May 2014 – robinchartier

C is for Cookie

Normally Girl Scout cookie season is spring, but for us in the land of sand, Girl Scout cookies arrive in June. This is the 3rd year we’ve been blessed by the cookie fairies. The call goes out that Girls Scout cookies have arrived on the island (donated by a troop in San Diego) and we all line up for our boxes of Thin Mints and Samoas. It’s fun to get a taste of home and to get adorable hand made thank you cards that get handed out along with the cookies.

Yesterday was cookie day — we got 12 boxes and everyone broke open their favorites on the way home.

Today was cookie day, part 2. They had so many boxes donated to our base this year that when we went through the NEX after church they told the kids to load up again.

Note the new haircut. He wanted it long, but then got tired of all that hair and was trying to decide between getting a haircut like Captain America or Iron Man. He looked up the photo on google by himself and show the barber what he wanted. He went with Captain America.

Day two they were all out of Thin Mints so they got a bunch of Samoas, Tagalongs (the chocolate covered peanut butter ones) and the lemon powered sugar ones (which I think are boring, but all 3 boys love them. Go figure).

The girl scouts here can’t sell cookies, but they do a great job of handing them out. Everyone loves free cookies!

Especially this girl. Last night she snuck a box of Thin Mints from the stash and hid upstairs in the blanket fort with her friend Jude and they ate almost the entire box.

Double fisted Samoas

We have enough cookies to last until next year’s cookie day, but with Camille in the house, we’ll be lucky if they last until Josh gets home. 2 weeks down, 2 weeks to go.

banana leaf

Over the weekend Calvin and I went with some friends to an Indian restaurant where you eat everything off of a banana leaf with your hands. I don’t know if that’s how they really do it in India, but the restaurant was packed with all Indian people so it must be doing something right.

Everyone gets their own banana leaf and then the waiters come around with various metal buckets/pots/cups and dish out the food. Above is a fried chicken leg on my leaf and salty banana chips and a salted chili pepper on Calvin’s. The pink stuff in the metal container is yogurt (not sweet at all even though it looks strawberry flavored) one of them is shredded fresh coconut and a third is a couscous-type grain.

Indian food is not her favorite (nor mine), but she was a good sport.

It was fun having him at lunch and telling me all about Germany. On his leaf so far (much more to come): pickled lemon (the red stuff) and then on the far side, the stuff that looks kind of like pasta salad is actually vegetables in a sauce — probably my favorite thing. Then the coconut, couscous and the pink yogurt.

both rice and bread — not paleo

The way you are supposed to eat it is to mix bits of stuff with the rice using your fingers and then scoop it into your mouth. I always thought I was fine with using hands to eat, but it was weird trying to eat things like yogurt without a fork or a spoon. I’m the kind of person who eats with a fork in a chinese restaurant, not because I can’t eat with chopsticks, but because it feels fake. Like, we all know I’m not Chinese so I won’t pretend I’m suddenly Asian because I can eat with two sticks (I know, I’m weird). So normally I would have said “pass the fork,” but the friend who brought us to the restaurant wanted everyone to eat with their hands. So I did. I loved the chicken curry and the vegetables in sauce and would have eaten those all day. Also liked the fried chicken and the fish was pretty good too. There was way too much food and I stopped taking pictures before they had even finished dishing things out.

If you come visit and want to go eat here I’ll take you. I’ll be using a fork — you can eat whichever way you like.

Calvin’s home!

I went and picked up our very happy soccer star last night at 1am. Where we live, 95% of the time flights arrive and depart between the hours of midnight and 6am. I see planes taking off and landing all day long, but whenever I need to travel, the only options are in the middle of the night. I used to think it was related to the heat/sand since it was true in Oman too, but now I think it’s to catch connections in major cities. A 10 am connection in Istanbul requires a 4am departure from here. I guess that’s what you get when you’re at the end of the line . . .

No photos at the airport. Trying not to be that mom. He had a great time and is full of stories about how green Germany is and the weird food products they have. Spaghetti ice cream? He says they take ice cream and run it through the pasta maker so it comes out in little strings and cover it with strawberry sauce. Ok, I think I could go for that. They also have a soda called MezzoMix which is orange and cola mixed together and bottled. Um, no. He also showed me a photo of cola beer which sounds gross too. I’m not really a fan of mixing things. Unless it’s chocolate mixed with ice cream, peanut butter, or more chocolate . . .

If he were to tell you about the tournament, this blog post would be 50 pages long as he described every detail of various shots, penalties, and who was down by how many points with so many seconds left in the game, but the short stats are they made it through the first round of pool play into the quarter-finals where they lost 1-0. They were at a disadvantage coming into the tournament because they were seeded 13th out of 15 so they had to play 2 very strong teams on the first day. The other teams play each other during the season (can you imagine traveling from Italy to Germany for one of your weekly soccer games?) so they ranked the other teams based on those standings and then tossed the Bahrain school in at number 13. The bottom 3rd of this article in Stars and Stripes describes their first day in a bit more detail. Tournament coverage, day 1

Calvin messaged me a few times during the week so we could keep track of how they were doing. He was really excited one day because he GOT TO PLAY (his text was in all caps — I loved “seeing” how excited he was) for a few minutes when they had to pull their goalie out to change some equipment. Other than that he cheered them on, watched a lot of great soccer and is dreaming about next year when he has the potential to become the starting goalie.

It’s all been worth it, but we’re both happy tomorrow morning doesn’t start with a 5:30am drive to practice . . .

Faux Friday

I had a “Friday” night all to myself (Thursday night is the last night of the work week) and what did I end up doing? The spirit of Pam descended on me and I spent about 6 hours sorting through Camille’s clothes and toys — throwing things away, separating out things to give away, and organizing the things I was keeping. It’s now almost 2am and I’m feeling quite productive, so I might as well be extra productive and post a round-up of photos of Camille from this week. (I always have photos of her because she’s the one that is around all day and the boys aren’t as funny as she is).

Loving on Zeki

our very fat and happy cat

(he’s fat because he eats the dog’s food. He pushes the dog out of the way and plants himself between him and the bowl)

We picked up a play kitchen from the neighbor’s house and loaded it in the back of the car. She claimed my seat and wanted me to sit in the back for the drive home.

The kids (minus Calvin) all had a slumber party. 7 kids were all still sleeping at 8:30 am. Best sleepover ever.

Playing with her new kitchen (wearing her apron)

I love it when she sleeps

I still love her when she doesn’t sleep (barely!), but 11:30pm is ridiculous. I had put her to bed and thought she was sleeping while I was watching TV downstairs. I came up to bed and found her in MY bed, with all of her blankets and stuffed animals. She asked me, “Where are you going to sleep?” Nice try, sweetie.

We went to get henna and a pedicure. This is the outfit she chose (you can’t see the florescent purple and orange socks she is wearing).

Beautiful henna (It’s Nutella on her mouth, not henna)

The remnants of this Nutella face — I don’t even know how she did this. Did she dip her face into the jar?

Gangsta Meels

Off to sleep feeling decluttered in both body and mind. Night night!

Without Fail, reprised

Today Josh left for Jordan for 3+ weeks. Within an hour of his departure, the car wouldn’t start. I can’t make this stuff up. It’s like it senses his proximity to the island and as soon as he is out of range, it all goes haywire. (see also: this time last year)

The car started fine first thing in the morning, though it did sound a little more sluggish than normal, and I drove to Pilates. An hour later I went out to the parking lot to drive home and “click-click,” nothing. I was sweating in a firebox of a car, staring at the gauges in disbelief, with a grocery bag full of frozen items in the back seat. Now what?

Praise be that this time I had a built in escape hatch! One week ago Josh and I bought a second car to make years 3 and 4 here a bit easier with scheduling and transporting of kids. It had already paid off once this morning when Josh had an early report time before his flight and it was about to pay off again when I realized that somewhere in the parking lot, I had another car to drive home. A friend and I separated and stalked the rows of cars until I spotted my little Land Rover — it’s a Freelander, so it’s compact, not the typical Land Rover beast.

This isn’t my car, but similar enough. Ours is sand colored, has a few more scratches and dings, but it has a working battery so I love it!

I was happy I had been lazy and told Josh instead of driving him in, I’d figure out how to get his car home from base later in the week. Instead, I was going to have to figure out how to get my own car home . . . someday. I messaged Josh, venting that this sort of stuff always happens when he’s off with the Marines, figuring he’d get it when he landed. A few minutes later I was surprised to get a message back that he was still in limbo, waiting on a broken plane. Long story short, his flight ended up being cancelled and they were returned to base to go home for the evening. Take that, car gremlins! Josh was able to jump the car, call the mechanic, and arrange to have a new battery installed tonight. I think we’ve had to replace the battery every year/18 months that we’ve lived in the Middle East. I think this is our 3rd — the heat is hard on them and when they die, they go without warning.

I’m hoping that we got our obligatory car problems out of the way and that there isn’t a repeat when he leaves again tomorrow. At least I’ll still have a substitute car to fall back on!