McGuire's of Arabia: November 2011

He is walking! With how busy we have been we have forgot to mention this news on the blog. The video I posted is of some of his earlier steps. He is a little studier on his feet now.

Also, it is the Thanksgiving/Christmas season over here. We let the two overlap, especially since we are headed home in three weeks. We have two Thanksgiving meals to go to this weekend and our tree is already up and the Christmas music pours out of our windows.

We are looking forward to coming back to Wisconsin soon, but are wondering how we will handle the cold after our last few winters where the highs were in the 70's and 80's.

Enjoy the videos.

Jamie

yeah!

He is figuring out new things all the time.

Excited for his first Christmas!

A video of Aden in the pool at the Al Bustan in Muscat.

We are off of school for one week for the Hajj Eid. On Thursday we flew into Dubai, rented a car and took off for Muscat, Oman on Friday morning. Our four hour drive turned into eight after some troubles at the border. We waited in line for two hours to get our Omani visa only to be told we don't have an U.A.E. exit stamp! Apparently we drove right through that check point. So we got back in the car to drive the few miles back to the U.A.E border. We ended up taking turns getting out of the car and walking the last part of the way to the border because the border traffic was so bad at the check point. A little over an hour later we went to the front of the line we had already waited in and were issued our visas. After that we only had to finish the last three hours of our drive. We checked into our hotel and went to sleep.

Our first day in Oman was spent in Old Muscat checking out the Sultan's Palace and the old forts. We had a fun time exploring and letting Aden get some exercise after such a long day in the car. We ended up on the public beach letting Aden play in the sand with some kids from Kerala India.

Our second and last full day in Oman started out with a trip to the corniche where we were going to check out the souqs (markets), but they were all closed in the morning. Having to change our plans we went to a big park where Aden was able to wear himself out playing. The highlight of our trip was spending the afternoon at Al Bustan hotel. This place was built in 1985 for a GCC (Gulf Coastal Countries?) summit. It was amazing. We at lunch at a sea side restaurant and then went swimming in the infinite pool and Gulf of Oman. We checked out the prices to see if we could ever justify staying there, but for almost $500 a night we don't think so.

Our vacation is going to finish up in Dubai with shopping at the awesome malls, playing in parks, and hopefully having dinner with friends who live in Dubai, but it is also their vacation so we'll see if our schedules line up.

Only five weeks until we are home for Christmas!