Golf tournament at our home club

The HSBC Golf Championship came and went.  I think I watched more of the golf on TV than I did when we were actually at the golf club!  I took Charlie on Thursday when big brother Graham was at school.  We watched Rory McIlroy tee-off on the 1st hole and Charlie kept saying "He's going to hit it into the water".  Too funny! Hopefully Rory didn't hear that, although there wasn't any water trouble on the 1st hole. Phew! But that was that... with the thought of taking Charlie out onto the golf course.
So instead, we opted to visit The Village instead.  Charlie loved digging in the sand and burying his bulldozer. We actually lost the toy in the sand for a little bit!

There was camel-riding and I had a chance to hold a falcon.

And fun with photo-taking:

I think Bobby and Graham had more fun later on that day with photo-taking!

The boys enjoyed putt-putt:

Charlie couldn't decide lefty or righty:

Or maybe he thought it might work if he gets down lower to the ball:

Graham like this other one instead:

Trying to get the ball out of the pipe!

I didn't get to see Kaymer this week in person. But poor fella - this is probably exactly how he felt about the golf tournament by the time he got to the last hole.  Kaymer had a 6-shot lead heading into Sunday and by the 5th hole, he had a 10-shot lead!  Just shows you that anything can happen in golf. ANYTHING! The Frenchman that won by one shot - Gary Stahl was ranked 357 in the world!

Anyhow, the other reason why we watched more golf at home was because Charlie had croup late Friday night!  A little after midnight on Friday, Bobby and I were still awake when we heard a strange noise. We thought it was the neighbors fooling around in the hallway but when I went to check, it was Charlie coughing! Gosh, it did not sound human at all! Now I know what they mean by "sounding like a seal barking".  Bob's first thought was whooping cough although both boys are vaccinated for that. Once we were able to see the doctor (around 1:30am), it was diagnosed as croup.  Charlie had a shot of steroids in the bum (OUCH!) and a treatment with the nebulizer and was sent home, already feeling and sounding better.  And we let Charlie pick out his own nebulizer. Too cute!

Thankfully he's been quite good about using it. It's Day 3 now and just one last treatment tonight. He's recovered nicely and now just has a runny/stuffy nose. Somehow he has finally learned to blow his nose too! Now if he'll only learn to poop in the potty! He's actually peeing standing up now. Ah... the joys of potty training!

And oh, we were suppose to go to a birthday party on Saturday, so that idea was completely scrapped. I had Graham write the birthday note on the present. He's doing better with his writing:

Graham did get a little impatient once he got to signing off Charlie's name, so I had to help him with that.  Obviously there is no "Q" in Charlie's name!

Digging for dinosaur fossils

So it's not exactly what you think. Daddy figured this would be fun for the boys, except it was Mommy that had to do it with them!

And off to work!

What a mess!

Although, pretty cool I have to say.

We still have some dinosaurs and clay left.  We'll save it for another day!

Finally, a legal driver in the UAE

I finally went out to get my local driver's license today. I've been using my US license and supposedly that's illegal once you have your residence visa. Who knew! Anyhow, the whole process probably only took about 20 min where they processed my paperwork, took my picture and then, printed my license. Success!

But... it took me probably 45 min to get to the Driver's License Dept from the house because of morning commuter traffic. Once there, they said I had to get my documents translated into Arabic (seriously??!). So... back into the car and 20 minutes later to get to the street where the translator was. But then I couldn't find it so it was another 15 minutes backtracking. Love how they use landmarks on their business cards! Once I found my landmark, I figured it was just best to find a parking spot.  Well, it probably took 20-25 minutes just trying to find a spot! And I think I was actually quite lucky!

After parking, it was time to search for the translator and voila, just as I started walking towards the general direction of where it might be, there is was! I had driven by it twice without even realizing it!  I could have just double parked.  Anyhow, 100 dhs later, it was back into the car and back to the Driver's License Dept. Thankfully, the "Ladies Only" line was only 5 people deep.  And thankfully I didn't have to take the driving test.  Supposedly with a Malaysian passport, you are required to do so but since I have my US driver's license I was just able to skip that. Phew! 200 dhs later, I'm back in the car driving home.

Yet another interesting day in the city.  I meant to drop by the Municipality office but figured I would save that for another day. There's some landscaping blocking the view of our exit by the apartment complex. We'll see how that goes. Until next time Abu Dhabi!

New bicycle and helmets

We decided to let the boys use the scooter outdoors and finally caved in and bought a new bike.  The seat is adjustable with a quick release handle. Hopefully the handle won't get too loose too quickly as we have been having to adjust it each time Graham or Charlie gets on as they are obviously of different heights.

And thankfully the boys have been open about using their new helmets.  Well, so far we haven't had a chance to use them outdoors yet but at least they are getting comfortable with it:

Charlie has been wanting to wear it just because. He has even worn it while he was on the potty!

Hopefully no major injuries when we hit the road!

At the movies

We decided to go watch a movie last weekend with the boys at the new mall.  But first, some lunch and guess what I saw at the food court. I'm SO excited! Yummy yummy!

When we walked into the movie theater, it was just us.  And it was a rather small theater - probably only 50 seats. But then it started to fill up with people from all other countries - we heard Spanish, Indian, one other one that I didn't recognize, English, and Arabic.

Charlie really loved the pop-corn! He probably ate through more than half of it.

The movie/cartoon was excellent, by the way. It was called Big Hero 6 - definitely a must-buy DVD! The boys behaved great and with the buy-one-get-one-free ticket with our credit card, we will definitely be going back to the movies with the kids :-)

Happy 8th Wedding Anniversary!

8 years... sometimes it feels like it's been 18 years! Ha ha... but in a good way :-)

No date night tonight as Charlie has school tomorrow morning, so we decided to go to one of our favorite places - a Chinese restaurant located in a bowling alley. Don't ask me why it's in a bowling alley! Graham almost always walks out upset/crying because he wants to go bowling. I told him that perhaps on his birthday we'll have his party there.

By the way, dinner was awesome tonight!  Charlie was a bit more adventurous with the food compared to Graham:

Thumbs up from Charlie!

Actually, Charlie even tried some lychee this afternoon. The local supermarkets carry some of the same variety of fruits here as in Malaysia, which is great for me! Graham had no interest whatsoever though and walked out of the kitchen. Ha!  I suppose the fruit does look a bit... weird?!

Charlie did give me quite the face when he tasted it but then he said "It's yummy!"

And speaking of Malaysia, there were two other Malaysians having dinner at the restaurant tonight too.  Small world!  At the end of the meal, I told Bobby... "Happy belly, happy wife. Happy wife, happy life!" :-D

Despite all the white hair and wrinkles you and your kids are giving me, I love you with all my heart. Hugs and kisses, honey!

Tennis - Super 6

I don't play tennis but I do actually love watching it on TV, especially when the big names are playing. Well, here was my chance to catch them live in action!  The "usual suspects" - Nadal, Murray, Djockovic (no Federer though) were here last weekend at the Super 6 just 15 minutes away from the house!

The boys were distracted by the nearby playground (of course!)

Obviously having fun!

And even more fun with the bouncy house!

What is it with kids and slides?

And of course, they have to go back up the same way they came down!

We did catch a glimpse of Wawrinka at the practice court:

And then, I got distracted with the moon:

Testing out the zoom lens on my camera :-)

Since we could not get tickets into the game, we opted to hang out by the field.  It was rather close to the (interesting) loo but thankfully it didn't smell!

Here was our view:

The boys obviously just wanted to keep playing. Thank goodness for those bright yellow shirts!

Looks like this was the closest I would get to Nadal:

And to Murray:

Dinner time!

The tickets were rather expensive for Day 2 (out of 3) so even if it wasn't sold out, I don't think we would have paid for tickets.  We should have made it out the first day as there was a Family Day package. Well, we'll know that for next year!  In any case, at least we caught a nice sunset:

And the moon again, of course!

Looks so close, yet so far!

The many faces of Charlie

Here are some pics of Charlie taken recently: 

 Charlie - concerned about the fog

 Charlie - trying out Graham's slippers and being very silly about it

And finally, Charlie goofing around!

By the way, Charlie is getting really good at the scooter!

Gotta love that butt crack too!  He he... :-)

Happy New Year!

Wow... Happy 2015!  Where did 2014 go?!?  We sure had a lot going on last year, so hopefully this year will be a nice relaxing one. (Right, honey??? ;-)

As usual, Bobby and I didn't stay up until midnight for the countdown to New Year.  We called it a night at 11pm. Close enough, I guess! And the next day, Graham was up early as usual and then, the TV remote disappeared!  You then realize how much TV is actually part of your life. So... with the weather being quite nice outside, we opted to read on the balcony.

We need to do this more often!  We also need to get some more Legos for the boys.  There are some really neat ones for the kids:

Charlie of course loves these smaller sized Legos too compared to the larger Duplo ones. Thankfully Graham loves playing with either one.

By the way, right before the New Year I decided to buy date-flavored camel milk.  It was actually pretty good, but rather sweet to my liking. Perhaps there are other different flavors to try this year :-)

As for New Year resolutions, I suppose the usual - eat better and exercise more :-) And hope to play in Malaysia again this year!