So Long 2013

We celebrated New Year's Eve our usual way, by staying home in our jammies. And we typically don't even make it past midnight, however the lattes we had at dinnertime helped a great deal. This year Tyler so wanted to be part of the celebration by staying up. We doubted that he would even make it past 9:30, but he surprised us. Mind you, we tricked him by watching the Dubai fireworks an hour before. He ended up falling asleep just a few minutes after they started, though he says he was still awake but rather just resting his eyes. LOL The Dubai fireworks were absolutely spectacular. By far the best, we've ever seen. They made a world record by having the largest fireworks display. By the time they were over, we actually were ready for bed ourselves despite it being 30 minutes away from midnight here in Bahrain. We couldn't break our tradition though. LOL

Birds Video

This once was an island off of Bahrain. They are constantly adding to the island and increasing its' size.  This part is located about 5 minutes from where we live. Enjoy the birds and the view of the city.

Empire Monopoly

Tyler and I tried out one of his Christmas gifts today, Empire Monopoly. It was a little different than the original Monopoly game, this game's goal is to buy brand name companies. It was an absolute blast to play. After playing the first game, we both wanted to immediately play again.

Downtown Camel & Teeter Tottering

While driving through the middle of town today, we saw a camel being lead through the streets. Later on throughout the day we decided to go to a park that is just down the street from where we live. This was our first visit there and will probably be our last as it wasn't very clean. There was a beach there that had a ton of litter. However, Tyler and Dad stopped to play on the teeter totters for a bit before going back home. Here are some of the photos:

Caching in the Desert

We felt the need to get out and do something today. It was decided that we should go and do some real caching. The Bahrain geocachers seem to focus on events here. It's great to get together with them and discover the good places to eat at their events, but caching is really about the fun of going out and finding the actual cache. Today we drove down to the south part of the island and cached in the desert. We had an absolute blast walking through the sand and taking tons of photos along the way. Tyler slid down the sand hills like he would a hill full of snow. LOL  Steve had a blast driving the MINI in the sand. We took some video. When we got back home, we all had to dump out our shoes and socks as they were both full of sand. Here are some of the photos I took. It felt great getting out again.

Christmas in Bahrain~

Tyler woke us up bright and early for us to go downstairs with him to check out if Santa found us in Bahrain. Thankfully he not only found us, but left lots of surprises for us to open. We started off with the stockings. Tyler received lots of food treats, like beef sticks and Gold Fish, and food erasers. Then we moved on to the bigger stuff under the tree. Santa was very good to us this year. Tyler got Legos, a crane, a remote control boat, clothes, Wii games, DVDs and books. Tyler was so surprised when he opened up the airplane Lego set. He said he had always wanted it. And when he opened up the shirt from Nanny, he took off his jammie top right away to put it on. LOL Dad and I received lots of nice gifts as well. He got some DVDs, a hand mixer for making frappes, a horse head ornament, and a cat shirt from Tiara. I got some pretty bracelets from Tyler, a Cape Breton shirt, Tim Hortons ornaments, and everything I need to make and decorate with fondant. Santa even delivered some presents to Tiara, lots of toys to play with. We are so thankful for everything we received. I put the turkey in the oven early in the morning, so we could have Christmas lunch. Everything tasted great! Later on after our food was starting to digest and we could find the energy to walk after we completely stuffed ourselves silly, we went to look at the lights they put up for National Bahrain Day. They were pretty impressive. We just got in the door when my brother called. My mom was at his house for Christmas dinner. We got to talk to them for a bit. Later on that night when I tucked Tyler in for bed, I asked what his favorite part of his Christmas Day was. His reply was when Dad was building Legos with him. It was the perfect ending to our first Christmas in Bahrain.

Christmas Eve

Tonight we met up with our caching friends again for an event at an English pub. It was wonderful spending Christmas Eve with our "Bahrain Family". Most of which are without their families for the holiday season as well. We were going to look at the lights, but Tyler was too excited to go home and get in bed. LOL He just wanted tomorrow to get here already. Once we got home, we went up to his room and was surprised to see a gift from Peter, his elf, on the bed. He opened it up and it was a pair of Mario jammies. Then after putting out whipped shortbread we made especially for Santa, eggnog and a huge carrot for the reindeer, we checked Santa's whereabouts using the Norad website. Once checked, Tyler was eager to get himself off to bed where I'm sure visions of sugar-plums will dance in his head. LOL

Merry Christmas Eve Eve in Bahrain

Weekend Before Santa's Arrival

Excitement is growing stronger everyday for Christmas to get here. This weekend we had a few activities to increase our excitement. On Friday, we had a family craft time where we painted the salt dough ornaments we made. Dad painted Tiara's ornament with her paw print she made herself. Tyler delighted us with his Spider-man angel. LOL And there were bells, stars, a heart, and a few gingerbread men that we painted. We really enjoyed doing our crafts and we're going to try anf make it an annual event for us. We just finished painting in time to make it to our geocaching event which was held on the base. We met at the A&W for burgers and to discuss upcoming events.

The next day, our main mission was to get Tiara to the vet for her updated shots. The shelter has a vet on site and it was also part of her adoption fees, so we brought her there. The poor girl cried the whole way there. She did great at the vet though and once she was back in the car we think she sensed she was on her way back home because she settled down.
We dropped her off and then went to the mall for some lunch at one of our favorite restaurant's, Pasterito's, an Italian restaurant. After eating, we went to the mall's Winter Wonderland. There had always been long lineups whenever we tried to visit, but today we got in with very little wait. Here are some of our photos.