We are on our way...

Well almost on our way. It is 1 AM my time and I am not sleeping. I never sleep much the night before a trip. I guess I keep thinking about everything and making sure I haven't forgot anything. It isn't just the packing that takes time for a trip, it is getting your house in order. I can not stand to leave a dirty house, nor any dirty clothes when I leave. We have all of the suitcases packed and we each only have one. Well, except Lance, he has two. One suitcase and one hanging bag. I think we did pretty good on keeping the load light. I feel like my Memaw when she goes to stay with my Uncle Tim for a month. She always packs her suitcase halfway because she shops for clothes while she is there and she wants to have room in her suitcase to bring it home. I definately want to have plenty of room to bring things home.

Evelyn's class Holiday party was sooo excellent today. The kids just absolutely loved decorating the ginger bread house. Unfortunately, my camera battery was dead so I took pictures with my phone. I am not sure how to get the pictures onto the computer from my phone, so stay turned for them.

9 Hours until take off....Houston here we come....

2010-12-15

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This is a collection of what we have been doing the past week. The following blog will explain it all. Enjoy...

We are getting ready....

Let's see...where to began. This past weekend was pretty good except I got Evelyn's stomach virus. Yuck. So I was a little slow getting moving on Friday. Infact we all hung out and relaxed most of the day. In the evening, though we left and went into the city for supper and to look at the lights at night. I feels like Christmas with all of the lights here, even thought they do not celebrate it. The city is full of lights from the National Day.

Saturday we went to the school for Breakfast with Santa. Evelyn had a great time playng with all of her friends on the playground. Ofcourse our first thing on the aggenda was to see the big guy himself. Evelyn was great. She told him exactly what she wanted for Christmas and that she was going to be in Texas. Camille...well...she screamed. She was even shaking, she was so scared. Poor thing. The girls got a picture with Santa and then we all got together and took a family photo with Santa. Camille is crying in both...well it is what it is. After breakfast with Santa we went to my dear friend's appartment (Kim). They have not been in the appartment for long because they have been trying to sort out maintenance problems since August. Well it was well worth the wait. I think they most have the best view in the entire city. It is a lovely appartment and we hung out there the rest of the day visiting with good friends. Not to mention eating some great chinese food.

Sunday, Evelyn woke up with a cold and a cough so I kept her home from school. As well as Monday. Well, I was on my way to bring Evelyn to school on Monday when she just coughed and coughed all the way, so I did not bring her. Instead the girls and I went to the corniche and had a breakfast picnic by the water. It was so nice. Then we did a little shopping and headed home for rest and relaxation. Monday night Evelyn took a nice warm shower, rubbed down with vicks, and some cold medicine...the next morning she was a new person.

Sunday night was Lance's company Holiday party. We had a lovely time. I really enjoyed meeting everyone, their spouces, and children. We are so lucky that Lance works with such a nice group of people, they treat us like family. The food was excellent and I made the table decorations. Everything turned out great.

Tuesday Camille woke with the same cold and running a fever. I took her to the pedi and he told me to do exactly what I was doing...tylenol and saline nasal spray. Today she is doing much better. I think everyone is going to be OK by the time we fly out. OH, Lance has the cold too.

The rest of the time this week I have been getting things ready for us to leave. Someone is coming to our house to take care of Ruffles and Fraizer...I hope they are going to be OK. I have been packing suitcases and getting the house in order. The hole in our backyard was finially filled back up yesterday after 3 weeks. So far it appears the work they did was successful. Evelyn had a field trip yesterday to the Heritage Village and they had a great time. I didn't go because I am going to leave Camille with a babysitter today so I can stay with Evelyn at school for her party and activities.

We have lots of great things planned for today for Evelyn's Holiday party. We are going to decorate a giant gingerbread house with candy (I made the house out of cardboard), make reindeer candycanes, and decorated gingerbread men. The eveyone is bringing a pot luck dish specific to their herritage at the end of the day. I was planning on bringing meatballs, but when I started to cook them last night, they just fell apart. It turned into one giant meatball. OK...plan B...going to the deli this Am and getting something from there to bring.

We are ready to head home for the Holidays...."I'll be home for Christmas"... Just pray that Chicago weather cooraporates, that we can get in and get out. Until then....

ONE MORE WEEK

That is right just one week away and we will be on our way to see all of you. We just can not wait.

Thursday, Lance had a board meeting that he has been preparing for for about a month now. I am very proud to say that it went very well. In fact the CEO told me last night how impressed he was with Lance's speaking skills. He didn't have to tell me that. The board was pleased with Lance and his vision of what to do next year with the company. Lance is very happy and now can relax that it is behind him. Now he can concentrate on coming home for the holidays.

Last night Lance and I attended the Almonsori 33 years anniversary party. You see Almonsori and Nalco (who Lance works for) combine in a joint venture to form Emmochem, the company Lance works with in Abu Dhabi. It was a very interesting party to say the least. It was set outside along the water which was beautiful. Everyone and I mean everyone who works for almonsori was there. First they served dinner buffet style and then dessert the same. Then the CEO of the company started the show. Boy was it ever a show. Of course they handed out rewards for the employee of the year, etc. But that wasn't all. Throughout the evening employees of almonsori would but on various performances for the audience. Apparently, that is what is custom for this company, the employees put on a talent show and at the end of the night everyone votes on the best act. I will have to say that Lance and I did enjoy one of the acts, the CEO of the company (who is from Yemen), the owner of the company Mr. Almonsori himself (emiratie), and a coon ass from Louisiana sang "Down on the Bayou". I promise, I am not lying. The suprising part was the emiratie knew all of the words. Too funny. This party did give me the chance to meet some very important and not to mention very wealth people. I was glad to put a face to the names of people when Lance talks about them. Altogether, we had a very entertaining night.

Water Issues

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After I wrote the blog following this one, I decided to take some pics of the maintence going on in our backyard or what they call garden. I know I have mentioned before our ongoing problems with our water. Sometime our water will just not work. Meaning when you turn on the tap nothing comes out. That means no shower, toilet flushing, even washing hands. It is very bothersom, esp when Lance is trying to get ready to go to work. What causes this problem? Well our water has to be pumped into our house and the underground hole were the pump lives gets flooded. Which inturn the pump gets wet and then shorts out. When this happens, someone has to come and pump out the water and then they blow the pump dry. Then we have water again. Like I said this has been going on and on and on and on and on. Infact two weeks ago we lost water 3 times in 2 days. I had enough, so I went up to the service office. So since then, they started working to fix the leak problem that causes my pump house to flood. There has been a huge hole in the back for the past week and 1/2 were these men come occasionaly to work on our problem. I think, but not going to get my hopes up, that they will finish today. The only problem now is were the durt that they dug up has been laying for the past 1 1/2 week, my grass is underneath and is now dead. We'll tackle that problem when we get there. So these pictures were just taken of two men working to "water proof" my pump house in our backyard/garden.

2010 Delcambre Abu Dhabi Christmas

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We had a great week last week. Plans are in the making for Evelyn's school Christmas party and Lance's work christmas party. Both I am working on. Imagine that. I hope you enjoy the pictures of the house decorated. It is way less than what we are used to doing for the holidays, but we decided to only bring the minimal here and leave the rest in storage. 20 boxes went to storage to be exact. To be honest it is really nice not to have to do alllll of that decorating. We have really enjoyed our tree and decorations.

Last Thursday was National day here. The day 39 years ago the UAE became a country. You would not believe how patriot these people are here. In the pictures above I put some pics of my neighbors car. Lots of people decorate their vehicles for the day. That night they ride around the city honking, etc. They even spray some kind of foam spray and silly string on eveyone. There was also a big fireworks show on the corniche. We did see some extreme cars that day. One had a giant teddy bear on top, some covered completely with feather boas in the nations colors, etc. We did not join in the festivities on the island that night because we heard it was too wild and Lance had lots of work to do anyhow. We did join a party at the club house and it was very nice. The locals brought food for everyone to tast and the kids played games.

We had a 4 day weekend this weekend. Thursday was National Day, Friday and Saturday the weekend, and Sunday was a muslim religious day. Lance worked at home most of the weekend while the girls and I hung out. Evelyn played with the neighborhood kids mostly. Lance is preparing for his end of the year board meeting and trying to get all of the reports together. Yesterday, however, (saturday) we went to Dubai. We went to a really nice souk to do some Christmas shopping and then we went to one of lance's co-workers home for BBQ. We had a great time. They have two girls and the kids played soo good. They have a very nice house with a pool and they can see the burj khalifa from their house (tallest building in the world) as well as the sailboat hotel that I can not remember the name of.

So that brings us to today. Evelyn has the day off and so did Lance, but he opted to go to work so he could work on the end of the year stuff. The girls and I are hanging out while some workers are repairing our water pump issue in the back. We are going to go sign Evelyn up for dance today and that will start when we get back from the holidays. Plus we are going grocery shopping. Nothing too excitting. Dad, I wished you were here to see what they are doing in our backyard. They have some torch thing. I have no idea what they are doing. I will have to take pics for you.

We are beyond excitted to be going home soon. 12 days from today to be exact. We just can not wait.

WHAT IS DIFFERENT IN ABU DHABI: Well I have been pleasently supprised how their is lots of Christmas here. Esp since it is a primarily muslim country. You can even buy a real tree and I saw real poinsettas at the store yesterday. Lots of the hotels have christmas tree lightings and concerts as well. We are going to see santa next weekend at the school's Breakfast with Santa event.