Happy 3rd Birthday Micah!

Micah's actual Birthday was January 14... so yes this post is belated... But we didn't have his party until this past weekend with our friends. Here are a few pictures of his actual birthday on the 14th... Below is the candle he blew out on top of a piece of cookie; the "real" cake is to come...

A friend gave me the idea of creating your own wrapping paper.. So I took some butcher paper we had, decorated it, then wrapped his presents in it...

As you can see, our 3 y/o is crazy about Trains!!!

The rest of the post is from Micah's Birthday Party...

Since the party was trained themed, we used Micah's train mat to play "pin the train on the track" with all the kids. So each kid colored a cut-out paper train, then was blind-folded, Randall spun them around 3 times and then they pinned their train on the track (or as close as they could get). What was really fun was that some of our Arab friends came to the party and had never played a game like this... Or had ever attended an "American" Birthday Party before!

Here are the kids anxiously awaiting the cake!!!

And here's my 1st attempt to make a train cake for my little Birthday Boy!

I guess Micah liked his cake.. seeing as he is wearing it on his face!

And here's a little video we put together to sum up Micah's party...Enjoy!

HAPPY 3rd BIRTHDAY MICAH! We LOVE You!!!

A Day Without Electricity & Water...

This past week we received a notice informing us that on Wednesday, the city was turning off our electricity and water from 7:30am-5pm... The first thing that went through my mind was "Did we forget to pay the bills???" But Randall assured me he had taken care of that and after talking to our neighbors, we soon found out that they too received the same notice. So what did we do? The only thing we knew to do: PREPARE... well, sort of....

So we took showers the night before, dried our hair, etc, made sure clothes were ironed if needed, etc. I then got up earlier that morning to make chocolate mill/juice cups for the kids and grabbed some eggs and apples for breakfast; gathered our cooler packs and set everything in our cooler. We knew that if we didn't open the fridge or freezer when the electricity is out, the food had a better chance of staying cool longer...

Thankfully, we have gas stoves in this part of the world, so we were still able to enjoy a "hot" breakfast...

But when the kids woke up and could not watch TV... we found substitutes to keep them entertained while we got ready to leave the house for the day... iPod and iPad (we made sure to charge them the night before)...Thank you Apple!

And to help pass the time, I had set an eye Dr. Appt that morning; went to that and then we headed for the Mall... Another genus idea: A Huge Indoor Play Area for Kids!!!

This definitely kept the kids entertained for a while...

So while the kids played... we caught up on emails, FB, books we are currently reading, etc... Can I just say that we only thought we were prepared to spend a day out of the house (really only to find out, we had prepared for the morning time only)... that is until we realized we had not had our daily caffeine for the day, did not pack snacks/drinks for the kids, etc.. Therefore, we ended up buying what we needed and "survived" the time...

Thankfully they turned everything back on by 2pm, just in time for nap time. Yeah!

Extended "Christmas Break"...

And the fun continued even after Christmas Day! Our friends Brad, Alison and Lucy had never visited our country before so we took them to explore... First we went out to explore this huge tree in the middle of the desert... with no water resource nearby...not sure how its still alive...

Here we are, attempting to take a Family Pic..although it was super windy that day!

Alison, Lucy, & Brad's Family pic turned out really cute!

Awww...just like when we were dating.. haha! kind of cheesy? Yes we know! (but we have to take advantage when other adults are around to take our pic.. usually it ends up being one of us with the kids in the picture, while the other one is the photographer!)

The Guys...(boys will be boys!)

And The Girls... (notice, we are a little closer to the ground!)

Then we went to a camel farm: Randall and the kids are feeding a 1 week old Camel!!! We considered having a new pet.. but if you know anything about camels on this side of the world... they are SO EXPENSIVE!!!

Our 3 little ones were fearless! They would go up to the camels, feed them straw and be within inches of their faces, which meant they were inches from their mouths too!! It did not even phase the kids how small they were and how big those camels were.

We then spent a day at an indoor watermark! It was a lot of fun!

At this point, Micah and Lucy were just running off of pure adrenaline as they skipped their nap time that day!

We had such a great week with our dear friends. This was our 3rd Christmas spent overseas and our 3rd Christmas spent with our friends. Such a blessing to have friends who are like family to us! Love you guys!

And finally... this was our "official" Family Christmas Picture of 2011. We hope each of you had a blessed Christmas and that 2012 is treating you well thus far!