Quick update and some videos

Hi everyone,  real quickly I wanted to post a quick update.  School is in full swing and we are very busy, but things are running pretty smoothly.  Last night was our back-to-school night and we had a good turn out of parents.  I also had an interesting cultural experience.  I put my hand out to shake a mother's hand and she politely refused.  This is not overly uncommon and I usually wait for the women to approach me because I know some of them are modest to the point of refusing any physical contact with men because of their Muslim religion.  I was actually kind of excited that it happened because it is a story that not many living outside of the middle east can share.

On another note, tomorrow Tara goes in for her hernia surgery which should be no big deal.  We are going in early in the morning and she should be home around dinner time.  Thankfully we have wonderful friends who can take Aden to school and other friends to watch him afterwards for a while.

Now, for the main part of this post.  The videos of Aden!

Run Run Run!!!

I call this one "The Lizard"

Back in Saudi

So sorry to our faithful readers (especially to Grandma Gloria)that it has been so long between postings.  We've been busy leaving Wisconsin, getting settled in Saudi, and starting school.  Also, we don't have home internet yet in our new house so it leaves posting a blog to our time at school, which is where we are busiest.

Enough with the excuses.  My brother Seth and his new wife Kelly had an awesome wedding that was a lot of fun.  It was a great chance to spend time with a lot of our family.  I also really enjoyed water skiing with Seth the day after the wedding.  It is something we used to do regularly, but it has been a long time.

After the wedding we spent some time in Mauston and then headed south to attend a family reunion for Tara's family.  It was a big reunion, her uncle Doug did some impressive planning.  Tara's grandpa and great uncle got together for the first time in years with both of their families.  It was a blast.  Grandpa and Uncle Leon told stories, we went on a boat cruise around Lake Geneva, and spent a lot of quality time together.

From the reunion we went to the Carlson's house with Tara's parents to visit friends.  We were able to spend a good part of the day with Tara's best friend Katie, her husband Mike and their two year old son Asher.  The next day we boarded our plane to Saudi.  The trip was uneventful, which is what we want, and we arrived at our house as scheduled on Wednesday night.  It was nice to unpack and live in our own place again.  Aden had a great time exploring everything he had forgotten ever existed.  The Saturday after we arrived we started our week of teacher work days and are in our first week of school now.  It is good to be home and be back at school.  Tara and I were both looking forward to our students coming back to school.  After a week of teacher work days I remembered being a teacher is pretty boring without students.  Aden is having a blast in the nursery with the ladies who take care of him and the other kids.  He is crawling all over the place on his hands and knees and is pulling himself up on whatever he can grab.

We'll try to be more diligent bloggers in the future and get back to our once a week routine.

Enjoy the pictures.

The brothers, wives, sisters, and baby

The mommies showing off their boys.

This is the kind of trouble Aden was getting into at the end of the summer at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

A for Aden!

Yep, Papa put Aden in a box.  The first of many probably.