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?

that's right... i'm delicious!

Posted by Tim 31 January 2006 0 comments

so i was talking... or as i say sometimes... attempting to talk to a national here earlier today. we got out the greetings, the how's your family, the let's get together... then at the end she said, "enta lahzeez" which literally means, "you're delicious!" so in making sure i heard her right i repeated what i heard with my tone going up at the end to make it a question. she then said, "enta zukhar" which literally means, "you're sugar" and then i understood that she was saying i was sweet.

i guess i was wondering why she didn't just say, "enta helowah" which literally means... "you're sweet"... but i guess saying it like that means i'm really really sweet... down right delicious!!!

my first minibus experience

Posted by Tim 23 January 2006 0 comments

so i wanted to get some tickets to a big football game here.

so i took a microbus... which is basically a beat down tattered old VW microbus. they drive by yelling where they are going and you wave them down if you're interested. to ride to their final destination costs about 9 cents in US money, which is quite a deal if i may say so myself. one i got to the first destination i had to switch microbuses and then go to the metro stop. so all in all, my trip downtown (2 microbuses and 2 subways each way) cost about 65 cents total.

'twas fun indeed.

my mom had better be impressed...

Posted by Tim 20 January 2006 0 comments

check out my homework maw! i didn't get thrashed by the teacher either... my sentences actually were coherant! yay!

having a ball...

Posted by Tim 19 January 2006 0 comments

I would say that Landon and his friend, Lee Anna, are both pretty happy about this new toy we got Landon.

It has got to be really hard to get flippin' cuter than these two are!
They're having a ball... no pun intended.

tim

so yvonne's birthday was last weekend and we got a handful of e-cards from friends around the world to commemorate her big day. today i got another e-card from some friends. here i was thinking, "aww how sweet that the remembered yvonne's birthday!"

so i click the link with yvonne there and the card loads and after playing a little while with the interactive hoops and yo-yo card... and... here is what the card said,

Dear Landon,
We miss you lots!
Love, Hudson and Caroline!

haha... he is 16 months old!

well i guess i'm off to forge a card from my son to their kids too.

DWP... driving while photographing...

Posted by Tim 16 January 2006 0 comments

we were driving down a *busy* street tonight with 4 of us adults (5 if you count the taxi driver) and 2 kiddos in the car. i was riding in the front and was holding landon in my lap. he played with the taxi driver's stuff for a while, broke a something rather that was hanging around his rear-view mirror. so i decided to turn him around and let him look outside. he was having fun looking at everything going by and i was helping him wave at random people... a minute or so later i look over and there is a guy attempting (and he eventually succeeded) to take a picture of landon on my lap waving at him through the car window (it was down) with his camera phone... so here he is... driving down a busy street at night, he is not looking at the road... he is looking at my son and pointing his camera at him... oh yeah... and he was smoking a cigarette, which was in the same hand as the phone... and then *flash* he shot a picture of landon (yes... his camera phone had a flash).


huwwa aba sayea khollas.
(we learned this little phrase the other day. huwwa is he, aba sayea is an area of town with a very large and well known mental hospital, and khollas means completely. so loosely translated it means he was completely mental!)

yesterday was the last day of the A'id here... which to mean meant we can go shopping tomorrow. most everything is closed during the holiday so grocery shopping is done at the huge supermarkets only. well little did it enter my thought process that today is friday... the holy day of the week... so nothing opens until after 1ish... argh! haha!

so everyday that i meet with my feluca boat captain/language helper i get tea. he needed to pray the other day before our meeting and i saw him cleaning himself off (washing his face, feet, etc.) in the local river in preparation for prayer. it was at that point that i began to wonder where the water for my chai (pronounced "shay", which means tea) is being acquired for i also saw other boat captains getting pitchers of water from the river to drink.

i think this explains my most recent case of the Pharoh's Curse (also lovingly known all over the world as: Montezuma's Revenge, The Delhi Belly, Tokyo Trots).

eww.

Bizza, Bebsi and Brad who?

Posted by Tim 11 January 2006 0 comments

we have a hard time with the language, so it is comforting to hear the people here completely jack up english... we revel in their failures because we have so many too :)

this episode of the camel riders is brought to you by the letter b... i mean p

for example... the other day we got a bizza (pizza) and we drank a bebsi (pepsi). we have gotten a few pizzas at this place called tebesty's. it is really good. the "pepperoni" is made of beef so it more like a hillshire farm's summer sausage pizza. another time they made us a pizza with egg on it. we didn't ask for the egg but they took it upon themselves to add it to our pizza because "it is really good"... and it wasn't all that bad. i'm not saying i'll order egg next time... but it was tasty.

to continue in their funny use of the letter p i'd like to share a cover of a dvd i recently bought. so i got this really legal copy of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith"... well just look at the picture.






















har har.

i'm blogtastic!

Posted by Tim 0 comments

i'm getting back in the swing of blogging a little more so make sure you don't think that the latest after this one is the only one since my minor dry spell... there are a few recent posts so give it a look. the oldest of the recent onslaught of posts is entitled, "and in this episode of Chicken Little..."

go start there.

tim

that is not to be read like i am british, but rather that i have no pictures with scenes of bloody goriness.

this morning i went down to the garage below our building to see if the killin' had started and it hadn't. they have to wait on butchers to come around. i guess you could compare a butcher's job to that of a US postal worker at Christmas time... they are in very very very high demand! so i went to the neighboring building who had a butcher. by the time i got to that garage they had already brought out the first little lamby and sent him to little lamby heaven. as i was arriving, they were leading in a humongous cow!

*****warning for those with weak stomachs... grossness ensues!*****
they led the cow in and took him into one of the garage ports. i think elsie knew what was coming because it got all sorts of hacked off and tried to escape. about 6-8 guys tackled her and took her down. they then got her up, calmed her down, tied her feet together, pushed her over, faced her to the east, said a little something of a prayer... and then helped her breath by making another vent closer to her lungs... i.e. slit her throat.
we did the math up... this is quite an impressive holdiday. we figure that there somewhere around 3 million sheep killed this morning in our city alone.
*****okay... the grossness has ended*****

regardless of whether or not you read the grossness part, it is at this time that i ask you to not classify the people of this area incorrectly or abruptly. the people doing this this morning were some of the nicest people around... they even gave us some lamb meat because they are so generous! those little guys ain't cheap... especially for the people here! so all i ask is that you not classify them as barbarians or inhumane, etc. unless you're a vegetarian... which i certainly am not... then we can't saw nothin' because we just let other people do the dirty work in our country :)
okay... my little diatribe on ethnocentricity is done. you can go about reading for your enjoyment.

but to tempt your imaginations here are the pictures of the little friends that bit the dust this morning... enjoy!


These are the little sheepys that were staying in our building's garage. I looked at them yesterday while our building helper (our boab) was there and talked to the sheep. I said to them "bukara... hallas!" which is translated... "tomorrow, you're finished!" He cracked up laughing and thought i was awfully cool.

bon voyage O' fecal laden friends



our "boab", insisted on bringing a sheep out so that we could take a "soora" (picture) of landon riding it. landon didn't like it too much. he was happier earlier when he didn't and we weren't trying to take a picture. this sheep was freaking out though and it probably scared landon and little. no more freaking out though as that was this sheep's last ride.

a'dieu sheepy.











Landon was much happier here... as was this sheep. the sheep was obviously in denial.

au revoir bah bah brown sheep.











Here is big honkin' water buffalo. I am sorry to say that he is no longer with us... except perhaps in the tummys and refrigerators of people here :)

Maa'salaama beefy buffacow

haha! a friend wrote the title of this blog to me in an email and I thought it was priceless. today is the start of the big 3-day A'id Al Adha (holiday where Abraham's near sacrifice of his son is commemorated). we are heading down to the souk (the market) right now to see some little lambys take the dirt nap. hopefully i can snap some shots and put them up here for you later.

Kuli Sena Wenta Tayeb

new friends

Posted by Tim 08 January 2006 0 comments

we met another american couple the other day. they are quite fun and have a little girl that is just a few months older than landon. we are excited that they can be playmates... it will be even more fun once they learn how to share! yay!

here are a few pics...



















death and dismemberment.

well today i had my first chicken killed. it was quite an experience. after a quick little slit of the throat it was into the boiling pot to loosen up them feathers. After most of the feathers were gone it was into a big thingy that spins them around real quick and gets the remainder of the feathers off... and then onto the butcher's block. i think next time i'll ask him to quarter it all up because all Moustafa did was kill it and clean it. after we got home i had to quarter it all up and man it was tough. i actually never did finish cutting him all up. plus, the chicken was pretty skimpy... it needed some boneless skinless chicken breast enlargements.

fun fun.

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