Ramadan is over. We can all eat and drink and chew gum in public during daylight again. It wasn't a big deal really, just a bit of a pain. The worst was being starving after 3 hours of skiing and having to drive home hungry, taking covert nibbles of beek jerky and sips of lukewarm water in the car. Matt came skiing with us this last week. We almost turned around to postpone it when we saw the crowds around the ticket counters. It was CRAZY! Eid is a big celebration at the end of Ramadan. Gifts are given, many people have a week off work, and it seemed that a big percentage of them decided to go to Ski Dubai! We persevered though and were thrilled to find that the vast majority of the visitors were just going to the snow park rather than the slopes. We almost never had to wait for a chair lift or rope tow.
Here are a couple videos we uploaded to YouTube.
The Girls
Isaac Jumping off some X-Game-ish jumps they put up sometimes.
We finished around 3 in the afternoon. We went up to the food court afterwards and found it still packed. We had to wait and jockey for a table!
An unfortunate amount of my time has recently been taken up with tasks that take all the fun out of being a grown-up. No kid would ever want to grow up (even with the enticement of driving cars and dating!) if they knew they had hours of scanning and emailing and making dozens of calls dealing with stupid health insurance companies. blah. It makes me long for our days without insurance and just paying out of pocket. If we didn't already have automatic deductions from paychecks taken out to help pay for it, I wouldn't bother and just stick with paying ourselves. But if we don't make the effort to get reimbursed, it's like we are paying double and I can't swallow that. So it continues. Matt thinks The Incredible's portrayal of insurance companies is spot on.
On Friday there was another convert baptism. We didn't attend because it was held BEFORE church at the Sharjah building which would have meant getting up around 5:30 am for us. The two who were baptized earlier in the summer haven't missed a week. These are amazingly strong people. I don't know who teaches the missionary lessons since there is no proselyting, but the work still progresses. The talks were given with the following accents, Filipino, Indian, Scottish. The American bishop presided. Too bad it wasn't the Russian counselor. ;-)
Matt sat the kids down one by one a few weeks ago to pick out and order their favorite NFL jersey. We are trying to keep our family tradition alive for Monday Night Football. This year the games will mostly be on Wednesday night for us. The girls' jerseys already showed up in the mail. We were amazed because theirs are customized, which would normally take longer?
Isaac has been watching the stock market and doing research for a couple months. He now has even more reason to watch but is driving himself and me crazy by checking it too often. He bought shares in two companies last week though a custodial USAA account (that took a couple hours on phone to accomplish). He wants to grow his college money faster than savings accounts will allow. He choose one new company and one tried and true. Both pay dividends. He will get sole custody when he is legally an adult.
Other news? It's still hot. I saw Las Vegas had a cold snap and torrential rain. I wish we could be so lucky. It gets down close to 90 degrees just before dawn. I'm anxious to start running again. The kids want to rollerblade and play outside. We want to go to the beach without blistering our feet. It will come and then we will have a lovely "winter," but I'm getting impatient. I'm really grateful our pool has a chiller.
In talking about dates for our big trip next summer, Matt and I have been tossing around a few more local ideas. It would be a shame not to hop over to Jordan for a few days. We want to go to the part of Oman up north of us which is a hot spot for dolphins. We are figuring out if getting extra passports for Israel would be worth it or not. . . . We are also toying with the idea of popping over to Garmisch and let the kids experience skiing on a real mountain. That wouldn't be until later Jan or February. And Isaac is now saving AED (local money) to go to Kiev on the ward temple trip. Can we arrange a missionary temple trip at the same time? We can at least drop a package with the mission home. I think it's in two months.
Here are a couple videos we uploaded to YouTube.
The Girls
Isaac Jumping off some X-Game-ish jumps they put up sometimes.
We finished around 3 in the afternoon. We went up to the food court afterwards and found it still packed. We had to wait and jockey for a table!
An unfortunate amount of my time has recently been taken up with tasks that take all the fun out of being a grown-up. No kid would ever want to grow up (even with the enticement of driving cars and dating!) if they knew they had hours of scanning and emailing and making dozens of calls dealing with stupid health insurance companies. blah. It makes me long for our days without insurance and just paying out of pocket. If we didn't already have automatic deductions from paychecks taken out to help pay for it, I wouldn't bother and just stick with paying ourselves. But if we don't make the effort to get reimbursed, it's like we are paying double and I can't swallow that. So it continues. Matt thinks The Incredible's portrayal of insurance companies is spot on.
On Friday there was another convert baptism. We didn't attend because it was held BEFORE church at the Sharjah building which would have meant getting up around 5:30 am for us. The two who were baptized earlier in the summer haven't missed a week. These are amazingly strong people. I don't know who teaches the missionary lessons since there is no proselyting, but the work still progresses. The talks were given with the following accents, Filipino, Indian, Scottish. The American bishop presided. Too bad it wasn't the Russian counselor. ;-)
Matt sat the kids down one by one a few weeks ago to pick out and order their favorite NFL jersey. We are trying to keep our family tradition alive for Monday Night Football. This year the games will mostly be on Wednesday night for us. The girls' jerseys already showed up in the mail. We were amazed because theirs are customized, which would normally take longer?
Makenna picked the Panthers.
Jess wanted Green Bay.
Isaac has been watching the stock market and doing research for a couple months. He now has even more reason to watch but is driving himself and me crazy by checking it too often. He bought shares in two companies last week though a custodial USAA account (that took a couple hours on phone to accomplish). He wants to grow his college money faster than savings accounts will allow. He choose one new company and one tried and true. Both pay dividends. He will get sole custody when he is legally an adult.
Other news? It's still hot. I saw Las Vegas had a cold snap and torrential rain. I wish we could be so lucky. It gets down close to 90 degrees just before dawn. I'm anxious to start running again. The kids want to rollerblade and play outside. We want to go to the beach without blistering our feet. It will come and then we will have a lovely "winter," but I'm getting impatient. I'm really grateful our pool has a chiller.
In talking about dates for our big trip next summer, Matt and I have been tossing around a few more local ideas. It would be a shame not to hop over to Jordan for a few days. We want to go to the part of Oman up north of us which is a hot spot for dolphins. We are figuring out if getting extra passports for Israel would be worth it or not. . . . We are also toying with the idea of popping over to Garmisch and let the kids experience skiing on a real mountain. That wouldn't be until later Jan or February. And Isaac is now saving AED (local money) to go to Kiev on the ward temple trip. Can we arrange a missionary temple trip at the same time? We can at least drop a package with the mission home. I think it's in two months.
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