London Trip

On the way home from the United States we planned a 5 day layover in London. We had such a great trip and loved doing a bit of travel on the way home since we were stopping in Europe anyway.  I decided to make scrapbook pages with all our pictures and post them here instead of trying to blog about the trip and also make scrapbook pages. I've been using the new Becky Higgins project life App on my phone and it is the easiest scrapbooking I have ever done. Once I complete all the pages I want, I will upload them to Shutterfly and have them made into a book. Becky is also working to make printing available directly from the app. In the first week I had the app on my phone, I completed 30 scrapbook pages! It is so freeing to have such a convenient way to document our memories. I'm posting them here so our parents (who aren't on social networking sites) can see the details of our lives.

Click on the pictures to make them bigger to be able to read the journaling. 

Disneyland Day 4 & Heading Home

We spent our 4th day back at Disneyland. As we were walking into the park we noticed all of the "main" characters out on main street. The kids (and Allen) were anxious to get riding on rides but I convinced them to get a picture with Mickey first.

 Emery loves Daisy almost as much as Minnie so I kept her while everyone else went to ride and we waited in line to see Daisy. Emery is pretty shy and had not loved seeing other characters in the park so I wasn't sure how she would react to Daisy (she loved Minnie). Turns out she loved Daisy and was even willing to give her lots of hugs.

The girls had been begging ALL week to see Anna and Elsa from Frozen. I knew it would be a long wait so Allen and I swapped back and forth in line waiting and taking the kids on rides. It ended up being a 2 hour wait and we got to ride a lot!

The house where the princesses were was decked out so cute. Olaf was asleep on top of the house and would periodically wake up to visit with the people waiting in line. He was hilarious and made the wait much more enjoyable.

The ladies were THRILLED once we got inside and were able to meet Anna and Elsa. I swear it made the whole trip for them. I so love that we weren't rushed through the experience and got a few minutes to chat with them. As a side note, there was not a SINGLE piece of Frozen merchandise available at the park when we were there. Nothing. Not a tshirt or stuffed animal or dress. It was sad and my girls were really disappointed but there is no doubting the love that people have for the movie!

Another small world selfie!

This picture is of the kids and the ridiculous treat they picked out. They were dying for the fill your own pixie stick all week and we finally relented. It was gross and not worth the money but they loved them. 

Big kids were so happy they were old enough to drive themselves on Autotopia.

Emery steered our car and laughed hysterically as she bumped into everything a million times. We had whiplash but it was worth it!

 The new princess area was open with a fun theater with a couple plays. We saw a short version of Beauty and the Beast which we loved. I love the Rapunzel tower in the middle of the square.

Dole Whip - our all time favorite Disney treat. The line was an hour long on Monday so we only got it once. So delish!

Being the amazing big sis that she is, Makenna ended up sharing hers with the little girls. She is amazing with them!

We loved our trip this time and Emery was such a blast to watch take it all in.

We flew out to Portland the next morning and had to rush around to finish getting packed to leave for Saudi the next day. It was a looong trip home. We are so glad we were able to go to the US but it is a rough few day so travel for everyone. Make no mistake, it is painful to travel internationally with 4 kids and takes an extra measure of patience when everyone is melting down at the same time.

This picture was taken at the London airport. We had already been traveling for about 18 hours and still had 10 to go. All 4 of the kids were crying at the same time and we had to let them sit for awhile to wake up and calm down. It's super glamorous to jet set around the world with kids. I always remind myself that while the getting there (and back) is painful, it's always worth it to have great experiences.

I was really happy to be home and was surprised that Saudi has actually started to feel like home to me!

Weekend in Bahrain

The kids and Allen had a few extra days off this weekend in celebration of Saudi National Day. We decided to spend the weekend in Bahrain. Bahrain is an island right off the Saudi coast. There is a 16 mile bridge that connects the two countries. It took us about an hour to get across and through customs and it was interesting to see the similarities and differences between the two countries. We were all about relaxing this weekend and enjoying a slightly less restricted culture in Bahrain. We headed straight for the mall on Saturday morning and caught a movie. We saw Turbo and it was cute. I took a picture in the movie to show the subtitles - Arabic and French:

We enjoyed lunch at PF Changs and did some shopping after the movie.

We stayed in a very nice hotel that had great amenities. Here are the kiddos with the camel right outside the hotel entrance. Emery was in love with this thing and we had to stop and look at it every time we passed.

We spent hours and hours at the gorgeous pool at the hotel. The kids could (and did) stay all day swimming and playing together.

There was a mini water park at one of the pools:

Emery especially loved the poolside food service. We ordered her a few treats when she got tired of swimming but the big kids were going strong.

We met up with some friends from our compound for the afternoon to swim together:

We had a lovely couple of days just playing at the pool and eating at yummy restaurants. It doesn't sound like much but it was perfect for us and so relaxing.  Yesterday we decided to forgo the pool because I found out that the big mosque in Bahrain is open to the public. I was so excited to go inside for the tour and because I am so interested in Islam. This is the mosque from our hotel room:

 
It is HUGE! That dome is the width of a football field. It was so so amazing to be able to see inside and learn more about the religious beliefs. When we entered the mosque, Allen, Makenna and I were given robes to wear since we were all in shorts. I was also given a scarf to cover my head. We were asked to remove our shoes. I always thought there was religious significance to not wearing shoes but it is only for cleanliness. A wonderful woman who is from Egypt but spoke flawless English gave us our tour. She was so kind and informative and answered our millions of questions.  I only had my iPhone with me so my pictures did not turn out great and I am dying to go back with my nice camera. The scope and intricacies of the architecture and art blew my mind. Here are a few of the pictures I took:

 The star window coverings were on every window and opening in the mosque - so beautiful

 This gigantic door was hand carved from wood from India and the glass lights/orbs were blown by hand in France. There were over 900 orbs in the mosque. This isn't a great picture but shows how large the door is:

We were able to watch a man sing the call to prayer (done in person for each of the 5 daily prayers) and then were able to watch the prayer from above. It was very spiritual for me, especially since the guide had explained the significance of each of the physical aspects of the prayer. After the tour Carter said, "Mom it is amazing how many similarities there are between their beliefs and ours." I was struck by the same thought many times throughout our tour.  I am so grateful we were able to spend a couple of hours taking this tour. All of the mosques in Saudi are closed to the public so this was a treat and the highlight of my weekend. I'm also so glad my kids are being exposed to so many different religions and cultures while we live here!

Santa Fe Weekend

Allen's mom had some timeshare points that were expiring this month and she asked if we wanted to use them. Of course we jumped at the chance and booked a 2 day getaway in Santa Fe for this past weekend. We went up Thursday night and then spent Friday and Saturday playing. It was a great weekend and much needed family time as this month has been really crazy for us. The resort we stayed at was beautiful and embodied the southwestern cultural perfectly.

Friday morning we spent walking all through downtown Santa Fe. It's a really cool city with lots of unique shopping and museums and artsy sites throughout. I stayed at the resort with Emery so she could squeeze in a short nap while the kids hunted for a souvenir. They ended up in a rock/fossil shop and everyone picked something to remember our trip.

After shopping we headed to Bobcat Bite to get one of their famous Green Chile cheeseburgers. This HOLE IN THE WALL place has been featured on lots of travel/food shows and it did not disappoint. Yummiest burger ever!

After lunch we drove up to Los Alamos to go ice skating. We heard about their outdoor rink that is nestled in a little valley. It was gorgeous! Allen sat with Emery while I skated with the older kids for over 2 hours! They would have gone longer but it was getting really cold and my ankles were sore. We had a blast though and all three kids got much more comfortable on the ice.
By the end of our time the older kids were no longer using the skate helpers but they helped a lot and Addison loved using her and got pretty fast and comfortable with it.
It was very interesting to see the National Labs which were nearby and had an incredible amount of security. Made us wonder what exactly they work on in there! From there we headed off to dinner and then back to the resort to watch movies (Allen and I watched Moneyball after the kiddos went to bed and it was fantastic!)

Saturday morning we had another leisure breakfast and then drove over to the state capital to walk around. We ended up staying for a long time because there was no one there but everything was unlocked to see. There was incredible art all throughout the capital that the kids loved seeing.

In the state Senate chamber. We ended up being able to go down to the floor and walk around but I didn't want to push my luck by taking more pictures.
We headed over to the lone outlet mall in NM on our way out of town and picked up a few things and started home in the early afternoon. We stopped at a Mormon Battalion monument that is about halfway between Santa Fe and ABQ. We have seen the signs a bunch of times but never stopped before. My kids loved reading the story along with the monument and were familiar with the story since they love 17 Miracles.
It was a great weekend to be together as a family and explore our own little neck of the woods. We've been to Santa Fe before but never spent much time exploring the culture very much. Allen and I would love to make a couples weekend out of it sometime since there were a ton of fun adult-type things to do up there. We're really hoping to do some serious exploring of NM this year before we wrap up our time here and this was a great way to start off.

Big thanks to Allen's mom for the use of her timeshare!!