4th of July

Sad to say, last year Tony and I didn't celebrate the 4th of July. So this year we decided to have a BBQ. We had such a great time! A bunch of our friends came over and we had a really relaxed, fun day-oh and the food was awesome. Tony BBQ-ed hotdogs (yes, PORK hotdogs), bratwurst, and the best hamburgers I've ever tasted! All of our friends brought sides over and our table was overflowing with all the food!

Kyle, Kasey, and, my little buddy, Andrew.

Stu, Syd, and they're little cuttie, Kaden.

Kaden showing off how well he can walk now!

Luis, Alicia, and Alberto. Do you notice a trend? Yes, we had three little boys under the age of two! It was so fun to see them all scurrying around the living room! Alicia is from Poland (and probably the sweetest person ever) so it was especially fun to show her how to assemble a hamburger and tell her what's in deviled eggs! (Alicia said that in Poland they make something similar to deviled eggs for Easter, but with different stuffings. She's going to show me how to make one with mushroom stuffing-sounds yummy!)

Kevin and Vanessa who introduced me to a very yummy drink.

Frank who also introduced me to a drink...but I don't think I would call it yummy. His family is from Poland (yep, like Alicia) and he brought back some home made vodka that he made us all take a shot of-I can't say I've ever had anything like it.

My buddy Mikey...almost didn't recognize him witout a beer!

The BBQ master himself! (Recognize the hat?)

Andrew...who is among the few people in this world who can look adorable upside down with a mouth full of food!

We had a great day. That night there we even spotted some fireworks in the distance. While I was missing not having sparklers to play with, we still had so much fun!

A Little Visitor

Last night Tony and I went out on the patio and guess who (or I guess I should say "what") came to visit? A baby gecko! Isn't he cute?
After catching him for his "photoshoot" we had to put him back on the wall because Kieley thought he was a moving treat!

Little Things

I don't have any big news this week but there are a couple tid-bits. Of course we BBQ-ed on Thursday and, of course, it was great. Friday was interesting. I needed to go to Oman to do my passport run. I still don't have a resident's visa mostly because the paperwork is a pain in the butt and it adds up to a lot of money. So instead, every sixty days I have to leave the country and re-enter so we drive to Oman which is only about an hour and a half away.

This week, a friend of ours, Austin, had to go too so he and I went (Tony has a visa so he doesn't need to go). It was actually a really fun trip. It involved ice cream, iced coffee, and a visit to the mall. The mall in Al Ain (which is right across the border from Oman) was great but the best part was the kids fun land! EVERY mall in the UAE has a huge play land for kids. I'm talking roller coasters, jump houses, giant slides-the works! I seemed really bizarre to me at first but if you think about it, it can be too hot to play outside up to five months a year! Well this play land took the cake! It actually had a small river with bumper boats, a virtual reality roller coaster that spins and goes upside down (there was a line so we didn't go on it this time-but it looks like it'd be a blast), arts & crafts, face painting...just about everything! There's even a pool hall upstairs for the parents! I'm so excited about our next Oman trip because Austin's wife and daughter will be here so we're making plans to spend the day at the playland! (I think I'll be more excited than his daughter!)

Since we were leaving the country we told Tony we'd bring him back a souviner. What's better than a talking camel? Well the camel doesn't actually talk, but makes this demented grunting noise. Kieley was fasinated!

The past couple days I've been sick which is a bummer. This means my house looks like crap-and so do I! Luckily right before I got sick I got a box of books I ordered from Amazon to keep me company! I've been rading Barbara Walters' autobiography Audition. It's AMAZING! And she's really a great writer! I think everyone, especially every woman, should read it!

Oh other news-I guess I shouldn't have complained about the washers downstairs leaking because now we have NO washers! The washers were leaking so bad that the couple who lives next door to the laundry room came home to 3 inches of water flooding their apartment! So the washers have been disabled and no one knows when they'll be fixed. Last time they were broke it took two and a half months to get them fixed! Tony and I don't even have one of the little ones that don't work well in our apartment. We are literally washer-less! It's so frustrating! So Tony and I decided that even though it's a big expense, we are buying a full size washer and dryer this weekend! I found one in the classifieds and this Friday I will have a washer and dryer all my own!!! Yay!

On Behalf of Abu Dhabi Housewives

Don’t get me wrong I know that no one likes to clean. However, there are quite a few reasons why daily household chores are way more frustrating when you live in Abu Dhabi then when you live in the States. Tony and I still love our new apartment, but let me take you through a day of housecleaning in my Abu Dhabi housewife shoes!

DUSTING
While there are definite perks to living on the top floor with a balcony, there are also definite drawbacks. First, we are always opening and closing the sliding glass door to go inside and outside. Well it’s starting to get hot so every time that door opens some of my precious air-conditioning escapes outside. It doesn’t help that our air-conditioning sucks. Cleaning when your house is hot and muggy doesn’t help to motivate you! Second, the same sliding glass door and air-conditioning unit blow in dust and sand. The air-conditioning units have no filters so it just fills my house with dust.

I seriously have to dust every day and I’m not talking about “light dusting” I’m talking about moving books off shelves dusting. But by the next day the dust comes back in and it looks like I haven’t dusted in weeks.

VACUUMING

(yep, that’s how it’s spelled-that word never looks right) Kieley used to be scared of the vacuum which was great because she would stay out of my way. Not anymore! Kieley chases the vacuum, barks at the vacuum and bites the vacuum-it doesn’t make my day easier! Since poor Kieley is an inside dog she never gets the chance to dig and hide her bones. As a result, she “hides” her bones and toys all over my house. This is what I found when I went to vacuum the couch today! She got a new bone last week that has gone missing-I still can’t find it! She waits until she has about three new bones (I gave her another one today) and then all of a sudden she finds them all…tricky dog.

MOPPING

There are no apartments or villas in Abu Dhabi that have wall to wall carpeting. Every inch of the houses here are marble or tile. Even the walls in our kitchen and bathrooms are tile! So wouldn’t you think this would be the perfect place for Swifters? Nope, there are none. I finally broke down and bought one online and had it shipped to my mom who is going to send it to me.

LAUNDRY

I’ve already posted about how frustrating the little washer-and-dryers-in-one they give us are. Well we have a two full size washer and dryers downstairs for the whole building to use.

The dryer on the right doesn’t work so that leaves one dryer for the building. Fine. But what’s really frustrating is that the water heater on the wall leaks so the whole floor is always flooded! So my socks get totally wet. Tony and I are planning on buying our own full size washer and dryer soon!

GARBAGE

Every floor in the building has a room in the hallway that’s the garbage room…except our floor. We have to take it downstairs. No it’s not that big of a pain but it does mean you have to get dressed to take out the garbage. You don’t want to run into a neighbor you haven’t met or one of the Muslim men who work here in your pj’s with no bra on.

GROCERY SHOPPING

Grocery shopping without a car sucks! It’s getting hot outside and sometimes I have to wait 15 minutes for a taxi. And then the majority of the population here has no clue how to wait in a line so people cut in front of you all the time. I’ll admit I’ve gotten pretty ruthless about snagging taxis. The way back is even worse though. In order to get to the front door of our apartment building the taxi has to make a couple U-turns and they look back at you like “you ridiculous, lost American!” Then if you’ve done a big shopping you have to unload all of your groceries on the street, and run them in shifts to the front door praying that no one runs over the rest of your food, punch in the code and carry them in shifts to the elevator, then in shifts out of the elevator and finally inside. Bleh!

THE KITCHEN

As you all know my fridge is down the hall. I think the reason that doesn’t bug me is because there is so much else in my kitchen that does. For some reason every room in the apartments here have doors-even the kitchen. Here’s what the doors in my kitchen look like open.

They block drawers I need to get into in order to cook, and they completely block my stove. If I close them I can’t get to my pantry which is on the other side of that door. Also, if they’re closed the kitchen get SO hot. There’s no air-conditioning just this fan. In addition, all that comes out of my sink in HOT water-on the “coldest” setting there is steam coming off of it. Ok so I wear gloves when I wash dishes-no biggie.. But there are other hazards. The other day I was making soup in the microwave and I spilled some on my hand and burnt it. I rush to the sink to put it under cold water…ooops there is no cold water! I put my burnt hand under boiling water!

THE TOILET

Ok this one is apartment specific to me. There are a couple things that the management company hasn’t fixed in the apartment-one is the toilet seat in the master bathroom. It is cracked in two places to when you sit on it, it bites you! And it hurts!

I know I’m ranting but there are some really great things too. We had everyone over to BBQ again last Thursday and it was a really great group.

We had a blast! The next night we hosted the weekly poker game and it was so nice we played outside. Thanks for listening to all my frustrations…sometimes everyone needs to vent!

Our New Apartment!

Well since I went weeks without posting I've decided to make up for it and show everyone what we've been so busy doing by giving you a tour of our new apartment. Tony and I are absolutely in love with it! This is the first apartment we've lived in over here that actually feels homey.

The first thing we did was paint! This is a view of the living room when you're standing in the hallway. The green on the TV wall isn't done yet but we should finish soon! Isn't it pretty? We got a steal on rugs and they are so worth it! It's amazing how much better carpet looks then our gross stained tiles! This is looking down my hallway...I have no idea what color to paint that-any suggestions? This is my dining room. I know I'm brave with paint, but people seriously thought I was crazy when I said I was going to paint green, yellow, orange, and brown stripes in my dining room...but it looks awesome! At least I think so! No, I don't set the table like that everyday...but maybe I should!

There is one odd thing about the apartment...there's no room for the fridge in the kitchen! So the fridge is down the hall in the laundry room!It's not really as big of a pain as you would think! But Tony and I are planning on buying a mini-fridge for the kitchen anyway.

There are so many little things I love about the apartment. One that makes me smile every day is the picture in my guest bathroom. My best friend in the States, Kelly, sent me this card and I just had to frame it and hang it above the toilet! It's so funny-when people leave my bathroom they are cracking up! Thanks Kelly!

I bought some aloe vera a couple months ago and it's doing really good! I still put it on everything and lecture everyone else when they wont let me put it on them!

The lillies here are huge! I bought a bunch of buds from the grocery store two weeks ago for 75 durham (about 20 dollars which is a good price because flowers here are EXPENSIVE) and they all bloomed into one foot wide (no joke) lillies! They smell gorgeous! People coming over tell me they can smell them all the way down the hall!

Here's the most exciting thing about my new apartment...my oven has temperature settings!!! No more "big flame, little flame!" Real life temperature settings! They are in celcius...but oh well! Here's the ironic thing, I finally have an oven with temperature settings and I haven't cooked with it yet even though we've lived here two weeks! The reason for that...Tony has been grilling on our balcony literally every night! And the food has been delicious! He found mesquite chips here and grilled an actual roast last weekend-with vegies and all! It was so yummy! It's been so much fun to grill every night and we've had people over almost every day! It would just be cruel to send the grill sent wafting through the building and not offer to share!

We are trying to get as much grilling in as possible before the summer really starts! For some reason we have been incredibly lucky with the weather here for June. This week it's 98! The bad news is that it's incredibly windy which means we've been having sand storms. Some days the sand in the air is so thick you can litterally look at the sun without squinting! Here are some pictures over the edge of our balcony. Usually you can see pretty far beyond that mosque. The round building in this picture is the soccer stadium. Nights when they have a soccer game they shoot off fireworks and everything!

We haven't really cleaned the deck up too much. We are waiting until the summer heat passes before we buy outside plants and furniture. Actually, we are talking about getting a small kiddie pool and tell me this isn't the perfect place for a slip and slide! I haven't ordered it yet...but it will happen! (We better buy a first aid kit at the same time!)

Last weekend we had all of our friends over for BBQ which was great and then we played Cranium. Poor Kyle...Matt and Tony were trying to act out dentist...

Well that's pretty much it! We are loving our new apartment and having everyone over to BBQ! We'll take more pics this weekend!

We Have Internet!

I know we've been MIA lately but that is because we were moving! We got the apartment upstairs and have been moving the past week. We just got our internet hooked up today which was exciting because they said it'd be another two weeks!

Tony and I have been busy painting and BBQ-ing on our balcony! I'll be sure to take lots of pics soon!

Since We've Been Back

Since Tony and I have been back we've been pretty busy. We were so sad to leave Italy, but we came back to Abu Dhabi re-energized. We hadn't left the country in over seven months. We have decided that we need to start taking more vacations so we can get out of the desert more often!

When we got back we fell back into the swing of things: BBQ-ing with friends on Thursdays, poker on Fridays...Well Tony and I hosted poker after we got back which is nice because we are the only ones with a big table. Get this-I won the first game (It's the first time I won!) and Tony won the second game! Yup, the Mugs made a clean sweep. Since then, Tony has won a couple times; actually last week, Tony won the first and second game! With our winnings we went out and bought a Nintendo Wii. Oh my gosh it's SO much fun! We got a bunch of games to go with it, but the best game by far is the sports game. It has tennis, bowling, boxing, baseball, and golf. The night we got it our friend Matt came up to play with us. Here's Matt and Tony playing baseball:Tony and Matt started boxing standing up...then they got too tierd. The bad thing was our air conditioning was broke that week so we had three adults running around in tanktops and shorts, sweating our butts off by the end of the night. Let's just say we were all so sore we couldn't move for three days!

Yesterday we got together with our friend Mike to celebrate Memorial day. We bbq-ed upstairs. My new favorite thing to bbq is twice baked potatoes-they're so good on the bbq! Then, in honor of Memorial day, I made apple pie! It's the first one I've made here. I tried apple pie for the first time, and it's pretty yummy!

Our other big news is that we get to move upstairs next week! They are cleaning out the apartment and painting it right now! All we have to do is wait for them to clean out the pool table and extra furniture and then we are good to go! I love moving and I can't wait to have a balcony! There are some logistic problems in the apartment...but I'll get into those later. For right now I'm just excited! That's about all we're up to right now, I hope everyone back home is having a great holiday weekend!

More Italy

Well I guess since it's been three weeks since we returned from Italy I should finish up my posts!

We made up for our day of relaxation the fourth day by hiking...all day! We took a train to the southern most town in Cinque Terra, Riomaggorie. There's an easy hike...well more of a walk really...between this town and the one to the north, Manarola, called the Romantic Trail. This walk was how lovers from different towns could meet before the trains were constructed. We arrived in Manarola feeling fine after our twenty minute, paved walk and explored the town a little. It was absolutely beautiful. Manarola is a very small villiage known for one thing. One of the vineyard owners had a son that was very sick and he appealed to God to cure his son by erecting a very large cross on the hillside of his winery. Well, the son did get better. However, the cross fell at sometime and the father ended up getting very sick and he died. On his death bed he made his son promise to repair the cross and add to it to regain God's mercy. Well the son is full grown now and he is ill so he continually adds to the...um...nativity scene. The result it pretty bizarre. No word yet on how the son's illness is doing. It was so beautiful out that we decided to keep going. After going up a serious of steps, the trail took us through the vineyards above Manarola and on to the next town to the north, Corniglia. The hike (and yes, this one was a hike) to Coriglia was more difficult and Tony and I were starving and out of water. We had planned on having lunch in Corniglia so I was overjoyed when the town came into view...that is until I saw the zillion steps up the side of the mountain that were standing in between me and my lunch! Over lunch we debated whether to catch the train home or say "What the heck!" and hike the rest of the way to Vernazza. We hiked. On one hand the two hour hike was painful in that the first hour and a half was all uphill...on the other hand, it was the most beautiful part of the hike. Instead of being on a rocky coast like the previous hikes, this one was through trees and plants with amazing views of the ocean. Needless to say we didn't do much else that night-besides recover!

The next day was one of my favorites! We started the day by having smiling cappachinos and Tony bought his FAVORITE food in Italy-Focaccia bread (I'm going to try to make some pretty soon.). Then we went and grabed the camera, a couple beers, and sat on the rocks watching the waves...all day. We ended up with about 800 pictures of waves-but here's the jist of it:

...waves on this rock...
...waves on these rocks...

...and waves on the beach.

Well, while on the rocks there was something a little more amusing than the waves. These HUGE waves were breaking over the rocks onto the dock where the tourists were waiting for boats. The ground is soaking wet so you would think people would have a clue that they could get wet...no such luck! So Tony and I sat and watched tourists go look over the dock at the water and end up getting completely soaked...and then they would complain about it as if it were someone's fault besides their own!

We were bummed because we thought this was our last day in Cinque Terra. Our plane was leaving from Milan at noon on Friday and it's a long train ride so we thought it'd be a good idea to spend the last night in Milan, which we didn't want to do. We got up the next day and took the little train to Monterrosso,the most northern of the five villages, and bought train tickets to Milan. Then I discovered there was a fast train from Monterrosso to Milan at five the next morning...let's say I didn't really have to twist Tony's arm to stay an extra day.

We found a hotel room...and here's the downfall (which I'll explain later) you had to use the door key to turn on the lights. Well Tony and I had a great day in Monterosso being happy we weren't in Milan. We didn't want to unpack too much so unfortunatley we didn't take any pictures. We had to wake up by 4:30 the next monring so we could catch our 5:10 train. No problem. Except that when we woke up that morning, we couldn't find the card to turn on the light! It was pitch black outside and NONE of the lights worked without that card. So Tony and I ran around the room trying to change and pack the rest of our stuff by the light of his lighter and I was using the display light on my cell phone. We had 5 minutes to get to the train station and I couldn't find the cell phone! We figured they would find it and mail it to us later. It sucked, but if we missed our train we would miss our plane. When I got back to Abu Dhabi I emailed the hotel and they said they can't find it either...which I don't believe, but oh well.

The funny thing about the plane ride home was that a friend of ours in Abu Dhabi who lives in our building had left to visit his family in the States and on his way home was on the same flight as us from Milan to Abu Dhabi!

Well, that was the jist of Italy! We had such a wonderful time and can't wait to go back some day!