Petra: Day 1

We have had a fun past week! Nathan's cousin Jenn and family that are stationed in Japan, came to visit us. We explored Petra for two days, camped at a bedouin camp in Wadi Rum, visited Jerash, and they visited quite a few other places on their own. I have lots of pictures, so I'm going to break the blog into a few days.

Today is Petra, Day 1. We woke up early in the morning headed south. We arrived in Petra mid morning, had lunch at our hotel, the had the day to explore. Petra is one of the new seven wonders of the world. It is believed to have been built/carved as early as the 300's BC, and was the capital of the Nabateans in the 1st century. Petra later became part of the Roman Empire, and it was a major trading hub for frankincense, myrrh, and spices. In the 4th century, most of the city was destroyed by a major earthquake, and by the 7th century was mostly deserted except for Bedouin people. The city was rediscovered in 1812 by a swiss explorer and has become popular ever since.

We started our tour of Petra by horse and carriage and entered the Siq trail.

The Siq trail is about mile long narrow gorge that occurred from a natural splitting of the mountain.Water channels run across both sides of the rock along the entire way. Check out the amazing colors of the rocks!

The walls go from wider to narrow along the way.

After close to a mile...

The Siq opens into the Treasury and lots of camels and donkeys waiting to take you for a ride.

The treasury was believed to be made sometime in the 1st century, it is close to 40m high, and beautiful decorated with carvings. It is an incredible structure to see, and unbelievable how symmetrical and perfectly shaped the treasury is.

 Benjamin quickly found his first friend of the day with one of the bedouin guides.

From the treasury, we picked up donkeys and rode for the rest of the day.

We rode down the old Roman road and saw lots of old tombs, to include the Royal tombs, which is 4 main tombs.

At the end of the road, we came to an old church and the Great Temple.

Omar was one of our guides on both days. He and Benjamin took a liking to each other :).

Caleb and Nathan on top of the Great Temple.

The Bobrowski and Purcell crew :).

Overlooking the tombs.

Petra is known as the rose red city, and when the sun goes down, you can especially see the beautiful color of the rocks.

We made it back to the treasury as the sun was setting, and rode carriages back to the park entrance. We were some of the last people out of the park!

We got back to the hotel as the sun was setting.

That night, Jenn and I went back to Petra for the night walk, which is held 3 times a week. The entire Siq trail is lit by candles. It was incredible. The only light was from the candles and from the moon and stars that were plentiful.

After hiking a mile by candle light, you get to the treasury. It was absolutely beautiful. A bedouin was playing the flute, someone was serving tea to the guests, and afterwards the man told a story about Petra.

Can you see us?

It was a beautiful walk back, lit by the candles and stars. We stayed behind the crowd and pretty much had the place to ourselves. It was an amazing first day...stay tuned sometime after Christmas to hear about the adventures of Day 2.

Lemon with Mint

We just got back from Petra and Wadi Rum with the Bobrowski's, and we had a great time! It's going to be a couple of days before I probably get some pictures up, so in the meantime here is what we were up to this evening. While I was making 5 loafs of lemon bread for the boys teachers - thanks Elizabeth for the recipe, Nathan and the boys were making lemon with mint. It's really simple, here is what you need to make about a pitcher full:

Squeeze the lemons

 Wash the mint leaves

 Taste the lemon and add the sugar

 Blend the lemon and mint well. Tomorrow we will add the water and ice and have a nice refreshing beverage for this nice refreshing weather. Enjoy!

Benjamin's winter concert and our visitors are here!

Benjamin had his winter concert at school yesterday, and this was his first show ever. He has been practicing for weeks and was so excited for us to be there. His class sang 9 songs in English, Arabic, and French, and we recognized a few of the English and Arabic songs he had been singing at home. Well, you would think we drugged our child for the show. He sat there and looked around, and did not sing at all! It was a cute show, and we were proud of him for standing up there the whole time:). First song is the Jordanian National Anthem, which Benjamin sings all the time.

A song about colors

And Jingle Bells :)

After the show, we went to a nearby park to enjoy the nice weather.

This park is lined with pomegranate trees. I can't wait to see them in season next year.

And when we got home, our visitors arrived! Nathan's cousin Jenn and her family are visiting us from Japan for the next week, and we are so excited they arrived! They toured downtown yesterday while we were at work, then the kids have been playing, playing, playing. We head out this morning for Petra and desert camping in Wadi Rum for the next few days - stay tuned!

Simple loves

Its been a nice weekend. The temperatures are getting cooler and we are enjoying it very much! On Friday mornings, Caleb usually goes with me to the grocery store, bakery, and butcher, and Nathan and Benjamin take construction walks or do projects around the house. Benjamin loves construction vehicles and it looks like they found some big ones.

 Just hanging out at our nursery at the base of our 'mountain.'

Whats the best treat after a walk? A kinder egg!

If you know our boys, you know they like to typically sleep in 'pants with no shirt.' Well, our house is cold and they sleep in footed onesies without a fight these days!

Though Benjamin still likes to play with his train tracks in his underwear.

He has become quite the train track builder!

The boys got new Christmas lights, their old ones broke. They were pretty excited for this surprise.

On Friday afternoon, we went to the 'Up Down' park to play. It is really called the Martyrs park, but we call it this because there are two parks, one on top and one below.

This is the down park, near sunset.

They like the superfast slide!

They got an early Christmas gift from Great Aunt Eileen that will be perfect for our trip to Petra and Wadi Rum with Nathan's cousins, to hike and camp next week!

They loved their matching outfits. Look at these goofy smiles!

We finished the evening by baking a mound of cookies for a cookie party we attended today.

And I made a delicious pomelo, pomegranate, and feta cheese salad with dinner.

Today was, cookie party day! I'm glad I made the boys eat lunch before we went. I can't imagine how many more cookies would have been consumed if their bellies were not slightly full. 

Everything was delicious and it was fun to see friends and their families.

After the party, more train track building. Ben asked if we could put this on the blog :).

And what I love most. Hearing Nathan play guitar and Benjamin singing along to Down by the River to Pray.

Enjoying our family and this time of year!

Around Town

Caleb's class is studying a new unit in school, who we are and what we do. They are learning about different jobs that people do, and today they took a bus field trip around town. We received a lot of pictures from his teachers today! From the looks of things, they went to a bank, a couple of restaurants, grocery store, pharmacy, police station, barber, clothing store, and a gas station. 

Caleb said the highlight of the trip was going to the police Station and McDonalds. He said the police men were nice and shook their hands. He told us he did not get a Happy Meal, and there are Super Mario Adventure toys....and can we go tomorrow!

Here are the pictures that he was in. 

Happy Wednesday!

Holiday Cheer

We had a fun weekend, spending time with friends on both days. And while outside on Friday morning, I noticed a few new roses that bloomed. Amazingly, our flowers are still going strong despite the chilly weather - we are already down to the 30's at night.

We had friends from church over during the day, that have 3 girls and a newborn boy, and the kids had fun playing for a few hours. Friday night, the boys and I made cut out Christmas cookies for our office holiday party today. They were good helpers and had fun making and eating the cookies!

I also made a winter salad that is mom P's recipe. It was a good compliment for the delicious Italian food that our co-worker made.

We have a LOT of kids in our office. Between 9 co-workers (and spouses of course), we have 24 kids. We tried to get a group picture at the party. We came close, but were missing 4 from the party, and 2 were toddlers that cried their way out of the picture!

Benjamin looked so handsome in his tie. He loves it and sometimes wants to wear it to school :).

Sweet boys. Love them so much!

And finally, a preview for Benjamin's class winter show. I have a feeling we will be out of town enjoying Petra that day. Though his teacher said it may be this upcoming week, but the school hasn't decided yet. Ha, and a glimpse of normalcy here :). Enjoy!