Tiara and her lizard

Tiara loves all her little toys, but her favorite is definitely her lizard. Tyler gave her his plastic lizard he found in his playroom shortly after we first got her and ever since she's been in love with it. He is in pretty rough shape after so much playing; he's missing body parts. LOL She carries it around in her mouth and meows for us to throw it for her. Then she goes and fetches it and this process is repeated over and over again. When she is done playing with "Lizard", she often puts him in her food bowl for some reason. I'm not sure if she thinks it will eventually become food or if she thinks he needs something to eat. LOL That Tiara is definitely quite the character.

International Night

With the official start of my cake business and a few orders in the works, I was too busy to post this one that took place last week. Tyler's school had their annual International Night. Steve was working the event for the newspaper and came home to pick us up for the event. We weren't planning on going at first because Tyler had been battling the stomach flu, but in the end we are so thankful we didn't miss out on this wonderful event. 

There are so many different students from different nationalities at his school that it was nice to see them being represented at this event. It gave the kids a chance to learn about where some of their friends come from. We started out by grabbing some food in the cafeteria where they had booths set up for different countries. Each country had several different foods to sample and all of it was so good! As we sat down and ate, the school's Bollywood dancers performed some dance routines for us. It was so cute to see the kids on the stage.

Next we headed to the different classrooms where they were converted into different countries. As you entered each class, the kids could get their passport stamped. Then we sat down and listened to a story native to that country. The best was Germany where we entered Hansel and Gretel's house. It was very well done!

The class that had the most student attend the event had a chance to win a pizza party. Well, Tyler's teacher promoted enough to her class and ended up winning! Tyler was so happy about that. The photos shown are the ones taken by Steve for the paper. We were so impressed with International Night that we are already excited about next year's event. Steve wants us to have a Canada booth there...

Found this guy floating in the pool this morning. He looked huge and scary! Hopefully he doesn't have any nearby friends.

Cake Time

So today we went to a birthday party of our friend of ours and I made the birthday cake. It was a My Little Pony Rainbow Cupcake-Cake. I was a little nervous as cake time rolled around and couldn't bare to look around as everyone dove in. Turns out everyone loved them! I had people tell me the icing was perfect and not too sweet. Another lady came up to me and introduced herself, she said it was the best icing she had ever tasted. I gave her my website and she already "liked" it.  Steve said the cake also had really good flavor. This made me feel good to gave me a little boost of confidence I needed to hear. We had a great time at the party. It was a hot day out there, but the kids cooled off at the pool. My friends live at a very nice flat that looks more like a resort.

Heather's Delicious Wishes Cakes and Cupcakes

Well, my dream has finally come true. I've officially started my cake/cupcake business. Baking and decorating has always been a passion of mine and I've always believed the saying "Find something you like to do, become good at it, then find away to get paid for it". I think the timing is perfect. Us being overseas and there's very few jobs available to spouses here, so I thought why not at least give it a try. My business name is Heather's Delicious Wishes Cakes and Cupcakes and you can find my business page on FaceBook at https://www.facebook.com/heathersdeliciouswishes . So please "like" my FaceBook page and follow my newest adventure. Tell your friends and family too! I'm very excited about it and already got a return customer for my cupcake-cakes. This is the cheerleading uniform and pom-pom I created out of cupcakes for the school's cheerleading squad's end of the year party. Go Team! Go Heather's Delicious Wishes Cakes and Cupcakes!

6 years ago today my dad went to be with our Lord. There isn't a day that goes by that he isn't in my thoughts. Forever missing you, Dad.

Easter in Bahrain

Every now and then we are reminded that we live in a Muslim country, especially during Christian holidays. Unlike Christmas where we had the day off to celebrate, the base and school were treating Easter as a regular day. :( With that being said, we had to celebrate a day early. The base hosted an Easter Egg Hunt in conjunction with Military Child Month celebrations. Tyler participated in the egg hunt and got a total of three eggs because there were so many kids in his age category. He was starting to feel a little sick. We had a family photo with the Easter Bunny and he had a little slip n' slide fun, as well as fun with the super soakers.

We came home to find a note on the floor. It was from the Easter Bunny! Apparently he had been by while we were gone and hit some eggs and treats for Tyler. Unfortunately, Tyler was still feeling ill and only managed to find half of the stuff before deciding to lay down and take a nap. When he woke up again, he asked me to help him find the rest of his Easter treats. The Easter Bunny brought lots of chocolate eggs, an Easter Bunny, a book, and even some strawberry toaster pockets. He also surprised Mom and Dad with chocolate bunnies for us too.

The next day was a regular work/school day, however Tyler was still not feeling well so I ended up keeping him home. Tummy ache, diarrhea, headache and dizziness were his symptoms. He ended going to school the next day, but the school called shortly afterwards saying he was still suffering with diarrhea. Dad picked him up and drove him back home. This morning he had a little diarrhea at the start of our day, but he's been eating some since then and so far so good. His friend from his class was sick for 5 days because of the same illness and another friend is home sick today, also from his class. He seems to be on the mend now. Time will tell.

Final Day of our Sri Lanka Vacation

Well, unfortunately it finally came to our last day in paradise. We packed up our luggage and headed down to the buffet breakfast. We got a table by the pool, ate while admiring the incredible view, and even watched a local climb up the palms with nothing but a rope and bare feet to maintain the palms.

Our driver was a tad bit late picking us up. Turns out he went home to his wife in Colombo for the night. He probably missed her a lot during our 9 day adventure. He told us that he has two older children, one of which is getting married in the summer. Anyway, our last day consisted of our last visit of some temples on our way to Columbo. One of the temples was more like a museum as they had quite the collection of Sri Lanka artifacts. They even kept an elephant in the back of the building. Our driver continued along for more sightseeing that consisted of government buildings and such. We stopped for a lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Our tour company called and said for us to drop by the office to meet them and they had a gift to give us. We sat down with them for about an hour. They wanted to know how we liked our tour of the country. They made us tea and gave us a box of tea and cookies to take home. Before saying goodbye, they took a group photo of all of us in front of their sign. Then our driver dropped us off at the airport. We thanked him for showing us around and countless hours of safely driving us to different places. We checked into the airport and waited for our flight. We had a connection in Dubai and then we arrived home in Bahrain around 3 a.m.

Overall, it was an awesome adventure, a beautiful country to visit, the most friendliest people we have ever met, and we were so blessed to experience all of it.

Day 8: Sri Lanka Vacation

The next day our driver took us to another temple with a giant Buddha. Before going inside, our driver found a vendor that had wraps for rent. Steve had his turn the other day, now it was my turn to wear one. You wear  them to cover up your knees prior to entering the temple.  We climbed up hill to reach the Buddha. We sure got our exercise while in Sri Lanka. This Buddha you could actually go inside. It is richly decorated with paintings that covered both the walls and the ceilings. After exploring throughout the inside of the Buddha and taking photos, we went across the street where we saw an elephant and people gathered around it. I saw one man and his child repeatedly go under the elephant. I wonder if they do that to bring good luck.
Then we went inside another temple where people were presenting food to Buddha. They had another building to the side where people would prepare the fruits and rice and make it nice for Buddha. We also saw off to the side where they dump all the rice/fruit in a big bucket after it's been presented to Buddha. It just seemed like such a waste.

The camera on my good camera went dead while inside the last temple, so I went outside and shot some video. Our driver asked if we were interested in getting some Sri Lankan sweets down the street where we parked. We were getting low on our snack foods anyway and had to reload for our flight the next day. The sweets reminded me of Indian sweets. They were very similar. Steve and Tyler picked out some various kinds to try.

We got back in the van and it was off to the turtle farm! The farm saved the eggs they find on the beach, rebury them in an enclosed cage to protect them from birds and stray dogs from eating them, once they hatch they put them in a holding tank and maintain them for 5 years until they are ready to be released to the ocean. The lady at the farm showed us all the turtles starting off with the babies. They were so adorable! They even had an albino one which is quite rare. Then she showed us some of their older residents who have been there awhile and will likely never be released out into wild because of injury or deformities. It's common for a turtle to be caught up in a fisherman's net. The government started a program where they will pay the fisherman to bring any injured turtles to the farm so they can get treatment and increase their chance of survival.

For our last full day, we asked the driver if he could take us back to our hotel where we could just relax by the pool and have lunch. Tyler got in the pool for a bit and then when it was time for lunch, we did the buffet. After lunch, we walked along the beach to a nicer part and found a spot where we enjoyed the water, sand and sun. We encountered several woman along the way trying to sell us handmade bracelets and such.










When it was time to leave, Steve suggested we hire a tuk-tuk back to the hotel. We were all excited! Tuk-tuks are everywhere in Sri-Lanka. To ride in one definitely made our Sri Lanka vacation complete.

We got back to the hotel and went back to the pool. We stayed there the remainder of the afternoon. We swam for a bit. Tyler met a few friends around the same age who were from Dubai. They had a blast together in the pool.
We then took some photos of the beautiful sunset before going back to our room to get showered and dressed for our last dinner in Sri Lanka.