You Know you Live in Saudi....

Recently I had an interaction at the grocery store that made me stop and think, "wow, I've lived here too long".  I thought this because there is no way I would have done what I did a year or two ago.  This  made me start thinking "You know you've lived in Saudi too long when...."  I decided to poll my Saudi friends to compile a list to one day look back on and be able to laugh.  The responses were fabulous but I've decided to break them up into two different lists.  The first one is "You know you live in Saudi when..." and the second one "You know you've lived in Saudi TOO LONG when..."  Here's a personal example: You know you live in Saudi when you constantly get cut in line because no one here understands the concept of waiting your turn.  You know you've lived in Saudi too long when you are willing to let the girls trying to push past you while your placing your order that "You can wait till I'm done".  Haha. I NEVER would have done that two years ago. Ooops. 

You know you live in Saudi when:

1. When you go shopping and rush around trying to beat prayer- Sarah Poulter

2. You go to certain stores only to use their restroom.... this turns in to a too long statement when you know EXACTLY what stores you want to use the restroom at- Lindsey Perry

3. You text your friends that the grocery store has cottage cheese, rotel, sour cream, tostitos- Kerri Snyder

4. The opening of a grocery store is all anyone can talk about- Heather Feimster

5. When you walk out of the store looking for your driver and Sequioa instead of walking to your car- Heather Feimster

6. You buy 35 cans of rotel because you don't know when you will find it again- Cherie Ford

7. You pay $13 for a package of hot dogs- Mark Pyle

8. You rush into your safe-room only to find out an hour later it was fireworks- Lindsey Perry

9. You have a "safe-room"- Me

10. You plan an emergency escape route off the compound- Inez Fasold

11.  You save your napkins while eating out so that you have toilet paper- Debbie Blessing

12. When you get told that a store won't carry a product anymore because it sells too fast and they can't keep it on the shelf- Deborah Richter

13. You plan vacation around Ramadan and Eid instead of Christmas and Thanksgiving- Binky Watkins

You know you've lived in Saudi too long when:

1. You think the first day of the week is Saturday not Monday- Laura Railey

 (Saudi weekends are Thursday & Friday making Saturday like Monday)

2. You convert dollars to Riyals - Laura Railey

3. When you are in the US and you tell the person working "Shukran" instead of "Thank you"- Laura Railey

4. When you give the Shwarma delivery guy a 20 riyal tip and your daughter thinks it wasn't much- Zalinda  (First of all, it's funny that we have Shwarma and that they deliver, Secondly, this shows how kids view of money changes here)

5. You are in the USA and you want to wear your Abaya- Jeanne Renee Singleton

6. You start saying "Inshalah" to everyone who wants something done- Elizabeth Kyle (Inshalah means "God willing" but too often here it means "if I feel like it"

7. You stop saying Sunday school and start calling it Friday school- Leti Lancaster

8. When an 8 hour flight is "short"- Me

9. You comfortably nap in the car on the highway instead of noticing the crazies around you- Heather Feimster

10. You can convert money, kilos, and centigrade pretty accurately in your head- Heather Feimster

11. You don't go anywhere after 6 pm because of the crowds- Cherie Ford

12.  Your fear of driving fast changes to a fear of driving too slow- Mark Pyle

13. You no longer notice prayer calls- Brent Railey

14. You are in the USA and your kid asks you "wheres the driver?"- Susanne Jennings

15. A car races by you on the shoulder of the highway and you no longer flinch- Debbie Blessing

16. You hear loud noises outside and you start to run to your safe room but then think about all the junk you would have to throw out in order to get in so you decide to wait to see if it's really necessary- Susanne Jennings

17. You believe that kleenex belong on the dinning table- Steve Fasold

18. You start making left hand turns from the right hand lane- Steve Fasold

19. You own more abayas than dresses- Cynthia Rudder

20. You walk into a gold souk after 12 years and the worker says "Oh Madam, where have you been".- Deborah Richter

And possibly my favorite:

21. You walk into a hotel room in San Antonio and exclaim way too excitedly "ooh, they have US plugs!!" - Kerri Snyder

My Beach Baby!

Here in Saudi, beach weather comes pretty early in the year which I actually love!  I love getting to be by the water, soaking up the sun.  We decided to take Jacob out for the first time in a while to see how he feels about the sand now that he can move and play with in it.  He LOVES it! He loves exploring, crawling, and playing in the sand. I have been taking Jake out a couple times a week.  

Sometimes we go out and play with our friends Gavin, Miles, and Brooklyn!

Finally I decided to test Jake in the water to see what he would think.  The water is still a little chilly and of course it is very salty so I didn't really know how he would respond. Again, he loved it! It was hard to keep him from wanting to go too deep and face planting in the water.  But he sat and splashed and played with the wet sand.  I didn't think I was going to put him in the water so we didn't wear a swimsuit. I guess we will next time. 

Heart & Sole: Walk for the Carpenter's

If you have read my blog for very long you probably know the story of our dear friends Darrell and Susie.  If you don't know and are interested you can go read their story here. Anyway, being so far away from our friends while all this has been happening was hard for us and the Perry's.  Lindsey came up with the idea to do a "Heart Walk" in honor of them and ask our friends here for donations to help out their family.  After lots of talks, date changing, idea exchanging, etc. we finally came up with our walk theme, t-shirts to sell, and flyer to send out to the compound.  Our friend Heather was lots of help with designing the shirt and flyer. Thanks Heather!

We planned the walk on Micah's birthday and he was such a good sport about sharing his birthday with our friends. On Monday, February 25, we had our friends come out to walk in memory of Cade and Addi.  We also had pizza ready after to be able to spend more time together.  We had a great turn-out and really appreciated everyone who showed their support for a couple they don't even know.  The whole process was very heartwarming!

THANK YOU!!

8 months

Jacob’s Stats:

Age: 8 months

Weight: 17 lbs. 8 oz

Length: ??

Eye Color: deep blue

Hair color: blonde

Eating Schedule: 5 oz 3 times/day, 6-8 oz morning and night. Solids at lunch and dinner

Sleeping: Jacob naps two-three times a day.  His first nap is in the morning and his long nap is from around 3:30pm-5:30pm.  Sometimes he needs one more cat-nap to get through the day happily.

Clothing: Jake is in some 6-month clothes but has started wearing his 9-month clothes as well. 

New Activities: Month 7 brought lots of changes.  Jacob became able to put himself into sitting position, started army crawling all around the house, and even trying to pull up. He has started eating solids more frequently including carrots, sweet peas, green beans, sweet potatoes, apples, bananas, avocados, and pears.  Jacob loves to laugh and play.  He is great at playing by himself with his toys. He is still the happiest smileiest baby ever.

As I said before, pictures are getting harder and harder to come by.  He is way too interested in his sign and doesn't want to be put in his bed if its not nap time. So we just do the best we can!

This is what pictures in the bed look like now

Are we done yet?

Valentines Day

For Valentine's Day this year, Micah and I agreed we both wanted to celebrate the night before on Wednesday which is like Friday in the USA.  I didn't want our entire Thursday to be spent "getting ready" for a Valentine date.  I wanted our Thursday to be more relaxed.  So Micah planned out everything and all I had to do was get ready and get Jake ready to go to Papa's for the evening. I think Papa and Jake had a fun evening!

After I dropped Jacob off I came home to Micah cooking dinner.  He went to the store, picked out the meal, cooked and even cleaned it all up!  As any woman knows, cooking for me is nice but if I have to clean up afterwards then it kinda ruins it.  Micah did great.  My hubby knows me so well that he decided this year instead of giving me flowers I could put that money to a new pair of shoes.  Dubai shopping here I come.  We had a low key, baby free, nice evening at home together.  I love my man!
Of course this means we didn't take any pictures of us.  Ohh well.  I did get a picture of my surprise Valentine cake made by the best cake person ever, Lindsey!

Jake and I made Micah a Valentine card.  It's based on one of the books we read him very often, "Guess How Much I Love You".  The last phrase is the "I love you all the way to the moon and back".  So the card on the inside is Jake's foot prints with the writing "From the bottom of my heart to the tips of my toes".   My friend Jenn came up with the idea and I think it's super cute. 

Our newest Valentine this year is such a huge blessing!  We just love him so much!

What am I doing in these flowers?

Baby food

First of all, I want to say that in NO way is making Jake's baby food something I would normally do.  I think its great that some Moms are totally into it but thats just not me.  If we lived in the USA I would be headed to wherever had the best sale on baby food and be done with it.  But, we don't live in the USA and the Saudi brands always available just don't strike much trust in my heart.  So begins the homemade baby food.

I brought enough back with me from the US to get through a while to give us time to get over jet-lag and get back into a rhythm before I had to start making food. Well, the time came for my first attempt.  I had asked my friends a lot of questions, did some research online, and looked at my baby food cook book.  It was time to get started.

I got out my fancy tools and some not so fancy tools.  I was given a great baby food maker machine as a baby gift and it was kinda fun to finally pull it out and use it. On one side it steams and on the other it purees. I also had out my food processor to do more at one time. I had some pans ready for baking the items I wanted to bake. And finally, I had the ice cube treys ready to freeze the final product.

*Of course I decided to do this when Jake was taking his longer nap of the day and of course he decided he didn't want to sleep this day!!

For my first try, I decided to make sweat peas, sweet potatoes, carrots, pears, and apples.  I steamed the sweet peas, pears, and carrots. I baked the apples and the sweet potatoes and a few carrots just to try two different ways.  I sliced, diced, skinned, and prepped the food.

Once it was all done being cooked I pureed it all and pored it into the ice cube treys. It took a little more effort to puree than I thought and I'm sure some of my first time foods aren't as smooth as they should be. Ohh well!

I also bought this handy little tool that Lindsey told me about called the Infantino Fresh Squeeze Station.  This little gadget allows me to take my homemade food and put it into the little bags that are now so popular with baby food.  This is awesome because it gives me a much easier way to store, freeze, and take baby food along with us on outings.  Here I am putting sweet potatoes into the pouches. 

My first time making baby food was long, and little frustrating, and tiring. But, I have no doubt it will get easier every time.  I wrote down lots of notes on what not to do or to do next time.  Hopefully it won't take me nearly as long and Jake will actually sleep through it. 

Here's Jake eating his first homemade sweet potatoes.