One of the advantages . . .

One of the advantages of not being able to get residency here in Kuwait is that we have to leave the country every 3 months to renew our visas. We've taken advantage of this by making our trips out of the country into fun family vacations.

The first trip we took was at the end of December and the first part of January. We went to Dubai. We had been told Dubai is a cross between Las Vegas and New York. Since we are an LDS family with 7 young children I can't say we saw those sides of it. But we had fun nonetheless. Dubai is one giant construction zone. They have so many projects planned and in the works. I think it'll be a great place in a few years but right now it seems so unfinished and such a hassle to manuever around town. We got to see things that we were told "will be great" and "one-of-a-kind" when it's done but we got to see few actual finished products.

One of the highlights of Dubai for us was Ski Dubai. It is an indoor skiing/sledding facility built inside of a mall. T was too little to go in so I sat outside with him and watched the others through a giant window that looks into the ski facility. Todd took the rest of the kids and they had a great time. We chose not to do the skiing but they had lots of fun tubing and tobogganing (is that a word?)

One day we hopped on "The Big Bus" for a tour of the city. We stopped off at a mall, a museum, and took a Dhow tour of Dubai Creek.

The first day we went to a place called Leisureland. It had some little rides and a crawling apparatus. What was unique about this place was that we were quite literally the only people there. I think we saw one other child the whole time we were there. It's no Lagoon (and definitely no Disneyland) but because of the lack of people, we had our own private ride operator. When we wanted to ride we would tell him and he'd get the key out and turn the ride on for us. Then he'd follow us to the next ride. We just kept a running tab of how many rides we went on then paid at the end. Our ride operator's name was John. He is from India. He has a wife and two daughters (that are about the same ages as Petey and Cricket) that are still in India. As Todd talked to him about his family he almost became emotional as he told us the difficulty in working at a place like this where families come together for fun and he doesn't have that luxury. He was looking forward to a 70 day trip back to India in the spring to visit his family. He only does that about every other year. We went away very grateful that we are all able to be here together.

The highlight of the Dubai trip--or at least the event we still talk about the most--is the beach fireworks on New Years Eve. We'd read online that the New Years fireworks in Dubai are world renowned. It's the same company that does fireworks for huge events like the Olympics (or so it said). We knew this was a great opportunity so we didn't want to miss it. So we went to the beach at about 6:00 so we'd be sure to get a good spot. We didn't need to worry. There were only a handful of people there. However, we did get a great parking spot right next to the beach. We walked to get dinner then walked back to the beach. We didn't want to lose that parking spot. We wasted time. We played on the DS Lites. There was a playground there that the kids played on. We went for walks along the beach. It got dark very early and there is no swimming allowed after dark so that wasn't an option. We wasted more time. Todd even risked losing the parking spot and he went to the store to get some snacks. We didn't lose the spot. We started wondering if we were in the right place because even at 9:00 there weren't any people that seemed to be there for fireworks. We double checked with a security person we saw and he said we were in the right place for the fireworks. A little after 9 another family showed up to get their spot. They were probably tourists too since tourists are the only ones who would show up that early. You should understand that this beach is huge. Since we got a great parking spot we were able to hang out in the car and watch the kids on the playground and play on the beach--even in the dark. Finally at about 11 or so more people started streaming in. Cars were now filling up the parking lots. We had our moment of "ha ha--we have a great parking spot because we came early!"

A few minutes before midnight we got a blanket from the car, our snacks, and we headed closer to the water to settle in for the great show. Sure enough, right on time the fireworks started. And they were great. There was no music but it didn't matter because we were having a great time. All for approximately 5 minutes. Then the crowd that had gathered gave a little round of applause and started heading back for their cars. We were too stunned to speak at first. Surely it couldn't be over already. Where was the big finale of all fire works shows? We spent an incredibly long 6 hours waiting for a 5 minute show. OK. Maybe I exaggerate a little. It may have been between 5 and 10 minutes. Certainly no more than 10 though. I'll take 4th of July in Sienna Circle any day over the overrated New Years Eve show in Dubai.

Our next trip was in March to Cairo. An incredible place with a lot of history. Makes me wish I would've paid attention better when I was in school. My overall impression of Cairo--crowded and dirty. I was more appreciative of the driving in Kuwait compared to the driving in Cairo where lanes have absolutely no meaning and cars will crowd in within inches on both sides of you. Fortunately I didn't have to drive myself. We hired a driver and a tour guide to take us around but just watching how close the cars were coming to us and how close we were getting to other cars made me nervous. The only saving grace was that traffic was so bad that nobody could build up enough speed that if a collision did occur, it would be nothing more than a fender bender.

Todd had business meetings for a couple of the days we were there so the kids and I piled into the van with the driver and guide who took us to the Citadel, a mosque, a synagogue, and a Coptic (Christian) church. We toured a museum type place (I can't think of the name right now) that gave us a good history of life in Egypt. The last day Todd was able to go with us and we spent the day at the pyramids. We rode camels (the highlight of the trip for me), saw the Sphinx, went to a perfume making shop, a rug making shop, a papyrus making store, an Egyptian souk, and just generally took in the ambiance of Cairo. One night we went on a dinner cruise on the Nile. The only problem with that was that it was so late at night (I think it left the dock at like something like 9 pm) and the kids were so exhausted that we were all just trying to stay awake enough to enjoy it. Red literally did sleep through the whole thing--dinner and the entertainment.

Visas expire in early June for T and Nic. Mid-June for the rest of the kids and I since the rest of the kids and I took a day trip in March to Bahrain for some school testing. Looks like we won't be attending that school in Bahrain since the plan now is for us to move to Jordan. So we're all going this weekend to Jordan to do some house hunting and school inspecting.