Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from Saudi Arabia. We are hosting a thanksgiving meal at our house today, our first time hosting one, Gregs first time cooking the bird, my first time in charge of the sides. Heres hoping it will all work out well.

We have a lot to be thankful for this year and just to name a few: a good job, a great extended family, wonderful happy healthy babies, the opportunity to travel and see the world, our current location (the easy living with children and the maid who helps keep things clean!), and wonderful friends. Greg is thankful for "his patient wife and his healthy children" I want to know where he keeps this patient wife at! I am thankful for a husband who is such a good provider and tries his hardest to come home in a good mood to help put Lily to bed and listen to the not so patient wife complain about how hard her day was! (I need to try harder to be in better moods when he comes home!) In short we are thankful to have each other. We hope that everyone has a terrific thanksgiving, we are thinking of you all.

Chelsi and Babies

The Mickle Family together at the beach

What an adorably silly little girl

Lily holding Oliver for the first time

Giving kisses

A Sick House

Sorry it has been awhile since the last post. This last week has been a bit rough on us. My Mum left, and had (or is having) the trip from hell on her way back to Africa, but more on that later. Levi (our maid) introduced a cold into the house last week, and we all got sick, everyone but Greg that is. Even my Mum caught the bug before she took off! Lily ran a fever for a few days and was a bit on the tired and crabby side, plus the congestion. She is all better now except for a little lingering tiredness and she still has a runny nose. I was the next to fall victim to the fever, congestion, cough, and sore throat, but I seem to be on the mend as well, hopefully last night was my last little bought with the fever. It was too much to hope for that Oliver would escape without catching the cold, but he too came down with a fever. His fever didn't last more than a day and night, but he is now seriously congested, which is worse than the fever because he wont sleep, which means that I can't sleep, which makes me a very crabby Mommy! Hopefully this won't last too much longer and we can all be back to our normal healthy sleep loving selves!

A view of our home

For everyone who wondered where we were living, my Mum has taken a picture of the front of our house, so I am finally going to show your what it looks like! Below is the front of our house in Saudi Arabia, with Gregs car in the driveway and Lily wandering out into the street! She likes to wander about. For all the Plumeria lovers reading this blog the tree in front of our house is a Plumeria tree! I didn't realize that until Mum got here, and neither one of us realized they got that big!

New Photos

Trying to get that Christmas Picture

Olivers first trip to the pool, he fell asleep on the towels

Grams and Lily playing in the pool

Grams meeting her new grandson

Grams and her Grandbabies

Mum in Saudi

My Mum came in to visit and meet Oliver on November 6th. We were all very excited to see her. Lily has been enjoying having Grams around, someone else to pay attention to her. Oliver loves his Grams, he has found a special spot on her to rest and fall asleep. Mum says that the grocery shopping is a lot better than it is in Angola, and we have been out and about trying to get a few things for her to take back to Angola.

Oliver is doing really well, he is growing and changing every day. He stays awake for longer stretches of time, and he lifts his head up really well. He would love to sleep on his tummy if we let him, which I do sometimes during the day. He is sleeping pretty well at night, for the most part, we have our hitches sometimes, but we do manage to get sleep at night. Lily is still doing good with Oliver, she tries to give him hugs and I let her get close and touch him. She tends to go for his face, which can be a problem, we are working on the concept of gentle, but that doesn't always get through. Lily now has 8 teeth total, she is growing, and getting smarter all the time. The last few days she hasn't really been herself, which is hard because she can't tell us whats wrong.

Greg took a trip to Bahrain last night with some buddies, and they are playing golf today, I hope that he had a good time over there enjoying a little bit of freedom.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween everyone (I know a few days late). They had trick or treating on our compound, so Lillian dressed up as a Patriots Cheerleader, she was so cute! Greg came home a bit early so that he could take her around trick or treating, Oliver and I stayed home and passed out candy. Greg and Lillian had a great time out and about, she held onto her treat bag the whole time, she didn't want to give it up. Oliver had a patriots cap on, he was a patriots fan for halloween, I was a mum, and Greg was a dad, how original is that! Most of the kids on the compound dressed up, so it was fun to see everyone in costumes. There were lots of little fairies, little girls in party dresses with wings, good idea! When Greg and Lillian came home they sat on the ground and she took all her candy out of the bag and showed us what she got! When I was getting the picture of the three of them she tried sharing her candy with Oliver! She is such a sweetheart.

Lillian was a Patriots Cheerleader for Halloween

Greg came home to take Lillian Trick or Treating

Lillian didn't want to give up her treat bag

Look at the neat treats I got! Her face says it all

Lillian the Cheerleader, Oliver the fan, Greg the Dad

Oliver Charles Mickle

Oliver Charles Mickle was born a week ago, Saturday October 24, at 1:02 pm. He weighed 7 pounds 8 ounces, and was 20 inches long. We are so happy that he is here finally! He is perfectly healthy, he was born with his cord around his neck, so he came out looking very blue then purple. His face remained a bit purple for a few days, and his eyes are still a bit bloodshot, otherwise he is perfect. We brought him home on the 25th, and Greg was home for a week to help adjust, start all the baby paperwork involved, and to bond with our little boy.

Lillian is doing very well with Oliver, she is adjusting to having him around. He is a novelty, and she wants to poke at him. She checks in on him when he is in his pack and play. She doesn't yet understand gentle, so we are very careful when he is within her reach. So far so good. We still go out to the park almost everyday, and we go for walks, mainly to our little store on the compound about once a day. As long as we are still going out Lily seems to do okay. While Greg was still home we ran errands, went to the mall and a doctors apt. Tested out our new double stroller, it is very large, but it works very well. Lily seems to like being in the front, but she doesn't really like riding in it around the compound, she would rather walk!

Oliver is a very good eater and sleeper, it seems that is all he does. A few nights he gets up early in the morning and doesn't want to be put down, but so far I think we are lucky. He really lets out a cry if he is hungry and you aren't fast enough in settling down to feed him, but that is the only time he really gets upset so far. He takes a lot longer to eat than Lily did, and he doesn't burp as well as she did, but he does spit up a lot more than she did. He has already shown us that we have to be careful while changing him, he peed on the wall for Greg already, and he peed on Levi when she changed hi one day! His facial features are already changing from the first day when he was born, when his face seemed very flat to me!

Greg and I are realizing how easy it was with just one baby, and how much more work it is with two now! My toughest times come when Oliver is eating and Lillian wants something and I can't do both at the same time!

Here are a few pictures, there are more posted on Picasa

Lily meeting Oliver at the hospital, she wants to give him a hug!

Lily peeking in on Oliver

Oliver Charles, just a few hours old

Oliver and happy Mum

Oliver and his proud Daddy