A little science experiment

Snow to Start 2013!

Snow is not an every-year-occurence here, but we've had some both last winter and this one! 

Christmas morning

We had a wonderful Christmas morning together, then a big dinner later in the day with lots of friends.   Here are just a few pictures.  Somehow we forgot to get a family picture!

Somebody was tired!

For the Grandparents

This week's family night activity

                             After making an apple pie together....we decided to go camping!

Catching Up: The last 6 months in pictures

Here are some of our family activities that I've neglected to post from the last 6 months....

 

 

We had such an encouraging and fun visit from Grandpa and Grandma in June!

.... and from Granddad and Beth in July

... and visiting Ireland with Grandmomma in August!  We are so blessed with wonderful family.  Ireland was a quite a photographic trip, so here just a few....

This is a favorite!  Can you see Justice running under the rainbow to meet Brian coming in on the boat?

So beautiful

Back at home with one of our three pet turtles

Celebrating Eid al Adha with friends

Our neighbors tied their sheep outside our window while it was waiting to be slaughtered for the Eid

Our country has many 'hidden' canyons that are beautiful to hike through.  A dear friend came with us for this fun adventure.

Our neighbor upstairs loves to come down to play in our garden.

Christmas cookies!

 

Recent wanderings

I'm so behind in blogging, but I wanted to share some pictures from recent family days.  These first few are from a quiet 'forest' area not too far from home.  We were amazed to be there completely by ourselves, without hearing even one sound, except for a very faint call to prayer, and the sound of the wind.  What a contrast to every day life in our neighborhood, which is full of noises of cars beeping, kids playing outside, trucks with megaphones on the street selling fruits and various things, loud calls to prayer, the sound of a wrench whacking a gas bottle (to let you know that the gas truck is going by), fireworks on the weekends, neighbors talking, etc.  It was a wonderful break after a busy and tiring week.

 

These next ones are from a couple weeks ago when we visited a wetland reserve in the middle of the desert.  It is much smaller than it used to be, due to years of pumping water and bringing it into our city in order to have 'enough' water for the growing population of the city.  I put 'enough' in quotes because it is such a relative term.  In town we only have unlimited water one day a week.  We fill up our tanks on that day and then use that for the rest of the week.  We always have plenty but many others do not.  Anyway, although this wetland reserve is much smaller than it once was, it still is the only water around for miles and miles of surrounding desert.  It attracts many migrating birds.  We saw egrets, a bittern, bee eaters, hoopoes, gallinules, and others.  Justice really enjoyed using the 'venoculars.'

This evening's activity