Lily places

Now that Lillian is mobile, she is very talented at finding new places, or spots where she isn't really supposed to be.  She gets under tables and chairs, this can sometimes be a bad thing if she bumps her head.  

Lily asleep under one of the side tables

Lily when she climbed into the cabinet

This is Lily in a place that she isn't supposed to be, there is a "rock garden" in our foyer, and she likes to crawl over there and put the rocks in her mouth.

She is very cute even though she is being bad!

We just bought Lily a tent and tunnel that she loves, this helps to keep her away from the rocks, but I am still going to have them replaced with some kid friendly carpet, maybe one day she can have a little fort up there.  

Wine!

The other day we started our wine making career!  Greg was very excited to do this, as you can see by his smile below.  The wine consists of grape juice, sugar water, yeast, a bit of tea and lemon.  Hopefully it will turn out okay.  We pour the juice in a large water bottle, and add the other ingredients.  Then we put a stopper on it, with an airlock, and put it in our storage closet for a month, and viola, wine!  Or so we hope.  Greg covered the bottles with black t-shirts (so they are in a dark place). 

Greg pouring the juice into the bottle

The Juice we are using

All of the empty bottles waiting to be cleaned

We are making a red wine and a white wine.  The white wine didn't get as full as the red wine, which is good because the red wine blew up the first night.  I guess the pressure built up too much for the little room that was left in the bottle, so it blew.  Greg made a few changes (I really don't know what he did) and he cleaned it up, and we are good to go again - hopefully.  One of the bad parts is that our storage room smells, a weird smell, not really a wine smell, but almost.  It is odd.  We are gong to let this batch of wine sit until after Greg gets back from Kellies wedding, so it will sit for over a month which is supposed to make it taste better.  I guess that the wine doesn't usually make it to a month before it is bottled, I guess most people get anxious for it.  

So wish us luck on our new wine ventures!

The Beach!

We went to the beach yesterday, it was great!  It is this little hole in the wall-literally!  The gate looks very sketchy, and it is unmarked.  But when you get inside it is a real beach, which is all that really matters.  Well the fact that it is a beach where women don't have to wear the abayas and can go swimming and get a bit of a tan.  We went in the morning, and had breakfast at the little cafe there, Lily had her first English breakfast-beans, toast, eggs, and even a bit of sausage (the mushy inside bit).  She ate everything we had her try, and there are no adverse affects.  

This was Lily's first trip to the beach, I think that she had a blast!  She tried the salt water, and didn't spit it out right away, silly girl.  This was also the first time Lily went swimming with Greg, so that was fun to. 

We finally have a picture of all of us!

Lily had to try the sand!

Lily and Chelsi sitting on the beach watching the people swim

Greg helping Lily walk into the water, she likes to walk, and isn't afraid at all!

Greg and Lily on the beach, getting ready to go into the water.

Look at me now!

This is a Lily update.  She is starting to do so much!  Her newest trick is to pull herself up, she does this in her bath tub, and she tries on the couch, she succeeds pulling herself up on her walker and her toy bin.  She is doing this very well, I am a little surprised because she isn't properly crawling yet.  The other thing that she does is sit up by herself, which is very good.

Lily has also figured out how to drink out of our Camelbak water bottles, which is great.  Hopefully this will help her figure out how to drink out of straws eventually.  She still likes her sippy cups, and she still tries to drink out of regular cups when we let her try.  
I can't believe how fast she is growing up and how soon she is doing some things.  We definitely have to watch what we leave laying on the floor, or within her reach on the tables.  

Greg and I are doing well here.  The thing that seems to be the hardest to get used to is how late he can sometimes work, and then how tired I am when he does get hoe sometimes.  Lily can wear me out, especially when there is laundry and shopping thrown in our days.  For the most part I am adjusting to taking the buses out in the mornings for my errands, and there are two buses that go out in the afternoon as well, just not to as many places.  Where it gets hard is if Lily is taking a morning nap when the morning bus comes then we don't go out like planned because I don't like to wake her up.  She takes so few naps as it is!  She is in to waking up early, around 6, which is nice because Greg then gets to see her in the morning before he goes to work for a bit,  and that is especially nice, especially when he works through her bedtime.  We will get into a routine, I am sure.

Pictures Finally!

So I have finally uploaded some pictures to share with everyone.  They go back a few days, but they are finally here for everyone to see!  This weekend we finished up the medical for our re-entry visas, which is nice to have done so that we can leave and come back - this is very important to have.  We also went to a BBQ in the SLB compound, and that was really nice to visit with people for the afternoon.  

Lily crawling through a tunnel!

This is Lily with her new friend Emma!

Happy Easter everyone (a little late)-like my funny face!

Mum and Dad tried the self portrait thing, this is the best one we got

Lily and her Dad before Greg left for work on Easter morning.

I will try and get a better family photo to post soon, as well as one in me and my abaya that I have to wear out everywhere.  

Saudi Tidbits

Tidbit #1: Driving

It is illegal for women to drive in Saudi, we get to ride buses to get where we need to go.  This is really okay with me, as even if I was allowed to drive here I wouldn't.  The way the Saudi's drive is crazy, almost suicidal.  There are lane lines, but they are just for looks as half the time people are driving on them.  And turning, wow, that is terrible, normally on a left hand turn the left hand turn lane turns, here the guy three lanes to the right of that lane will take a left!  It is nuts.  They do this thing called the Saudi inch, where they inch forward waiting to go, then they are too far beyond the light that they need someone to honk to let them know that it turned green.  The horn is used regularly, more than blinkers are used, to let people know you are there so they wont merge into you, to let people know that you are coming up, to let people know to go...   There are no stop signs, all the places that would have 4-way stops in the states are 4-way go's here.  There are no speed limits, and some of the people go really fast.  There are no traffic police until there is an accident.  The other thing is that they don't use seat belts, and car seats for your kids is just a novel idea.  They call them the airbags, they just let their kids run around the cars.  

Tidbit #2: Weather

Saudi is hot, it is getting hotter every day, and the worst time to be here is in July and August, when it is the hottest.  You cannot survive here without air conditioning.  The odd thing that the weather has been doing for the last few weeks is storming, there have been quite a few thunder and lighting storms while I have been here, with quite a bit of rain.  This has been nice, but Saudi is not a country set up to deal with rain, they have things that look like drains, but they are just that, for looks, they go no where, so the streets flood when it rains.  The Saudis have no idea how to drive in the rain either.  The other day it even hailed out!

Tidbit#3: Desert

Saudi is not a desert in the traditional sense.  It is in the sense that nothing grows here, but it isn't because the water table is so low, the water table is high here, you can dig and hit water in a foot or two.  The problem is that the water is contaminated with Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S)  due to all of the oil and gas that is in the ground!  We get the water in our house from the desalination plants, and the water they use outside is recycled house water.  Only on the compounds is there any real greenery.  

Tidbit #4: Alcohol and Drugs

All Alcohol is illegal here, as are recreational drugs.  This doesn't mean that people don't drink here, the Saudi's cross the bridge to go to Bahrain on the weekends to drink, and the Non-Saudi's just set up their own little brewing stations in their homes.  The wine and beer that is made isn't the greatest, but it isn't the worst either.  I knew all of this, but this is what I didn't know, pure vanilla extract is also illegal, as is cough syrups, just because they have traces of alcohol in them.  Rec. Drugs are illegal here as well, big surprise, what I didn't know was what happened if you are found with them.  They still have beheadings here, and that is what happens if you are caught with drugs!  

Tidbit #5: Weekdays

This is what is hard here, I have no idea what day it is, at least hardly ever.  The weekend here is Thurs and Fri, and Sat is like Monday, the beginning of the work week.  This is really odd for me, and Greg.  

I hope that you enjoyed my Tidbits!  I will be posting new photos soon, I have misplaced the cord to download the pics onto my comp.  

First trip to the pool

Yesterday we took our first trip to the pool here in our compound.  Lily and I were in the water for about an hour, she had a blast watching the other little kids running and swimming and splashing.  It was very entertaining for us.  I am glad that I brought over the floaty from the states, it was very helpful, and she like it.  I dunked her, and she just came up sputtering like she does, no different from when we had her in the hot tub.  We did a lap around the pool, and she liked that, that is different from the hot tub.  I think that the pool is where we will be spending a lot of afternoons.  Lily loves to stick her face in the water, I think she is trying to drink the water, but she gets a little too much and then she starts to cough, but she does it again!  I hope this is something that she will grow out of.  she likes to be on her tummy and kick around.  She will soon be my little swimmer.

The weather here is turning hot, hovering around the 90's.  Greg insists on having the air on all the time, I don't particularly like the ac, it feels fake somehow.  I have the feeling that I will grow into it though.  

Tonight we are going to go to the Aramco compound, Greg is playing golf over there tomorrow, so tonight he is going to and hit balls.  This is where the nicest golf course is here, maybe I can actually get some pictures taken here to put on the blog.  So far the camera hasn't made it out yet, and I apologize for that, but there really isn't much here to take pictures of, except for Lily!

Saudi Arabia

So we are settling in, we spent our first two nights in Saudi staying at a friends house (they were on vacation, so it worked out nicely) on the Schlumberger compound called Mutlak.  We moved into our house on the third night, which is in a compound called Canary Village, it is full of expats from different companies.  I was eager to get out of suitcases!  Greg took me to one of the grocery stores the night before we moved, we hit it at prayer time, which is the wrong time because everything closes, so we waited for them to open up again, and we did a bit of shopping.  Needless to say it wasn't a stress free event, when you go out at night around here you are going out with everyone else.  The Saudi's do most of their shopping at night, when their husbands can take them, and when prayer times can't interrupt.  

I went to one of the malls here, called Dahran mall, with a SLB lady, it was very nice of her to take me over on the bus.  It gave me a taste of how the bus system works here, and of the mall.  It was my first time out without Greg, and I was glad that I wasn't alone.  The mall is HUGE, I guess all of the malls are big.  It has very nice stores, anything you could want, you can get there, it is very westernized with the different kinds of shops, such as Gap, Banana Republic, Carters...  plus it has many of the higher end designer names.  This sort of shocked me, all the Saudi women are covered, head to toe, and most of the men wear the traditional white robes, so why do they need to have such high end clothes?  Even fancy evening wear!  I guess they like to wear nice things at home, or under the Abayas.  The thing that I am going to have to get used to is always paying attention to the time, I have a tendency to lose track of it, and here I can't afford to do that, because if I miss the bus, then I am in trouble.  The other thing is trying things on, you have to be very certain of your size when you buy clothes here, because you can't try anything on in the stores, there are no dressing rooms, and all the stores are clerked by men.  Women do not work here.  So you buy something and take it home, and try it on, if it fits, great, if not, then you have to go back within the next few days (2 days) to return it, or you are stuck with it.  This type of shopping shouldn't be a problem for Lily.

Greg took me to IKEA on Thursday, (which is like Saturday here), that was great, we spent a long time there, because we were there over prayer time, and when you do that you have to stay in the store and continue shopping until prayer time is over and they open the cashiers again.  That was okay, and I got quite a few things that will help out until our shipment gets here (more on that later), and a few ideas for some solutions to storage in the bathrooms, and maybe a desk.  On Friday (AKA Sunday) we went to brunch at a hotel near here, and then out shopping for a TV later that day.  Greg found one he liked, and we also got a DVD player with a system - boys and their toys!  I got a microwave, a fancy one that says it can grill and roast, so we will see, I think I will be testing it!

Today I went out for the first time by myself, from the Canary compound.  I went to a grocery store, called the Hyper Panda (this is not an animal full of energy).  I am trying to get used to the grocery stores, they are very similar, except for the products, they carry some American products, but not everything, and I haven't been able to find things like chicken stock or boullion, I guess I will just have to make it myself.  

Lily is tired of trying to crawl, so I had better go and rescue her, she gets very frustrated these days, I will continue things later.  

Back online!

We are here, we arrived safely without any complications, in all it was a very easy flight to make.  I have a lot to blog about, but for now I am going to stick to the trip here, and to let you know that we are all safe and happy to be together again.  

The trip here:  We took a direct flight from Houston to Dubai, which is a 14 hour flight.  We flew with Emirates, which was an awesome airline if you have kids.  This was a wonderful flight for me, but I wouldn't have predicted that, flying that long with a 7 month old.  Lily was wonderful, I couldn't have asked for her to be any better, really.  After take off they brought the bassinet and hooked it up to the bulkhead for me, where, after an hour on the flight I proceeded to put Lily to sleep, and she did sleep, for close to 8 hours, which was awesome, I wish I could say that I slept, but I had a very annoying child behind me that kept banging on his TV screen, or kicking my seat, and the mother did nothing, even after I spoke to him about it, this was the most annoying part.  Lily woke up, ate a little, and played in the seat next to me (the plane was far from full), where she took her morning nap while I ate breakfast.  Then she was awake again, and so was everyone else, people would come by and want to hold her, or play with her, and I just let them while I organized our things and got ready for landing.  It was great how they entertained her.  Landing was fine, but the Dubai airport was a little stressful, not much, but a little because I didn't know how it worked, or where I was going to be meeting Greg.  Over all I ended up just following the crowd, through Passport Control, then through baggage, where I made sure that I didn't need to pick up my bags(this was very important, one person and a baby, 6 checked bags, and only 100$ fee!), which I didn't, and then proceeded through the no claims gate where, finally, we saw Greg.  He had a car waiting, with a car seat and we went to the hotel.  I was tired and hot, but Lily was ready to go for her day, that was the worst night, she was up almost all of it, and Greg and I took turns sleeping.  The next day we woke her up after she had only 2 hours of sleep, and kept her awake for most of the day (her night) with a few naps here and there.  We flew into Bahrain that morning, a totally different airport, tons older than Dubai, and a little scary, thank God I didn't do that one on my own the first time!  Another miracle, all 6 bags made it, and we headed out with a driver to head across to Saudi.  Saudi territory begins halfway across the causeway, so there is a little island built up for border control and customs...  You had to leave Bahrain, and enter Saudi, I had to have my picture taken, and get fingerprinted.  Oh, I forgot probably one of the most comical parts of this trip, Greg had bought me an abaya (the black robe thing women have to wear here) and it was huge, HUGE, you could have fit 5 of me in the thing!  So I had to wear it across the border, until we got into the compound, so i had it all bunched up, trying not to trip over it.  (I now have one that fits, but it was a nice gesture of Gregs to get me one, he didn't have a clue how to buy one)  We got to the Mutlaq compound (the Schumberger compound) and stayed there that night.  This was really long, so I guess I will continue tomorrow.