved to Saudi we moved into an apartment on our compound.  This is the living arrangements the company gave us since we didn't have any kids.  Since we found out we were pregnant the company moved us to a bigger place on the compound where Jacob will have more room and now Gizmo has a yard!  I was having a hard time imagining having to take Gizmo out on walks and get Jacob's stuff (car seat, stroller, etc.) up and down the apartment every day so the move was a huge blessing.   So, here is our new place.  It's still a work in process but I'm feeling pretty settled.


This is our "extra" sitting area that will one day become more of a play room.  Notice the changing table in the corner. 

Dinning Area

Entryway with Abaya hanger and bag hanger. It's looking into the kitchen

Downstairs bath

Living room

Backyard 

View from back porch.  Giz is in the back corner.

Kitchen

Our bedroom

Our bathroom

And now what everyone's been asking me for...Pictures of Jacob's nursery!

This will be his "changing table" upstairs.
Eventually a changing pad will be there instead of the nap nanny.

Pictures aren't quite hung yet and not sure about this corner.
Again, a work in progress.

These pictures will be hung over the crib.
These are pictures I took on our Safari that we had put on canvas.
I LOVE them!

There you have it. When we finish Jacob's nursery I will post updated pictures but that won't happen until my Mom gets here to help.  

Wow...

We've been back in Saudi for 12 days now and I am already packing my bags to leave for the USA in 2 days...CRAZY!  It's just enough time to get over jet-lag and get back on a plane and tackle jet-lag again. But I wouldn't trade getting to go home for anything.  Jacob and I will be back in the States for a little over 2 weeks.  Just long enough to have a couple baby showers (thanks to my wonderful Mom, sister, sisters-in-law, and mother-in-law).  I can't wait to see all my family and my friends to celebrate this upcoming time in our lives.


Now to add to the craziness... Micah and I officially got word that we will be moving to a new villa on our compound in order to make some room for our growing family.  This is a HUGE answer to prayer but the word came yesterday.  Meaning that I have 2 days before I leave to try to get some stuff ready to be moved.  Just a little stress.  Today I was able to go buy the paint colors I want and the guys even started painting soon after I dropped off the paint.  They move fast when they want to. Me leaving will probably leave Micah with a lot of the burden of figuring out how moving everything is going to work.  But the guys at our compound are a huge help and are always willing to try to get stuff right for me.  Also, I'm sure I will be enlisting some of the help of my dear friends while I am away.


Ok, back to baby. On Saturday I went in for the routine glucose screening they always do around this point in pregnancy.  Today I had the follow up appointment and ultra-sound.  Dr. says I passed with "stars".  My glucose levels were "excellent".  Woo-hoo. One really nice thing about having a baby in Saudi is that you get an awesome ultra-sound EVERY appointment.  It will be hard to go back to the US after this pregnancy.  I love seeing my baby every time I see the doctor. 

USA I will see you soon!

Craftiness

Lately I have been adventuring into the world of being a little more crafty.  Sewing was a major step in that direction and I have worked on a few more sewing items including a drawstring bag, little pouches, and another quilt.

Drawstring bag that I can use as a shoe bag or lingerie bag for traveling

Current quilt project not yet finished. 

I also got some inspiration from pinterest to make my own wreath.  The original picture was for Halloween but I decided I would prefer a Cowboy wreath for football season. Go Cowboys!

Another big project I have had recently was selling personalized cups with Lindsey.  This was totally Lindsey's idea and I just went with it. We had some plastic tumblers sent over in someones shipment and then used our Cricuts to personalize the cups.  We sold them to ladies on Murjan and at the annual Murjan Bazaar.  We had a whole business set up with order forms, creating process, etc.  The day of the bazaar was busy and hectic (especially when you are doing a major part in putting on the entire bazaar) but it was a fun day.  We had several great friends volunteer to help us out with taking orders while we worked on creating the products.  Thanks Laura, Heather, Leti, and Amber! In the end we have sold almost all of our cups and had a blast working together.

Completed Cup orders

Product waiting to be personalized

Personalizing station

Our booth at the Bazaar

Cup Ladies :)

Order Up! 

Our wonderful friends: Laura (with Savannah) and Heather

I decided to have fun making an OSU cup for myself. 

It's Official....

I'm 70 years old.  That's right.  If you were to listen of a description of my current life you would probably think I was a 70 year old woman.  I go to "coffee mornings", play cards, cook, walk my dog, and now I can add quilting to the list.  Yep, quilting.  In general, I have no desire to be a quilter.  However I do have the desire to learn how to use my sewing machine and just generally know how to sew.  There is a Saudi lady, Nora, that lives here in Jubail and is an excellent quilter.  She occasionally teaches beginner quilting classes and some of the other ladies here were nice enough to invite me along for the class.  I was the only one in the class who was a true beginner.  I couldn't even get my machine out of the case the first day.  The class was 2 days a week for 3 weeks.  We would work from 9:00am- 1:00pm.   In the class we learned how to pick fabric, cut fabric accurately (hopefully), and sew things together.
I was lucky and had a fun group of ladies to take the class with.  There were 7 ladies in the class, 5 of whom are Chevron wives like me.  Of course I was the youngest in the class.  I am the youngest with most things that I do during the day.  All of these ladies are so much fun to be around and the helped make my frustrations with sewing more enjoyable.  Here are some pictures of our class.

Judy and Lori

Cindy and Lonna

Me pretending to sew 

Lonna

 One evening I received a "Flat Stanley" from a relative in the States.  I decided he needed to go to quilting class with me and get a picture with a real Saudi lady.  Nora was so nice to agree to put her full covering on and take a picture with "Flat Stanley".

3.5 weeks later and many hours of cutting and sewing I had my first quilt (almost) finished.  I really liked the end result.  Since we had worked so hard in class Nora decided our last class would just be a party time.  Cindy hired Lindsey to bake us a really cute cake and other ladies brought some snacks.  We were also able to show off our finished projects. 

Lindsey's cake

My 1st quilt

Our class: Lori, Nora, Christianne (?), Lonna, Cindy, Else (?), Me, Judy

Happy Quilting!