Monday, January 12, 2009

back in the swing of things

sorry about a slow blogging month.  It's kinda ridiculous to take a month off and I'm sorry. Half of the break was due to the hustle and bustle of the holidays and traveling and jet lag, and the other half was just plain laziness and not knowing where to start.  Plus I know there are lots of pictures that are on someone else's camera and I find that as a convenient excuse to hold off posting about things.  


We've enjoyed a great holiday season.  December here in the UAE was full of holidays and when we combined that with the 2 weeks (11 working days) that John requested off to fly home to the U.S. for Christmas, we realized that John only worked a total of 5 days the whole month of December!!!  Not bad- we enjoyed ourselves that's for sure!
We enjoyed some fun family time around here during his time off and some wonderful extended family time in AZ for a couple weeks for Christmas.

We celebrated:
UAE National day- fireworks and picnic remember?
Eid holiday- 3 days off work where we went dune bashing, desert cookout and shopping
Asher's birthday- he turned 4 and got to spend the day with BOTH sets of grandparents and a visit to the train park and much more (separate post of course)
Christmas Eve- yummy food, checking out Christmas lights in the back of a pick-up, Luke 2
Christmas Day- more yummy food, playing games, giving and receiving gifts and loving our kids
Islamic New Year- we spent this day on our around the clock return flight from the U.S.
New Years Eve- dinner with friends kids had no problem staying awake to ring it in. (still not adjusted to jet lag)
New Years Day- slept a lot (jet lag is a beast) nothing too memorable or I would remember right now.

We also celebrated lots of days in between- those were just the "calendar events".  I'm going to try and pace myself as I post old stuff (for my own sake and those of you that want to see pics of the kids) and new stuff, like some random stuff about Dubai (everyone always has lots of questions so I think maybe I'll have to start sharing more about this place we live) AND a baby that's due to arrive in about 3 weeks!

I'll leave you with our New Years greetings that I'm just about finished sending off (via email), so much for my plan.  
Hopefully you got an email from me or you're on my list to email tomorrow (baby steps).  

6 comments:

  1. Love the card! You look great! Hope things are going well. We just found out I'm scheduled for a c-section at the end of the month.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Really, Toria, I think b/t the traveling and nearing delivery of #3 is the best excuse for not blogging! I'm impressed you got a card out, email or not.

    Looking forward to a blog post about Asher's B-Day. Abel's is on Wednesday and I'm sure it will be memorable. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I thought jet lag from coast to coast was hard - i can't imagine going around the world.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I don't think you should feel bad for taking the break, you deserve it, cross world travel and baby on the way are good enough excuses, I'm just glad I got to see you!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Love the card. Hope you have a great 2009!

    ReplyDelete
  6. wow wow 3 weeks? I can't wait to hear about it! Sounds like you guys had a great trip :)

    ReplyDelete