Tyler found some old pieces of cardboard boxes and decided to make Tiara a cat house. Here's how it turned out.

Master Builder

Well, Dad wasn't the only one in our family who received an award yesterday...

Congratulations!!!

This morning Steve and his co-worker, Derric, received an award for the video they took awhile back of the bridge move from the base annex to our base. The video was a stop animation video that took over 24 hours to film and received the most hits in history on the Stars and Stripes website. I personally know how hard they worked on this video, this award was well deserved. Always so proud of you, Steve. Steve and Derric are pictured with the XO of the base.

It's raining??!!! No, it's just our latest leak. Let's see how long it takes for them to come and fix it this time.

In the shade right now.

The 1 kilo (35.2oz) Steak Challenge

Steve participated in the Bennigan's 1 kilo (35.2oz) Steak Challenge last night as part of a geocaching event. The Bennigan's restaurant will reward anyone who can eat the steak and two sides with a t-shirt, knife, 10% on your next meal, and a place on their wall of fame. Two of our cache members had previously been rewarded and last night it was Steve, another fellow cacher, and a few of his British friends who participated and successfully met the challenge.

Dolphin Resort Field Trip

The 2nd graders had their field trip day today. The buses took them to the Bahrain Dolphin Resort where they had a blast along side three other Bahraini school classes. They first started out with some fun group photo taking on the rides and then after purchasing their tickets, they got on the rides. Tyler rode the pirate ship, the bumper cars, the swings and a turning tunnel.

After the kids had a blast on the rides, they cooled down a bit with some slushes. 

Finally, we got to go inside where the a/c was (thank God) and the kids had their Hardees lunch meals that were delivered to the resort. And shortly after this, the show started! The sea lion was first up. He did all sorts of tricks with his trainer including balancing of the ball on his nose, ring toss, clapping, and even the audience got to participate in several tricks.

Next up was a baby sea lion which was just so adorable. He was out for a short time and the kids got a chance to do some tricks with him. It wasn't long though before the star of the show came out and wowed us all with some mega high jumps and non stop amazing tricks. They picked a child to represent each school to go and see the dolphin. They had a group photo done.

Overall, the show was much better than we all anticipated. The tricks were all incredible to watch. The announcer was speaking Arabic throughout the show, so we really didn't have to clue what to expect before each trick. This was the first time the teachers had been there too. I'm glad we had an opportunity to see this cool show with our kids. The kids got back on their buses and went back to school, while us moms went and grabbed lunch together.

Sri Lanka Safari Video

Lazlo Lights the Way

Steve installed these cool puddle lights on the MINI last night!!

There's not a spot untouched with Tiara around.

Ahhh...refreshing!

Part of Our Family

Tiara likes to join us at the dinner table. She just "sits" in her chair with the rest of the family for mostly every meal. Notice that her back feet are still on the chair. She really does think she is human. 

Sorry I've neglected the blog. I'm getting a ton of orders with my cake business and it's keeping me extra busy. Here's what went out today, including my very first official Navy cake for a promotion of a Master Chief.

Mother's Day

Everyday I feel so very blessed to be able to be a mother. My family is truly the best. They are my everything. This Mother's Day my family made me cards, including Tiara. I was so touched by their thoughtfulness. This meant more to me than a store bought card. They put the time into doing this for me and used their own words to express their love. I will cherish these cards forever.

Mother's Day of course falls on a Sunday, however Sunday is a normal school/work day here in Bahrain. So the 2nd grade teachers and students held a lovely Mother's Day Tea for all of us mothers. They sang songs, both in English and in Arabic. Read poems they made. Served us Moroccan tea and gave us cupcakes to eat. They also made us treat bags filled with pretty flower vase with paper flowers inside, a cute tea cup that I will cherish forever, and some chocolates. After the tea, I went to the cafeteria and ate lunch with my boy.

 To complete my day, Steve and Tyler took me out to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants. It was the perfect way to end a special day with the ones I love with all my heart!!

Indoor Pool

If it's not one thing, it's another with this villa we live in. So, Saturday morning I just finished getting the last batch of cupcakes out of the oven when I think I hear a noise outside. While trying to figure it out, I notice water sweeping out from the middle of the facet. I go to turn it off and nothing is stopping it. I call for Steve to assist and he goes to find the valve to turn off and there's none to find. Meanwhile I'm trying to soak up the water going all over the counter and down on the floor. Steve comes back and calls our property manager and informs him what's going on. "Melvin" says no problem, he will send someone. While I'm trying to decorate cupcakes for delivery in a couple of hours, poor Steve is trying to stop the water flow. He manages to create a dam out of tinfoil so the water is now contained to the sink. There is water everywhere and as big as our kitchen is, it is now starting to head out of the room. Steve mops up the mess. Meanwhile we are still waiting for someone to come and fix the leak or at least turn off the water. Our local friend offers to come over and help, but we decline because we feel we have it under control and we have to leave soon anyway to deliver the cupcakes. We go deliver the cupcakes and still no sign of anyone coming to fix the leak. We decide to take a swim in the pool and as we are getting out, we can hear a vehicle on the other side of the wall. It is the maintenance guy. He replaced our old maintenance guy and this is his first time repairing something for us. We soon find out he speaks very little English. Because he hasn't been to the villa before, he also doesn't know how to shut the water off. It took him a good half hour to figure it out. Then he makes a couple of trips to the hardware store to get parts ad a new facet. Meanwhile, Steve and I clean up the water again because the guy removed the dam that Steve made. It was after 8pm when all was fixed. Yes, this is the norm when you live overseas.

Tanya!!

It's not that often that I get to post about my friends back home. Here is one of my best friends, Tanya, who no longer lives in Cape Breton, but now lives in Alberta. In my opinion, she has one of the best jobs ever, a children's librarian. This morning I found this photo on Face Book that a mom posted of her doing story time the other day. 

Tyler's Science Project Video!!!!

Tyler's teacher emailed us to let us know that they are showing Tyler's science project video to the entire elementary student body and staff Thursday morning!! She said Tyler's work is admirable and deserves to set an example to the others to show what hard work can accomplish. She also said science is overlooked in the lower grades and she thinks the kids will enjoy learning from his science experiment. How cool is that?!!
Here's the video:

Cupcakes out the Door

Woohoo!! Steve delivered my first big cupcake order this morning. A lady wanted 40 white and chocolate rose cupcakes to give to the employees at the CDC (Child Development Center) on base. As he was walking over to meet her, he said there were a lot of people saying how nice they looked. Steve said she absolutely loved them and she sent me a message afterwards saying how beautiful they were. Below are the photos that Steve took of them.

Bahrain Bus

Last night we took a fun little tour of Bahrain with our caching friends. We rented an old 1957 bus to cruise around in. The bus was the coolest ever. It was just recently restored and had been in the owner's family for many years. It was used to transport public employees, employees to the oil refinery, as well as to transport dead bodies to the morgue! The family even lived in it at one time! The bus had a wooden body and bench seating. It had no a/c so we had to have our little tour at night when it got cooler. As we drove, everyone was taking notice of the bus and were taking photos of it. We would all wave to them. It was pretty hilarious! They were probably wondering who we were. LOL

The first stop on our scenic tour was a mini zoo. Many of us had never been to this zoo before and after our visit was done, we knew why it wasn't a very popular spot. It was actually a pretty sad sight the way they caged up the animals in very tight quarters. It also seemed as if they caged up whatever they could find including domestic cats and even a German shepherd. :( I did get to pet a very sweet camel though. Many of us, mostly the Americans, were glad to be leaving that awful place and get back on the bus.

Our next stop was suppose to be the souq, however by this time we were quite hungry and so we ended up skipping it and grabbing some camel burgers. Steve got a massive camel burger. It was probably the biggest burger we've ever seen. After just making friends with the sweet camel, I couldn't bring myself to eat one of his friends, so I just got a normal burger. However, after trying a few bites of Steve's, I must say that it was quite tasty and that I would definitely get one next time. Before leaving, a couple of us found a nearby cache. It was getting late and we only rented the bus for 3 hours, so we headed back to where we parked the cars. Overall, it was a great time! Steve's co-worker that works for the Stars and Stripes newspaper came along with us to do a story on geocaching in Bahrain and it peaked his interest in starting geocaching. He also decided to make the story an in-depth article, so we'll see him again at another event. 

When I asked Tyler why he took this stuff out of his playroom and put in the living room, his reply was that he was camping. 

Take Back the Night

Like most cities in the U.S., our base held their annual "Take Back the Night". Tyler and I walked throughout the base with our lit candles with the others. At one time, Tyler's cup surrounding the candle fell to the ground and while I was helping him get the cup back around the candle, my cup caught on fire. LOL Then his cup also caught on fire. I quickly blew them both out and so part of the way we walked in darkness. Thankfully someone had a lighter that saw us and re-lit them again. LOL Meanwhile, Dad was busy taking photos of the event for the newspaper. Here's a group photo that he took. Tyler and I are in the second row, last 2 on the right.