Month: January 2013

My kids are addicted to electronics. Two weeks of Christmas vacation and worn out parents hasn’t helped. I’ve chosen the path of least resistance lately — if you fight over it, I’m turning it off. Otherwise as long as you take turns watching your sister, I’m happy to have you not interrupting my own love affair with electronics. I can handle the remote, my laptop, phone, and still knit a skirt. Multitasking at its finest.

But I got tired of seeing unwashed bodies still in pjs (or just underwear) late into the afternoon and eventually my threats of unplugging them weren’t enough to squash the bickering. The final straw was when we wanted to do something fun as a family on New Year’s Day and you would have thought I was marching them off to Auschwitz. Dour faces, attempts to smuggle PSPs and iPods into the car, and moans of, “Why do we have to go?” caused me to sarcastically declare 2013 as the “Best Year Ever!!”

What was the torture we had planned for them? A visit to the camel farm and the Bahrain Fort. The camels are fun because there are about 500 of them and it’s open to the public. No tickets, no admission, no hours. The female camels are grouped in pens, but  the males are each tied in place so they have a small area to themselves. (We deduced this after a bit of camel underside investigating). 

s t r e t c h ! ! ! 

 

one of the girl camel pens — there are over 500 camels on the property

 

As you can see from the photos, they enjoyed it, but it still didn’t keep them from complaining about the second stop on our tour: the Bahrain Fort. We already had one failed attempt to visit it under our belts. When Nana and Poppa Chartier were visiting we followed the GPS through some sketchy looking back roads until we got to a locked gate. The black flags and the guy shouting something in Arabic via the mosque loudspeakers made us reconsider and head home. This time since I had the more reliable GPS with me (Josh), I knew we’d find it.

At least Josh ended up in the same wrong spot we did (and I momentarily felt vindicated), but then he continued on down the road and found the entrance quite easily (remember, persistence is not my gift). It turns out there’s a beautiful museum that serves as an entrance and introduction to the fort. Something the GPS would have taken me to the first time if I had known to type in “Bahrain Fort Museum.”

Huge multi million dollar museum

 

old city, new city

 

Of course we bypassed the museum and wandered around the grounds, cause why look at photos of it indoors when you can explore the real thing? It turns out that inside the museum are free headsets that will take you on an audio tour of the fort and grounds: the history, how it was built, who lived there, what the big moat was for, and other such trivia (I’m assuming — we didn’t discover it until the end as we were leaving so I didn’t actually listen to it). It would have been extremely helpful in answering questions like, “what was this room for?” Or “was this their bathroom?” Next time we visit we’ll be better prepared. Third time’s the charm, right?

 

Storming the castle

everyone comes to this spot to get their family photos taken. We probably will too before we leave.

What’s in here mom? Their bathroom?

He decided the upper tower window is where the archers must have stood to shoot arrows at enemies.

Our Flat Stanley visitor from the states in front of the Bahraini flag

PS: They did apologize for complaining about going and admitted that it was a pretty fun day after all (but they still wanted to play X-box as soon as we got home). 

A much anticipated box of yarn and needles arrived in the mail today. Too bad Carter is out at a sleepover and missed the first session of Chartier knitting class. It’s actually a good thing he wasn’t home because between Caleb repeatedly asking “Is it my turn yet?!” and Calvin, in response to my praise of how quickly they picked it up, questioning, “There’s not really a knitting gene, is there?” I was about maxed out.

Add in Camille begging, “Me Mommy? My yarn?” and trying to pull the free ends of all the balls of yarn and a dog who likes to grab them and run off for a good soft chew . . . in spite of all the distractions, I had two excellent students tonight who are on their way to creating a hat and a scarf. I was really impressed by how quickly they both caught on. I had taught Calvin the basic knit stitch 4 years ago and he remembered right away and moved on to purling and knitting on circular needles.

“back through the fence and off we leap!”

Caleb started from scratch. All I did was cast on, show him how to make a knit stitch three times and he was doing it on his own. Some of my easiest students ever (thus my comment about the knitting gene. If there is one, they certainly have it!).

In case you think knitting isn’t a manly enough activity for them, I’m thinking about getting them this book. Real men do knit.  

If you are very good this year you might end up with one of their original creations under the tree next Christmas because I don’t think there’s much need for a big red scarf here in Bahrain. 

One thing I’ve always said about Caleb is he makes us laugh every day — sometimes intentionally, other times not. He has a favorite blanket that is made from a double layer of fleece, held together by knotted fringe all around the perimeter. Some of the fleece knots have worked their way loose and he has discovered he can climb inside and use it like a sleeping bag.

On this particular morning he climbed in, stuck his feet through two small spaces in the bottom hem, tied up the fringe around his shoulders and then walked around wearing his blanket. He thought he was hilarious until he wanted to get out and realized he had tied the knots too tight and was stuck inside.

Our holidays haven’t been anything exotic, but since Josh has had a few extra days off, we’ve tried to do some things around the island that we haven’t tried yet.

Like ice skating at the rink they have here. We had it all to ourselves. 3 BD (about $7.50) got us skates and some very bumpy ice. 

It was a maze of grooves on top of other grooves and my skates skittered around on top of the ice instead of cutting in. It didn’t slow the boys down any though. They went flying around, trying to skate backward and knock each other over. Understatement of the day by Calvin after taking a tumble: “Ice is hard!”

Um, yeah. It’s cold too.

Local “Zamboni.” Guy with a push broom style blade and another dude with a shovel. No wonder it’s rough.  

The best part about bumpy ice is that she could run around in her shoes and not slip.  

 

I thought this sign was odd, but Josh said it’s probably cause they don’t want people sitting around taking pictures of girls skating. OK, that’s creepy. 

But I wouldn’t blame them for wanting to take pictures of this girl skating. 

Discipline is not my strength. I have perfected the art of giving up when things get tough. When I started blogging 2 1/2 years ago I didn’t think I’d still be posting now. One of the reasons I’ve been successful with consistently blogging (vs. say, exercising) is because after we were evacuated from Egypt, I saw how important my blog was to remembering our time there. Then when we moved back overseas, to Oman, I vowed to continue to be consistent in my blogging and set a goal of posting something every day.

I was thinking about discipline/consistency as we were budgeting for 2013. Before we moved overseas we cut our expenses dramatically to save up for our year of travel. This past year we spent as we wished, traveled as much as we could, and didn’t worry about saving. Now that we’re back in “real life” it’s time to start saving again: for our next car, a down payment on a house (less than 5 years to retirement!), future travel, etc. God bless automatic transfers! We set them all up yesterday and 18 months from now, when we leave Bahrain, we should have the money saved to get started in a new place. If the money didn’t disappear immediately when it hit our account, we wouldn’t be nearly as successful with saving (see the first sentence of this post). Too bad I can’t set up an exercise program the same way . . . program my body to automatically do it, no questions asked. Preferably while I’m asleep.

Happy 2013 from the Bahrain Fort! 

(I know we look like a post-card perfect happy family, but we’re all overtired and crabby and spent the time hiking around threatening to take away all electronics for the rest of Christmas vacation . . .)