We continued our regular activities, such as swim practice, Habitat for Humanity club, student council, AWANA, Friday school, drama rehearsals, set building, Girl Scouts, private swim lessons, our Wednesday night shawarmas at the pool, and Brooke began taking a ballet/jazz class. She also auditioned for a solo dance in the year-end recital show of Alice in Wonderland, and she was given the solo part of the Hare.
Bruce made a trip into Khobar to have some nice pants made for work that fit him, so I went as well and found a shoe repairman to fix some of my favorite sandals. I'm so happy I don't have to throw those shoes away now! Reese went to look for some party favors for her birthday party.
Reese began learning about the Periodic Table of Elements. Here she is using marshmallows to create the first ten atoms.
Brooke is making tortillas. They're way too expensive to buy at the commissary here, so we've been making our own.
Shadow wondered why she was on the floor.
Reese swam in her first swim meet of the year while Bruce worked it. Here she is with her friend, Baily (she's Kelcy's sister).
In mid-October, we celebrated Reese's 11th birthday. First we had our family celebration with gifts and a favorite dinner. We made these cupcakes to take to the kids at AWANA, but we had a few left over.
Look at all those presents!
Can you tell that Reese has always wanted a pillow pet?
A sweatshirt jacket from Target!
Brooke made a pinata all by herself for Reese's party this weekend. Didn't she do an amazing job?!
A backpack for her American Girl doll. Now she can take one of her American Girl dolls back to the US with her.
Reese planned to have a Haunted Hotel party since it was almost Halloween, and she found some cute ideas in her American Girl magazine. I had fun copying some monster cakes from her magazine.
Reese showed me how to make eyeball cookies.
We ordered Domino's Pizza to be delivered at 6:30 (but it arrived an hour early and Bruce had to go to the gate to get it because they couldn't let the driver on camp). I should've taken a picture of the pizza for you, because it was okay, but it definitely wasn't up to Domino's style. The pepperoni is beef pepperoni, by the way--pork is against the law.
Can you see the cobweb in the corner above the palm tree? Reese got the idea out of her magazine and made them out of yarn. Here are some of the girls after they played flashlight hide-n-seek in the park (it was really dark out there!)
After dinner the girls made cookies and decorated them. I gave them balls of dough and they were to put them together to make flowers or caterpillars but instead, some smashed their dough together and made all kinds of crazy things. You can see that Reese is making a flower.
Here you can see on the right that Micaela made a sword out of her cookie dough. Jayda (next to Brooke) made a giant pumpkin cookie.
And Grace poured so many sprinkles on her cookie, you couldn't see it anymore :)
Playing the blindfolded cotton ball game.
In bobbing for apples, some of the girls wanted to win so badly, they put their whole head in the bucket!
Bruce is ready for the pinata. He had to hold it while the girls tried to hit it.
Reese went first.
Then the youngest girl at the party... and I should have known to make Grace go last (remember the girl who cut off her finger and was in the park that afternoon?... and who couldn't go fast enough while water tubing?) because she whacked that pinata so hard, it broke open immediately and no one else got a turn! I love that girl--she's one tough little girl!
Then they made marshmallow structures.
And sang karaoke before bedtime.
And sang karaoke as soon as they woke up the next morning (even though they stayed up until 2am!)
They had pancakes for breakfast.
The next day we went to Brooke's Girl Scout Bridging & Silver Award ceremony at the Girl Scout house on camp. Brooke was one of four girls who earned their silver award. The projects are displayed here.
The girls decided to forego the traditional bridge and crossed this balancing beam as they bridged from Cadets to Seniors.
Then we had a potluck lunch.
Brooke is telling us what she did to raise awareness for safety with wild dogs on camp.
We had a little icing left over from Reese's cookie-making activity, so I made some more cookie dough and decided to get creative and make some cookies just for myself.
The next day we went to the Al Rushaid Village compound to swim while Jordan taught her last swim lessons. We loved going over there, but Jordan's schedule began to get too busy, and Brooke had to rehearse for her play and couldn't come with us any longer.
When we got home that evening, we celebrated Shadow's third birthday! (That makes three years that I've been free of cancer) We used the rest of the dough to make cookies in the shape of dog bones and decorated them and gave him a piece of each cookie and a brand-new squeaky toy from Wal-Mart.
He's so excited... he can't wait to get his teeth on that toy!
Dog bone cookies.
I thought you'd like to see some pictures of a pep rally at Jordan's school.
Jordan's school hosted a Battle of the Bands and she got to judge those auditioning to be in the show.
While Jordan was watching the Battle of the Bands with her school-mates, the rest of our family was watching the middle school production of an Alice in Wonderland musical at the theater on camp. Bruce and Brooke had built the sets for the play, so we were given free tickets to watch the show. Brooke was a good sport since she wasn't allowed to be in the play.
Here Reese has made some atoms out of edible playdough.
The weekend before Halloween, Reese was invited to join Grace and Katherine at the "Boo" Event on the baseball fields. All the kids dressed in their Halloween costumes and trick-or-treated from table to table and played games. Brooke hung out with her friends at various places on camp while the rest of us ate shawarmas at the pool with Bruce's friend, Jeff, and his family who was visiting from the U.S. After dinner, Jordan hung out with her friends at Angie's house, so we had the house to ourselves for the evening--it sure was quiet! All the Aramco kids were out because school was out for a week to celebrate the Eid holiday. Usually it's only for three days, but it fell in the week in a way that they gave the kids the whole week off school. We had all planned to fly home for the week, but Bruce and Jordan decided that they just wanted the time off, and didn't want to rush around in airports.
So, Brooke, Reese, and I flew to Atlanta the next evening. Brooke needed to see the orthodontist, and we were excited to be home and trick-or-treat on our golf cart again. I took this picture of the Dammam airport parking lot because there were soooo many cars that they didn't all fit in the parking structure. But everyone just parked in the Saudi way... just left the car wherever they could fit it. Here you can see cars parked up on this curb.
...and here you can see cars lining both sides of a main thoroughfare. We could barely squeeze our car between them all! No one got a parking ticket... it's acceptable here to do this. It was so full that Bruce couldn't park and had to drop us off instead of coming into the airport with us.
We flew from Dammam to Amsterdam, but the flights to the U.S. were full, so we flew all the way to Portland, Oregon to catch the one flight back to Atlanta. But while we were in the air, Portland had a delayed flight and put everyone on our flight to Atlanta. We didn't get on the flight to Atlanta, but instead got seats on the delayed flight to Minneapolis. We thought we were going to be stuck there and have to spend the night, but the flight to Atlanta was delayed just enough that we were able to catch it and take a taxi to our home around midnight! We traveled for 36 hours for an orthodontist appointment!
We spent three days resting and running errands and catching up with friends, and even carving pumpkins (and getting our golf cart fixed.) On the fourth day, we got hair cuts and had portraits taken. Here is Reese's 5th grade picture.
Here is Brooke's 8th grade picture.
Our photographer, Tony at Fayette Photo, is a friend, and since he liked this picture, he gave it to Brooke in black and white.
and then I took the girls trick-or-treating. Reese decorated matching fairy wings for her American Girl doll.
In order to maximize their candy consumption, they went afternoon-trick-or-treating with Grace and Wilson in our little downtown of Tyrone where the businesses hand out candy.
The firemen were having a good time watching all the kids.
This is our police station.
That evening, our golf cart was fixed and delivered at 6pm--just in time to trick-or-treat in the neighborhood behind our property. We took Grace and Wilson with us again, and I watched the four kids run from house to house up long, steep driveways, until they had no more energy and begged me to take them home. Brooke was the die-hard and didn't want to quit because she wanted to find the house that handed out king-size candy bars. In the end she did find a house (a different one,) and she got a king-size Heath bar!
Here the kids are sorting and trading their booty at 10pm.
We had a terrific time at home and it was a great way to end October. We just wish Jordan and Bruce could have been with us.
While they were Saudi, Jordan handed out candy at her friend, Angie's house. Jordan dressed up as Tiger Lily and Danielle, as Peter Pan.
Bruce was invited to join his buddy, Harry, but he chose to stay home. Only one group of kids came to our door... a group of Arab kids that didn't even have costumes on. They didn't understand the whole Halloween concept, but they wanted some candy.
It's December 13th, now, and the girls and I are heading to the U.S. tonight for Christmas, so feel free to call us in Tyrone soon!
- Pattie -
