A great visit from the Punchers

It was a last minute visit from some friends in the UK and I'm so glad they were able to make it!  We really enjoyed having them around especially when they agreed to stay over at our place too.  The boys were overjoyed!  They had someone to do arts and crafts with them:

Graham and Charlie especially loved playing with Izzy! :-)

Having guests also meant going out to fun places like the new Glow-in-the-dark putt-putt:

At first, everyone took turns on the same hole:

But after a couple of holes, everyone just sort of scattered.  It was nice that there was no one else around!

 There were some interesting holes with humps and bumps and swirls:

A little tricky for Charlie at times:

The boys did enjoy watching their golf balls roll around:

After not finding the 19th hole, Graham started investigating how some of the mechanisms worked:

And he also liked playing the hole backwards instead - trying to put the ball the wrong way into tubes, for example:

At times, some of the golf balls got stuck.  We knew who would take care of that :-)

Did I mention how tricky and quite dangerous some of these holes can get??!

Ahhh... time for a break!

Ok, just kidding.  I meant a coffee break.  Yummy roti (buns) with nutella!

Charlie, like Mommy, prefers the bread plain:

It's funny how even kids love taking selfies!

One more hug during dinner before leaving the next day:

I'm glad the boys got the "Play with phone" out of their system on the last night:

Good times!

Thank you Punchers for coming over.  Please visit us again soon!  In the meantime, the boys are back to doing what they do best - watching TV on the couch!

And recycling...!  I finally managed to get Graham to do this for me :-)

Now, if the boys are only old enough to go do the groceries at the new supermarket that opened up downstairs!

Fun at Fun Works

Since we still had some credit left from our last visit to Fun Works at the mall, we decided the boys could go to another section of Fun Works before school started again.  It was a little bit more expensive but I think Graham enjoyed it more than Charlie, especially the video-gaming part. He got to be part of the video game!

Graham got to practice his skills of throwing fire balls, using his strength, and also using mind control to defeat his nemesis.  Wait... I think he's already pretty good with the mind control thing on Bobby and me!

Charlie was not too interested in creating his own avatar, but once he saw his brother playing IN the video game, he wanted in as well.  Once that was over, it was time to decorate cup-cakes and Charlie decided to opt out again.  We are definitely not getting our money's worth in this place!

After cupcake decorating and shopping in the grocery store, an attendant finally got us into the car workshop.  I suppose that was one bad thing playing on a not-so-busy day - it didn't seem like they had enough attendants for all the workshops!
Well, Charlie finally got excited about the car workshop.  They boys got to build their own cars out of legos and race it down the track:

Charlie was so happy that his car won!  A week later and he is still talking about it!

Then, they got to "drive".  The attendant is actually controlling the car remotely with his hand that's out the window.  The boys obviously did not know that!

I'm glad Charlie was being a nice little brother and sharing the wheel with Graham:

A fun day overall but I still prefer the other enclosed play area where the boys got to climb and slide. Although with Graham, he still talks about wanting to fight Dr. Dark!

Recent happenings in Abu Dhabi

The Mythbusters were in town recently.  We figured it might be a little over the head for Charlie so Bobby took Graham to see it live.  Too cool!

And speaking of too cool, look at the picture that Graham drew of me. Ha ha! Love the awesome hair-do and the heart balloon :-)

In the meantime, we have also added a hopscotch to our little back section of the apartment.  The boys were jumping around when I was trying to put it together but unfortunately, that excitement sort of faded after a little while. Perhaps we'll have to revisit that again when Charlie gets a little bit better at hopping on one foot:

Charlie??? Where is Charlie??? Woooooooo.OOOOoooo....!!!

Oh, there he is!

Charlie received another birthday gift in the mail recently.  Thanks to some lovely friends in the UK! The package took a little longer compared to Graham's package that they had sent back in May. So I was starting to get worried, but when it finally arrived after 2 weeks of being posted. Charlie was so happy! And so was Graham because that meant another toy for Graham too (as he gives Charlie a kiss).

This little wooden dragon was the reason for the delay. For whatever reason, customs decided that they needed to open the package.  I still don't understand why!

I finally got tired of looking at all that sand off our balconies:

I decided to clean 2 balconies in one morning and crazy enough, I actually got sun-burnt!

Look at all that yucky sand and that's just from one balcony!  I'm definitely not going to miss the sand and dust around here when we leave Abu Dhabi!

In the meantime, I'm going to contemplate about whether I'm going to fix this little side table.  It was the perfect little table for our home phone and modem until of course the boys kept running into it or banging a ball against it.

This little table is probably my biggest disappointment with Ikea.  I suppose it also says "You get what you pay for!"  So I guess I'll continue contemplating... like Graham perhaps, who is in deep thought after dinner:

These kids can practically sleep anywhere when they are tired! :-)

Random pics of the week

We haven't been doing too much lately. Just staying home mostly as the temperature outside is still quite unbearable during the day! So let's see... where should we start:

Charlie finally finished the last bit of his birthday muffins:

And speaking of eating, Charlie loves watermelon! I wonder if it has anything to do with my cravings for watermelon when I was pregnant with him:

By the way, you can never assume that a watermelon is seedless (perhaps at least not in this neighborhood!).  Gosh, it took me forever to de-seed this baby watermelon because the seeds were so small as well.

As the weather is so warm, the boys love the occasional homemade ice-pop as well.  Charlie makes the funniest sounds when he's eating these ice-pops. Ha ha!

Back to playtime - Graham and Charlie loves playing on the Leap pad or tablet.  It seems we just can't get away from technology these days, as long as it's off during meal times!

We had a little project on building some bowling pins out of recycled water bottles. That was fun (but noisy!):

And Graham found another use for our fan when they came home with a couple of balloons from a restaurant.  Clever boy!

And speaking of clever, I thought this was quite the drawing he made. We were watching a TV show and they were building the Da Vince tank and coincidentally, we also have a pop-up book of Da Vinci's machines that we had picked up on our trip to Italy.

Not too shabby! And here's Graham attempt on a stop-watch:

Baby steps, I suppose!  If he was only as enthusiastic about doing some homework for me.  One day, I had assigned some math for him but had to step away to tuck Charlie in for his nap.  When Charlie finally fell asleep, I walked by Graham's room and discovered this.  He definitely has the "Lee" sleeping-genes in him!

Anyhow, while the boys were napping I figured this would be my chance to try out the biscotti recipe.  I have had a craving for them since our trip to Italy.  Gosh, the dough is so sticky!

I put cranberries in them.  No almonds though since I was going to pack them for a breakfast playdate.  They weren't too sweet but I think they needed to crisp just a little bit more next time:

Well, back to play!  The boys get quite imaginative at home, but that comes at a price of a messy living room.  They obviously had to dump out ALL the toys out of the bins to be able to stack them like that. Grrr...!!!

Why can't they just run around the living room?  Oh wait, they already do that - Charlie that is, as he does his kung fu sound effects:

By the way, Charlie finally got the "Interrupting Cow - Knock, knock" joke.  Too cute!

And also cute was meeting Mr. Broccoli at IKEA!  Charlie was too afraid to stand next to him.

And perhaps this was semi-cute.  This was Bobby last week when we were playing golf.  It was 115F when we got done!

Oh, what's that??? Mommy 1 up! :-)  Looks like that new swing is working!

Yes, nothing like practicing golf at night with the boys!