Thanksgiving

Because of the way our weekends are here in Saudi (Thursday and Friday off), we always get Thanksgiving off.  Although now I realize why it isn't on a weekend in the States.  After all the cooking and eating, you need the weekend to just relax.  We actually had two Thanksgivings this year.  One on Thursday with the rest of the teachers on our compound, and the other on Friday with a group of friends on a different compound.  It was a lot of fun getting together outside of school and eating amazing food.  Both dinners were unbelievable and we ate way too much.  One even included ham (which is illegal in Saudi) which was a pleasant surprise to our taste buds.  Those of you who know my fairly basic cooking skills would have been impressed with my sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, and brownie pecan pie.  I also attempted rolls that didn't turn out so well.

As for the rest of life, it is pretty much consumed with school and getting ready for the baby.  This has been our life for the past few months, but now we are getting down to crunch time.  Only 7 weeks until the due date and there is a lot to do still.  Jamie has been hard at work putting the baby nook together.  We'll get pictures up once it is all done.  So far, it looks very cute.  Nice work hun!

A quick picture of our Thanksgiving festivities on our compound.

Our wonderful tree.  We have 24 ornaments this year.  Not bad since we started this collection with zero last year.  We have one from every country we've visited and many from Saudi, but those are 'decorations', not Christmas ornaments.

Latest Ultrasound Picture

I almost forgot to post our latest ultrasound picture.  Baby McGuire is over 4 pounds already!  Just under two months to go.  I have been busy with some nesting projects.  We'll post pictures of our baby room when it is all finished in a few weeks or so.

-Jamie

He's shaking a fist at the doctor for trying to coax a good pose from him.

Dubai

Yes, we had another week off of school.  It may seem as though we never work, but that's because most of our days off are bunched together in these first 4 months of school.  This time, we had off because of another Muslim holiday, Eid al-Adha.  It's a Muslim celebration of the time when Abraham was going to sacrifice his son Ishmael but Allah intervened.  Sounds kind of familiar.

During our time off, we decided to take a babymoon to Dubai.  We have some friends that work there at the American School of Dubai.  It was wonderful to see them again.   Jake and Jen even let us stay at their place while they went camping in Oman.  It was a time of relaxing and seeing the sights of Dubai.  It is quite amazing how Dubai has grown in the last decade.  They really do know how to go above and beyond everyone's expectations.  If you didn't know, Dubai is home of the tallest building in the world.  The Burg Kalifa stands 828 meters tall (2716.5 feet) with over 160 stories.  We were allowed to go to the 124th floor which was high enough for me.  It was quite amazing the view you can get of the city from that viewpoint.  Malls are something else that Dubai sure knows how to do.  There are a ton of malls in Dubai, but we only went to two of them.  The first was the Mall of the Emirates.  It rivals the Mall of America in size and also has a ski slope inside.  Yes, a ski slope!  You pay to rent all the equipment (snowpants, boots, goggles, skis, but not hat or mittens-go figure!).  We were really excited to go into the snow park portion since we won't be able to go home for the hoidays this year.  However, they wouldn't let us in because I'm pregnant.  We tried to explain that we're from Wisconsin and know how to walk on snow, but that didn't seem to matter.  I may of actually cried.  The other mall we went to was the Mall of Dubai which has a cinema, aquarium, and underwater zoo in it.  Plus, they have a fountain that performs a water show to music about 9 times a night.  It truly was amazing.

There are still more authentic parts of Dubai, but they tend to be quite touristy now.  They have sections of souqs (markets) that are grouped by what they sell.  There is the spice souq, gold souq, and textile souq.  These were neat to walk through, but not much different from our shops in Jubail.    

One thing that we really enjoyed was going out to eat.  You could say we indulged all week (I was even allowed a dessert a day!)  We really love good food and Dubai had an abundance of amazing restaurants with a huge variety of foods.  One of my favorites was Yum! where we got fairly authentic Thai food.  I got a Thai chicken in mango that was so good I almost made myself sick eating so much of it.

That's about it for our trip.  Below are some pictures....

Tara

Burj Khalifa - 828 meters tall

The motor city residences where we stayed at our friends house

The snow park in the Mall of the Emerites

Us in the Atlantis Aquarium

That's one big friend you made Tara.  Yeah, it's a real giant grouper fish.

The Atlantis

Dubai Mall Aquarium

These garden eels were weird.

Finding Nemo exhibit at the Aquarium.

Fountain show at Mall of Dubai.

View from the observation deck of the Burj Khalifa.

A 'normal' car to see in a fancy hotels valet parking.  This was at Jumeriah Beach hotel.

Us with the Burj Al Arab behind us.

Burj Al Arab.  If I had a million dollars we might spend the $1,600 it costs for one nights stay.

Us with our friends, Jake and Jen Dibbert.

Baby Shower

We are feeling very blessed right now.  This past Tuesday a few of our friends threw us a baby shower at school.  It was a laid back time of hanging out, eating food, playing a game, and opening presents.  Boy did we get a ton of presents.  We now feel much more ready to have this baby.  Thank you to everyone who was involved and made it such a great afternoon.

Thursday we boarded a plane and headed to Dubai where we will spend the next week.  Tune in soon for some pictures of our adventures here in the fastest growing city.

 Sign going into the room

Diaper cake surrounded by other presents

Our friend Lindsey is an amazing cake maker and made this for us.  It matches the bedding set we picked out.

A super cute onesie set we received.

The car bedding we picked out.

One of my favorite gifts, a bouncer.

All the ladies at the shower.

Our car filled with gifts.

Halloween fun

Halloween is one of the few American holidays that we get to celebrate at school in Saudi. Boy do people have fun with it. This year, we had an evening event that consisted of a costume contest, trick or treating, and Mr. Borisko's Hallway of Horror. Our friend Cory put in a ton of time and effort creating a fantastic hallway which was kind of a mix between a haunted house and a Ripley's Believe It or Not exhibit. The high schoolers had a great time working the hallway as exhibit guides, gypsies, or even vampires. Below are a few pictures of the night.

Another thing we did this week was attend our biannual ISG conference. It's two days set aside for all of the teachers in the district (from all 7 schools) to come together for a time of learning and fellowship. They were very long days, but really meaningful as well. We created new relationships with staff from other schools and were able to see those we know who we haven't seen for a while. A lady from our British Grammar school was getting rid of some baby items, so we bought a glide rocking chair from her. This made me super happy since I really wanted one, but wasn't sure if 1) it was in the budget and 2) we could find one here. Slowly and surely the baby nook is starting to fill up. After our next Eid break (yes, have another week off of school next week) we will really start putting some work into the decorating and organization of it.

Tune in next week to hear about our next doctors appt and the upcoming baby shower some friends are throwing for us.

Tara

Jamie the skier and Tara the jack-o-lantern.

A few of our students dressed as gypsies and a gangster

Our mummy librarian

Dracula lying in his coffin gave quite a few people a good scare.