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.

Celebrating Jacob's 1st Birthday

We had Jacob's 1st birthday party a little early so on his actual birthday I decided we should do a little celebration with just our family.  I pretended to be a baker and made him his very own cake.  I also pretended to be a singer and sang "Happy Birthday" to him multiple times during the day. It's amazing the things we do for our kids.  Luckily, Jake seemed ok with my singing and even enjoyed the cake.

When Daddy got home from work we ate dinner and then just had some play time together.  Jacob loves playing in his chair we got him for his birthday.  He uses it as a launching pad to practice walking.

Once we had played up an appetite it was time for some desert. Don't judge my cake, I really truly have no clue what I'm doing.

We only had one present to open on his birthday and we only had it because Mom sent it back with Micah.  I'm really glad he had something to open.

Happy Birthday Jacob Asher!

12 months!

12 months!!!

Wow, I can't believe I am 12 months old today!  1 year ago I made my appearance into this world.  It has been a fun year full of growing, learning, and love.

Jacob’s Stats:

Age: 12 months

Weight: 21 lbs 1 oz

Eye Color: deep blue

Hair color: blonde

Eating Schedule: 3 bottles a day, morning, afternoon, and night. Solids at breakfast, lunch and dinner

Sleeping: Jacob naps two times a day.  His first nap is in the morning and his long nap is from around 3:30pm-5:30pm. 

Clothing: Jake is in all 12 month

Teeth: Jake has 4 on bottom and 2 on top

New Activities: This past month has been full of fun!  Jacob has started taking a 3-8 steps in a row by himself.  He loves playing in his chair and stands up from the chair and walks towards us.  He is super silly and loves talking while he plays. Jacob has started playing with legos and pretending to drive cars.  He loves to take rides on his tric and play on his slide outside.  He will blow kisses and lean in to give kisses.  Jake is such a sweet loving boy! Jacob eats a ton of food and we sometimes wonder where it all goes.  He likes most food we give him.  We basically feed him whatever we are eating for dinner. I can’t believe he is 1 year old!!

My Giz

When Micah and I first got married we had my childhood dog, Rusty.  In our first month of marriage my 14 year old yorkie passed away.  I was so sad!  Micah decided the cure to my crying would be for us to get another dog.  I researched breeds and one day we went to a breeder and looked at her puppies.  Micah instantly fell in love with Gizmo.  I was looking at other dogs and playing with them but Micah only had eyes for Gizmo.

Gizmo has been a great puppy and our first "child" for the last 6 years. He has moved around Houston and across the world with us. Recently, Micah and I made the decision to send Gizmo back to the USA to live with his Sperling grandparents.  It was a difficult decision and we are going to miss our Gizmo puppy so very much!  We  are concerned that with Gizmo's age and his tendency to freak out in his cage that he wouldn't safely make the flight home in a few more years.  Plus, we aren't sure where we would have to leave Gizmo when we go on vacation in Doha.  Here in Saudi we have been blessed with so many great friends who have been willing to keep him while we are gone.  We aren't sure about our situation in Doha and the idea of leaving him in a kennel for 3+ weeks isn't something we wanted.  So, all that being said, I made the arrangements and put Gizmo on a flight to the USA.  It was really hard to say goodbye but I know he is going to a great home and will be very spoiled! Micah's parents are excited to have a pup in the house and will love Gizmo just as much as we do. Of course we will still get to see him when we visit.

Here we are on the way to the vet to drop Gizmo off.  We didn't want to have to deal with any of the Saudi customs and such so we paid the vet clinic to take care of that.

Luckily, we were able to get Gizmo back to the USA while Micah was home.  Even though it was hard for me to send Giz off alone I was happy Giz would have a familiar face on the other side.
Here he is, safe on the other side.

We will miss you Gizmo!

Hofuf

After living in Saudi for 3 years, we still had not done much exploring.  There are multiple reasons for this including: Micah working 6-7 days a week, not having a car to drive ourself, Saudi not really being an exploring type country, and our company restricts the places we can go.  So when I realized our time in Saudi was coming to an end I decided we needed to do SOMETHING in Saudi besides eat and shop.  Many people we know have gone to a city called Hofuf where they have some caves, and old fort, and interesting souqs so thats where we decided to go.  In order to do this trip I had to get permission from our security advisor saying that it was safe to go and then permission from the higher ups to give our driver permission to drive us there.  Hofuf is about a 2.5 hour drive from where we live and everyone I talked to talked about getting lost.  For days I prepared Micah for the possibility of getting lost and that we just had to think of it as an adventure.  We borrowed our friends GPS which made life a lot easier. At last everything was planned and we left at 6:00am headed for Hofuf.

On our drive, I was fascinated to see how the scenery changed.  Typically on our drives all we see is really flat desert with lots of trash.  Once we were south of dammam everything started to evolve.  There were hills, sand dunes, and even occasional areas with a ton of trees from oasis'.

Our first stop was on old fort.  There was no one there but a couple workers and a guy nice enough to go around and un-lock stuff for us.  We were able to go inside a mosque which in Saudi is rare for a non-muslim much less a woman!!  We also saw the armory, a underground room (maybe an old prison?), and the old barracks which housed a museum.  They even still had the old toilet area to view or maybe use.

Up next we stopped at the souqs.  This area in Hofuf recently burnt down and they rebuilt it to be much nicer but in the old style.  A very nice man decided to stop and talk to us about the area.  He informed us that many of the shops were not filled since the fire but they hoped to have them all filled very soon.  These were the best looking souqs I've seen in Saudi.

After the souqs at about 10:30 we thought we were going to the Intercon for lunch but it turned out they didn't start serving lunch until 12:30.  Instead of waisting that much time waiting, we called our driver back and drove to the mall and had a food court lunch.  I was a little sad to not get a nicer sit down meal but it turned out the mall had a DQ and I was able to get a blizzard! Needless to say, I was no longer sad (well, I guess Jacob was still sad).

Once we were fully refreshed and fueled we headed out to the caves.  This was a really fun experience for me since it was so different from anything we have ever done in Saudi.  We hiked and climbed and explored.  Let me just tell you this is not easy to do in an abaya.

Jacob hadn't napped all morning so about 5 minutes into our hike he was OUT.  So out that I checked a couple times to make sure he was still breathing.  He woke up for the very end.

Up until this point we hadn't really ever been lost but that changed as we tried to leave the city.  All the roads the GPS wanted us to get on were under construction so we drove around for a while trying to figure out where to go.  This gave us some time to get some random pictures of the city.

It was a great trip and I'm really happy we decided to do it!