About Us

We left the US to live in the Middle East in 2005 with one child and 10 suitcases. We've been here for over 5 years now and we have three children, each born on a different continent!
Welcome to our Blog! This is where we try to keep everyone up to date with news, stories and pictures from our lives! More about us...

Kenzy

Kenzy
2 years old!

Josiah

Josiah
4 Years

Landon

Landon
6 years old! First Grader!

Yvonne

Yvonne
Yvonne & Kenzy

Tim

Tim
Scuba Instructor Dad

The Camel

The Camel
Whaddup?

our first Christmas overseas...

Posted by Tim 29 December 2005 0 comments

well christmas is over and all in all it went pretty well.

from time to time i will be pretty honest with y'all and this is one of those times (it's good to vent and not worry about who is reading it). Christmas was kinda hard. a few days before Christmas, yvonne and i got word that one of our good friends in dallas died of a heart attack. we are still overcoming that sadness... but hey... we do not greive like the rest, who have no hope (52/4/13-14). you can be thinking us often because the friend who died was buying our condo and car. we trust it will all work out for good. we of course missed family at Christmas too. we have friends here we spent it with but nothing makes up for mama's cookin' and love... and i guess you could say that a "white christmas" was out of the question... haha.
well nothing chears up our hearts like landon and i hope these pics will do the same for you!





































































yvonne went to the coiffeur recenlty and this was the outcome... she tamed it a little once she got home but we needed a picture for posterity.

fetlah

Posted by Tim 24 December 2005 0 comments

yvonne and i went to the coiffure this morning... they borrowed the hair dresser word from french. well i went in the gents side and she went to the ladies side. while she was enjoying her shampoo, color treatment, and then style (for 21 dollars i might add), i was next door getting my haircut and getting fetlah.

everything was great. i got a good haircut, a shampoo, a great super-close shave.... and then the fetlah. so what it is is this: the guy takes a really long piece of dental floss type string and puts one end in between his teeth and then makes an intricate web of strings around his fingers. he then pulls it tight using his teeth so that all the little web holes close up... around the excess hairs on your face which rips them out with excrutiating force. my eyes were watering and on the verge of forming tears... especially when he did it around my ears. OUCH! after the fetlah and him trimming my nose hair, i feel all groomed up!

come on out and visit and i'll take you to the coiffure! haha

hitching a ride with dad to school...

Posted by Tim 21 December 2005 0 comments

we just love this picture. it was actually taken by yvonne from the taxi cab window the other day. it isn't everyday that you see a little girl, with a backpack, riding a camel around with her baba (daddy).











this one is fun too but it just ain't the same as the one above. this is when we were driving around town. we actually almost hit some goats/sheep the other day in our taxi. we were mere inches from having lamb kebabs that night! haha!

out for a night on the town...

Posted by Tim 18 December 2005 0 comments

it was date time and so we got a sitter and skeedadled for a nice night and some Christmas fun.

it was a fun night. here is where we went...

1. Our first stop was the space needley type tower thingy in our city. it is about 613 feet high. so we went up there and walked around and looked at our city by night.










2. After seeing spectacular views and enjoying that we went back down and got in a horse and carriage and toured the downtown area on the way to our restaurant for dinner...









3. Johnny Carinos baby! it was definetely nice to have a taste of home again. of course the dish we always get has bacon and therefore didn't taste quite the same with beef bacon... these people don't know what they're missing! It was quite a special treat... oh and did i mention that this restaurant that has both chili's and johnny carino's in it is on a boat docked on the river here?

oh don't ask about the duck and the bear. they were the greeters on the bridge onto the boat. i have no idea what in the world they were supposed to be... some pseudo-daffy and poo-imposter? or maybe they were just a duck and a bear. who knows... it was fun to get a picture taken with them nonetheless.


4. i got us some tickets to the opera house here for an international Christmas show. it had the symphony orchestra, the celebration choir and the opera company doing carols and other Christmas music. we ran into our neighbors there too... it was crazy. we saw the wife lighting up a cigarette (nearly everyone smokes here) in front of a no smoking sign inside the opera house lobby. everyone was doing it so no big deal i guess.
This was a lot of fun and was a good part of helping us feel like it really is Christmas time!

meet the guys who enjoyed my camera...

Posted by Tim 17 December 2005 0 comments

so here's the story...

we went down to a book fair downtown the other day. once we got home yvonne did her quick breathing in thingy (you know the kind you do when you're really freaked out!) because she realized she left her purse in our cab. there was no money in the purse but there was a digital camera and a cell phone. so i called the cell phone over and over and over and over and they finally picked up when i was on my way to Landon's daycare to make sure we hadn't left it there. i got my neighbor to talk to the guy because i didn't understand a lick he was saying. it turns out that the next patron that got into the cab we were in took the purse out of the cab. so blah blah blah back and forth and my neighbor gives him directions and says he will be here in 40 minutes.

well pushing two hours later... the guy shows up with the purse with all things intact and in place. i was going to give him a reward because he brought it back but he told me he wanted 5 times what i had handed him (and what my neighbor said was sufficient). well we got our stuff back and it wasn't that expensive so we are quite happy regardless.

well the title of the entry has to come into play at one point or another... they took pictures with my camera while they had it. enjoy...

















































we be christmassy and all that...

Posted by Tim 14 December 2005 0 comments

I was dispatched today, under formal decree of Madame Tim (she refers to herself as Mrs. Tim now as to associate herself with me to others and to show that she is an honorable woman), to acquire a Christmas tree here. We had bought a fake one about a week ago but it was flippin' huge... i mean 'ginormous'! so we returned it and today i was commissioned and ordered to acquire a new one... a real one. so i went and got a cedary type shubbery (i should have bought two and then made a nice little path between them... sorry for the lame monty python and the holy grail quotation).

i really one upped her expectations because they had wreaths for 2.50 but I paid a whole extra dollar to have it with decorations on it. i also bought a pot for the tree to sit in, 12 pinecones and two poinsettias. all in all i dropped about $26 which made me happy... and all this great festiveness warmed yvonne's heart a lot. we also just bought a Christmas album off of iTunes with an iTunes gift certificate my mom gave me. we're just about all decked out and ready for Christmas now!

here are some pics...











































Merry Christmas y'all!

dinner with the neighbors

Posted by Tim 10 December 2005 0 comments

so i was walking up the 4 fights of stairs today and i met one of our neighbors that I had never seen before. she was very nice to me and said that she wanted to me to drop by anytime and bring my wife and son.
so on our way out of the house around 5pm, we dropped by to say hello. they were eating dinner it turned out and they would not accept no as an answer when they asked us to join them... so we ate, talked in arabic for a good bit (they knew we were studying so they were helping us), had some tea, and talked a good bit more.

at one point moustafa said to me, "Tim, I would like to ask you a question... we watch american movies and we love them. they are very popular here and america pioneered movies. is america like the movies?"... to which i immediately exclaimed, "no! not at all. we are often ashamed of our movies." because i was almost sure he was referring to the moral side of things (sex, drugs, etc.). he said, "so the police there do not chase people through the streets shooting windows and destroying buildings?" i sorta giggled and told him that never really happens and that it is hollywood and done for pure entertainement.

it was fun.

santa even visits here...

Posted by Tim 08 December 2005 0 comments

here is a pic from a recent Christmas bazaar we went to. we got some pretty cute stuff there but nothing is as cute as my boy with the ol' man. i love the background... very middle eastern...

hey grandmas... this is big enough to click on, right click and save to file and then send to sam's club for hard copies if you want to.

tim

so i bought this george foreman grill before we left and i packed it up to come with us. well to make a long story short... it broke in transit. it still sorta works but the base is all shattered and i just burnt my hand like 3 times. argh!

if you know anyone coming this way have them bring me a george foreman grill GRP99 unit for me. its the one with the built in timer and temperature gauge.

i'm venting :)

amoebalicious

Posted by Tim 07 December 2005 0 comments

well... we have been told that we are being indoctrinated early. we have all caught some little friends called amoebas.













it's kinda different to find out about why you're sick here.

in America you...

  1. go to the doctor
  2. wait forever in the waiting room for them to call your name
  3. wait forever in the patient room for the doctor to make his way to you
  4. tell the doctor everything that is wrong with you
  5. he'll take a sample of some sort
  6. pay a co-pay and maybe a little extra for the lab work
  7. deal with insurance
  8. the doctor will have the lab pick up the samples
  9. the lab will do the work (give them a day... maybe two) for them to get back to the doctor
  10. nurse will call your house and leave a message because you weren't there because you had no way to know when they were going to be calling
  11. call the doctor back and maybe... just maybe... he'll come to the phone and explain it to you
  12. get the doctor to call in a prescription
  13. go pick up the prescription
  14. deal with insurance
in our area...
  1. nix the doctor and take your own stinking stool sample to the local medical lab
  2. pay $3.50
  3. call them 4-6 hours later and know what's going on
  4. call the pharmacy and have them deliver your prescription to your house.
why couldn't it be this easy back home?


smellin' sweet...

Posted by Tim 01 December 2005 0 comments

we got this lovely bouquet today. it is a common thing to buy fresh flowers every week here. the guy we bought them from was really nice and helpful and we will most likely go to him for our flowers from now on. this heavenly arrangement set me back a whole $4.35.

brownie points just went on sale baby!

Search Our Blog

Blog Archive

Search Posts by Label