growing

I know I've dropped off with the frequency of my blog posts lately. Sorry about that. I haven't decided whether to blame that on the dog or on Camille. It's not that I don't have time or the material, but when I do have a free minute, I'm too tired to be creative and end up watching something on TV that takes zero mental energy (reruns of Friends and Seinfeld usually -- remember, I'm limited in what there is to watch in English). Then this past weekend I finished our annual family calendar which took tons of creative energy, but came out perfectly. Once those lucky recipients get them in the mail, I'll share it here. It's not as exciting or exotic as last year's where each month was a different location from our travels, but it's a good one. 

My garden is exploding! Seeds are sprouting, veggies are budding and fruiting, and vines are flowering. This is my third planting of sunflowers that started popping up yesterday. So far they have been safe from the birds, even when other plants haven't been as lucky. Maybe the birds know if they leave them alone they'll end up with tons of seeds to eat?

My peppers have peppers! I think these are bell peppers, not hot peppers, but I'll know for sure as they take shape over the next few days/weeks.

I have never grown eggplant before so I was excited to see the beginnings of this one -- the flower fell off and left the tiny fruit behind. I didn't even know what color eggplant this was when I picked up the seedling from the nursery. It looks like it's becoming the pale purple and white variety.

Bushy tomatoes are on the right -- I think I have 6 tomato plants total. I think they are mostly cherry type tomatoes, but since nursery guy and I were playing charades about the different plants (big? small? eating? flower?) it's all a mystery until the tomatoes actually start appearing.  

I thought these plants were getting big enough to withstand the birds, but it turns out the birds love my swiss chard and pecked the leaves into lace covered stems. 

So I pulled out the mesh again and protected the things that the birds seem to like most. 

like the carrot greens! The birds got the first wave of sprouts, but I replanted and protected them and they are doing really well now. 

pepper in foreground, tomatoes in black pot on left and orange pot in center. Bushy things toward the back are squash. They are getting really big (the plants, no squash yet). 

My sunflowers have flowered. I've seeded them in stages to attract bees and other pollinators. The newest seedlings are in the black pot on the left, the half grown ones are on the right and the ones that have flowered are in the back. If they were planted in the ground they'd be taller than I am, but being in pots stunts their growth a bit so the tallest ones comes up to my shoulder. 

Just wait -- someday soon this plant is going to cover this huge trellis. 

eggplant flower

my garden watchdog -- he helps keep the birds away 

 

My crazy dog (literally and figuratively). I could write posts and posts about him. The other day he caught a bird and carried it into the house like a cat with a prize. Then when Josh went to take it away he half inhaled it and then wheezed for the next 30 minutes as if he had feathers stuck in his throat. 

He's quite the scarecrow for my little farm. 

a few of my favorite Christmas things . . .

This is our third Christmas overseas. I can honestly say I never saw that coming when I boxed up all of our Christmas items for storage thinking, "I'll see you next year." My advent calender, all the Christmas picture books, our stockings, singing snowman, ornaments from various places we've lived, and lots of other things that I'm sure I'll be surprised by when we are eventually reunited with our "stuff" a few years from now. 

Last year I didn't have any Christmas decorations except for a naked tree that was a gift from our neighbors, the Aldermans, when they moved to Germany. I didn't feel up to creating a Christmas out of nothing, but thanks to peer pressure from Facebook and the kindness of friends who shared some of their ornaments with us, we had one of my favorite trees ever. When we put up the tree today it was fun to pull out the ornaments that have become special to us after just one year: 

I adore this little crocheted Santa from my friend Summer!

A handwoven basket from Cheyenne from her trip to Rwanda. 

For this Dutch girl, an ornament from Holland (from Josh's mom).

Our Omani camels from Josh's mom (That's the Oman flag painted on its back).

traditional coffeepot

and khanjar that I picked up at the Taism craft fair

Jennifer brought these woodcut deer back from Germany

Handmade (beanbag) throwing stars from my talented quilting friend Kristi 

I put these guys in charge of the tree this year and they did all the work -- untangling lights, arranging branches, and hanging ornaments. 

Thanks to our many friends, we have lots of Christmas cheer!

thankful

We are thankful for grandparents, family members and other friends who have come to visit us here in Bahrain. We know we don't live in an exotic locale any longer so it's nice to know that people really do like us. 

Sadly the grandparents have gone and Thanksgiving is over. So life has slowed down, right? Nope.

Our friends from Oman came for the weekend. Caleb's friend wanted to spend her birthday with us so we got to party all weekend. A trip to the waterpark, dinner out, dessert from Lilou's (the French cafe that does chocolate like I've never experienced before), and lots of friend time.

 
They made clothes for their stuffed animals by cutting up baby socks

Choco-Mocho, Chocolate Volcano, Le Noir . . . and several other delicacies. 

At the waterpark: Play Pen or a cage? . . . you decide.

We went first thing in the morning so we had the place all to ourselves. No lines anywhere!

  

 

On our way to Baskin-Robbins -- they must have known our Bob was in town!
(Caleb, K-Bob, otherwise known as Bob at our house).

The boys have the next two days off of school for the Shia holiday Ashura. I'm thankful for the extra time to rest after a busy several weeks!

Specially for Faith

In case you didn't know, I do take requests. My niece, Faith, sent me a video via email asking for "more videos of Camille."

The girl is a genius with the ipad. She opens up Netflix, browses around the kid shows and watches things like Pound Puppies and Jem (which is Jem and the Holograms from when I was a kid). When the video starts, she's lying down waiting for the show to load. Total pro.

Henna Time!

For Barbara's birthday, we went to a henna salon. Barbara had it applied to the back of her hands and the tops of her feet and I chose to have my palms painted. I like it on my palms because the back of my hands look normal and then I have the surprise of flowers and leaves every time I get a glimpse of my palms.

The henna is applied as a paste the way you would decorate a cake. The blue cone has a tiny hole in the tip and she draws everything freehand.  

Meelie came along, but she didn't want anyone coming near her with any henna. She sat quietly and watched everything and when we came home she wanted to draw on my arm with a pen just like the lady did. 

Left hand -- love the sunflowers, the details of the leaves, everything about it. 

Right hand -- rose style of flower. I love all the swirls and can't believe she can do all this with such a steady hand and get this kind of intricate detail. I can't even draw a good looking stick figure . . .

After she finished the design I sat in front of a heater to help it dry. It was so warm her cheeks started getting pink. 

As it dries, the black paste flakes off, leaving an orange stain behind. The color will darken and deepen over the next 24 hours or so. 

12 hours later . . . getting darker! 

Days of Thunder

One of the fun things that the boys did with the grandparents this weekend was Go-Karting!

  

I was home with a napping baby (totally worth it) so these photos are from Josh and Barbara. There is a  professional race track here (I don't do NASCAR or anything, but I know it is big enough to hold Formula One races) and part of the complex is a Go-Kart track. They have separate tracks for kids and adults. The boys went through the short introductory video briefing and then they were ready to suit up!

Getting ready to get into the cars -- Calvin is on the left, Carter on the right.

They drove in two racing sessions. Josh said you could see a big improvement in their driving skills from the first session to the second. The boys kept a tally of how many other cars they passed. Caleb was proud that he passed up one other car, but then admitted, "he spun out."

My drivers!

Having a ball

My sister reminded me that I didn't post any photos from this year's Marine Corps ball. She wasn't sure if we even had a ball since we were overseas. We did and it was a great night of dinner and ceremony (usually we dance all night, but the DJ and I weren't feeling each other. Maybe next year.)

It was especially fun to share the experience with Josh's parents at their first Marine Corps ball. It's hard to believe we only have a few more of these while Josh is still active duty.

I only have fuzzy cell phone pictures, but it's enough to get the idea. Some people get professional ball pictures taken every year (like at the prom), but I've never been that sentimental and the first few years we didn't even have the $15 to spare for a photo. Right about now, though, I'm wishing I could go back and see photos of us from all our past balls: my $20 dress from the Ross clearance rack, the one where I was pregnant with Calvin and had a fat face, the bridesmaid phase at Ft Sill when I wore my sister's hand-me-up dresses back when she was in a wedding every other month, the Vegas era where we were lucky enough to have family willing to come in for the weekend to babysit in the hotel . . .

The best part about the current state of our ball experience is that we got to go 'babysitter free' for the first time since the fat face ball 14 years ago. The hotel was nearby so our in-house childcare provider took care of things at home while the 4 adults went out. If you want to come party with us next year, just let us know!

You know you're not in Kansas anymore . . .

Please don't read this and freak out. These things are all true, but the risk to us is low. 

. . . when you yell at your kids for walking on the side of the road and tell them to walk in the street with the cars because you don't want them to stumble on any explosive devices.

. . . when you spend 20 minutes debating whether going to church would be considered "essential travel" since you've been told to stay put except for necessary outings. 

. . . when it turns out that it doesn't matter either way since church has been cancelled because police have closed the roads leading to and from church. 

. . . when your 8 year old gingerly steps around trash lying in the street whispering, "that could be a bomb . . . that could be a bomb." 

. . . when you wake up to check the latest security notices and see that your house is now firmly planted in the middle of the red zone, making it "off limits." (we can still live here, but are supposed to do all of our shopping, eating, etc outside of the red zone.)

. . . when you laugh at this warning poster put out by the government:

(not because I think bombs are funny, but who wouldn't report the propane tank with wires hanging off of it? Hello, obvious!)

. . . when you ask your husband to check twitter before driving anywhere because you don't want to be stuck behind a wall of burning tires.

. . . when you have to have The Talk with the kids and it's not about sex, but explosives.



The big development this week was in addition to the normal protests, burning tires, and road closures, there were 5 or 6 small pipe bombs that were planted in and near the area where we live. The closest one was a few blocks away. They were either disguised as trash or planted on the ground near dumpsters. One or two of them exploded and killed 2 people, the rest detonated without any injuries.

My resident expert is not concerned for our personal safety for several reasons that I don't want to share publicly, but if you want to know his theories of what's going on, email me and I'll go into more detail for you.

We are just as safe here as we are anywhere else in the world. If they offered a voluntary evacuation at this point, as much as I would LOVE to go hang out in California for a few months, I wouldn't take it. We are fine. Things are fine. I miss Oman and I miss California, but that is more about missing the beach and the mountains than being worried that I'm going to get blown up.

I could have ignored this subject entirely because I know there are family members who don't have a clue this stuff is going on (I'm looking at you, Kristy), but I know other people regularly get Bahrain news through Google Alerts and I don't want you to be worried for no reason. I'm not, so you shouldn't be either.

camel crossing

Even though Bahrain is a small island, I haven't come close to seeing everything here. Today we went to two new places: the camel farm and the National Museum. The museum is beautiful and modern with displays of life and culture from the past that showed off historic fashions (the women were covered, but colorful), weaving of baskets and cloth, Bahrain's history of pearl diving, and other ceremonial things unique to here (boys used to be (and might still be) circumcised between 3 and 6 years old -- ouch!).

My favorite part of the museum, however, was a gigantic satellite map of the entire country on the floor of the main room. I stood in the map, found our house, and things started to fall in place from there. I told Josh I need to go visit there just to figure out where I'm going before I drive anywhere and I was only half kidding. I felt like Joey on Friends when they go to London and he keeps putting the map down on the ground and standing on it to figure out which direction he's supposed to be walking. It's the only way it makes sense to me. 

Something I didn't know about Bahrain before we moved here is its long history of pearl diving. Bahrain was well known for quality pearls and this statue at the museum shows how they used to harvest them: nose clips, ropes to secure them to the boat and bare hands. They must have had fantastic lung capacity and better ears than I do (mine always hurt whenever I dive down any distance at all and nothing helps except coming back up).

The beautiful building behind the statue is the new theater that opens tomorrow night. We'll have to check the schedule and see if there's something worth going to. Placido Domingo is coming later this month, but Josh will be gone traveling for work. We'll just have to catch him next time. 

 

She loves to run -- she's either running away from me or trying to beat me. 

Another place that is on the "must-see" list here is the camel farm. The camels are owned by the king or the prince (somebody from the royal family), but we had heard the farm was open to the public. We wandered in like a bunch of yahoos off the street and I kept expecting someone to stop us, but I guess that's what everyone does since nobody even blinked.

The camels aren't in cages, but they're attached with a short length of chain so they're not able to go anywhere. I thought the camels must be special ones for racing or for eating, but one of the caretakers told us that they're just raised as a hobby. The camels just "eat and sleep. No racing. No meat."   

This cute little one is only two weeks old. He (or she) was leaping around on his gangly legs. 

 

 

Mama and baby -- settling in for a nap.

If things would chill out here, I can see us really starting to enjoy it. Bahrain isn't outwardly beautiful, but there are some unique opportunities that we have here. We'll keep searching for more of them!