Night Life and Marine Life

One of my goals while living in Kuwait is to get better at photography. There are so many types of photography styles, and Kuwait will be a great place to experiment with night shooting since they light up the city so colorfully. Clearly, I need a lot of practice, but I still thought some of these pictures turned out ok.

 

The first is of the hotel that Nathan and I stayed when we came to visit in March.

 The next few pictures are down by the gulf. On Friday evening, we got a babysitter for a few hours, and Nathan, Jason, and I went to dinner.

 We went to a restaurant that serves all kinds of middle eastern food, and it was delicious.

 

 On Saturday, we met Abeer, her two boys, and Rachel at the Scientific Center. Inside the center there is an aquarium and a place called Discovery Zone, which is similar to the Children's Museums. They had a lot of neat animal exhibits and a huge sandbox for the kids to play. Caleb and Firas had a good time exploring the museum, while Ben and Faris slept and looked around.

 I would say the sandbox was the biggest hit of the day for all the kids.

 Abeer with Faris and Ben. Faris has big curly eyelashes and I love his hair. Why is it that little boys always have the longest eyelashes! The two boys are only 3 months apart, and I think future partners in crime :).

 I love this pictures of the boys playing together.

 Even the adults can get in the sandbox, bonus!

 Next, we went to the aquarium, which we all really enjoyed. Most of my pictures did not come out well because of the lighting, but here are a few. As you would expect, lots of fish :).

 And big fish, as Caleb said.

 We ended the day with lunch at Pizza Hut.

It was a good weekend!

4th of July

The Embassy hosted a 4th of July BBQ for the Embassy, Military, and their guests. There was music, lots of good food, a sponge bob slide, bouncy castle, and soap soccer. Caleb took his first camel ride with our friend's son, Brian, and he had a good time!

 Miss Rose, who watches our boys during the week, came with us to the BBQ. I have been wanting to get a picture of her, and she finally warmed up to the idea after seeing our blog last night! She is great with the boys, and they enjoy spending the days with her.

Caleb was very excited about the sponge bob slide, but he was a little unsure about going down once he got to the top. It was a bumpy ride down, but I think he enjoyed it :).

Good ole American boys!



 

Our friend Jason is in town this week, and he joined us for the BBQ this evening. He and Caleb are becoming buds, and they had fun playing together this evening. 





Happy 4th of July from the Middle East!

Balls!

Two little boys are enjoying Caleb's early birthday present! Thank you Grandpa and Grandma R :).

Good things

We have had a good weekend, we spent time around the house, around town, and we saw some friends. Even Elmo enjoyed a bike ride today!

Random picture, but I am in love with Ben's hands. They are so little and chunky, and I just want to eat them up. His little hands can now hold his bottle, grab for everything in reach, and squeeze my finger so tight. I just love these little hands!

On Friday, our neighbors invited us to church with them. It was a contemporary service, and the message was very good. After the music, the kids went off for kids church. Nathan went with Caleb and said they sang songs, listened to a Bible story, and did an art project. Many people are gone for the summer, but when fall starts, there will be more people and kids. We really liked the service and are thankful our neighbors told us about this church, because everything we found so far would have been hard to attend with small children.

 In the afternoon, I went grocery shopping with Caleb. I enjoy grocery shopping, especially when I learn the layout of the store....I know, sounds kind of weird. Almost everything is in Arabic since I shop at our local co-ops, so I am still trying to figure out what is what. There are lots of new foods we are not used to, and we hope to learn about and try some of them over time. Our grocery stores here are very nice. We can get whatever we need, but things in general are a bit more pricey than in the States. We are trying to buy local products to keep our bills lower. Some things that are much cheaper than what we are used to are gas (obvious), in season fruits and vegetables, olive oil, hommus, grape leaves, to name a few. Some things are a lot more expensive, like cereal (almost $7/box), broccoli (right now close to $8/head), pretty much anything American. We are doing some online shopping for non-perishable goods, but in general we are trying to adapt to what is local.

Later that evening, our neighbors had a going away party for some of the people that are finishing their tour. We got a baby sitter for a few hours and we enjoyed hanging out with everyone and meeting their families. It was a nice treat for Nathan and I to go out:).

On Saturday morning we went swimming at the Embassy, and our neighbors' daughter also joined us. She is 9 years old, and she loves little kids. The Embassy has an awesome kids pool and lap pool. It is very big, shaded, and there are lots of toys to play with. Caleb loved getting in and out of the pool and playing in the water. Ben had a great time sitting in the water and splashing around too. I think we will be doing a lot of swimming over the next two years, and we are grateful for the nice facilities we have available.

When we got home, we saw one of the landlord's workers, that we have been talking to. He is from Afghanistan and speaks little English, but somehow we seem to communicate ok. He has a nice garden close to our home, and today he invited us back to pick some fresh mint leaves. He taught us a few Arabic words today. I think he was saying he will teach us one word a day, and by a couple of years we will know "too much Arabic", probably he meant we will know a lot :). One of our next goals is to figure out how we can start learning the language either through the Embassy or a tutor.

Since we don't have our shipment yet, we are still missing a lot of things for the boys. We did ship a good amount of toys, but we can tell that Caleb is getting bored, especially because he has to be indoors most of the day. Caleb loves music, and this afternoon Nathan made him a homemade drum. Caleb decorated it and played us some songs. We definitely have a music loving child.

This evening we had some friends over for dinner. They were our sponsors, and they took very good care of us when we arrived. They have two children who are 10 and 12, and they liked playing with Caleb and Ben. I made a lasagna and some appetizers, and they brought over delicious chocolate chip cookies. We had a good time talking, eating, and playing with the boys. We look forward to more get-togethers with their family.

Caleb had such a good time he wanted to run around in his diaper :).

 It was a good weekend, and we are ready for another week. Still getting used to Sunday being 'Monday.'

 

New Friends

We have been meeting a lot of people the past couple of weeks. One person we have been waiting to meet since we got here is Marissa's good friend from college, Abeer, and her family. We finally got to meet her earlier this week and we had a great time! She and her oldest son, Firas, picked us up and took us out to dinner at a Kuwaiti restaurant, and the food was delicious! I don't remember all of the food we ate, but there was hummus, lentils, chicken and fish dishes with rice, dumplings, tea, and coffee.

 

Abeer has lived here most of her life, aside from going to Indiana University for a few years. She also has two young boys, Firas, the cute little boy in the background playing with the teapot is 3, and Faris, who is 6 months old. We had lots of good conversation, and we are looking forward to learning more about life in Kuwait, and getting together more often with their family. It was fun for her and Nathan to also talk about Bloomington and the good old college days. 

Thank you for introducing us, Marissa! I think we will have some fun times ahead.

On the Verge

Ben wants to crawl, and for the last few weeks, he has been getting on his hands and knees and rocking back and forth. We keep thinking he is going to make a move, then he scoots backwards! He does a good job getting around that way, and eventually he will get the hang of crawling.

We are starting to realize that we will have two mobile kids very soon, which is something that we have taken for granted. And the crazier thing is within a few months, Ben will probably be walking. It will be fun when the boys can run around together, which will be here before we know it!

Stay tuned for our little crawler...

Kuwait Video

Mark has been busy making videos in his spare time of events, old baby pictures, and just everyday things. After his trip to Kuwait, he made this great video. Hope you enjoy!

 

Hanging around

We had a nothing special kind of week, which was good. We hung around the house, went to our local co-op and to different playgrounds in the evening, and we got out this weekend. We are adjusting well to being here, and some things are an adjustment. I think the biggest one right now is not being able to let the boys play outside throughout the day. It is very hot and dusty, so we need to be careful. And if you know Caleb, you know how active he is.  Being inside most of the day makes him antsy, so we try to get him outside in the evenings.  The rest of our belongings are supposed to arrive in about a month, so we are making do with what we have, and just adjusting :). In other good news, we got a little better internet today! I realized I only took a few pictures since Mark left, so here are a couple from today. I am excited that I can upload a few pictures, and over time I will have pictures from Mark's visit...stay tuned.

On Friday, we went to a co-worker's going away party, who is leaving next week. There were a lot of people with small children, and the party was in a big room where the kids could run around. We had a good time meeting new people and letting the kids run around.

On Saturday, we met a co-worker and his family for breakfast at IHOP at one of the local malls, and then we did some shopping at IKEA. The malls are big attractions here, and they are packed on the weekends. We had a good time at breakfast, and enjoyed getting to know their family. They have an almost 3 year old and 3 month old daughters. I'm sure we will be getting together with them much more during our time here.

Caleb is keeping us on our toes,  and he is testing us a lot. He has had a lot of change lately, so we are trying to stay patient and keep things low-key. Ben wants to crawl. He gets into the crawling position and rocks...then he scoots backwards. He can get around pretty good with his backward scooting. We are glad for the good week and weekend, and even though we have been keeping busy, we don't feel very busy. Hope you have a good low-key week!