Month: June 2018

That’s not a deep statement — just a celebration that my refill of contacts arrived! For the last 6 weeks in Abu Dhabi I was down to one good contact and one of my old (weaker) prescription and was hoping I didn’t have a lens failure before returning to the US. Of course ever since my fresh supply arrived, my left eye has been problematic and refuses to cooperate (it feels like there’s sand in it every time I put a contact in) so I’m struggling along with only one contact anyway.

ProTip: put your contacts in before flossing your teeth unless you enjoy minty fresh tears. I always forget until the burning begins. Next time I’m buying the non-mint floss . . .

I’m also seeing clearly on my brand new computer screen. I was trying to figure out how to clean it since it always looked dirty and I discovered (thanks Internet) that there was a known problem with the non-glare coating on my model and that Apple would replace it for free. While I was in the Apple store I asked about my busted iPhone camera and the guy said, “Oh that’s an easy fix. $59 and I can do it right now.” Yes, please!

Now I can take beautiful, non-fuzzy photos of anything I want. Like of my oldest baby at camp with his cabin of kids.
and with his sisterand of us walking (impossible before)and of our trek to the beach to watch my mom play ukulele with 90 of her friends.Caleb playing along with her. They do this every Saturday. It started out sunny, but then the fog rolled inand my kids can’t handle it — Caleb trying to get warm.

Tomorrow is the day! The beginning of retired life. We fly to Orange County to meet up with Josh, start our vacation, and figure out what grownups do.

I’m pretty sure my phone still thinks I’m in the UAE because I posted my camp post from my phone 2 days ago, but it dated it as yesterday . . . I’m having a hard enough time keeping track of days with church on Sundays and Friday as a workday. Counting backward I’m at day 4 so I guess my phone knew best after all.

The end is in sight. Over the next few days Josh will turn in his work car, go through the checkout process at the embassy, do the final checkout for our house and turn in the keys, drop my car off at its storage spot for the next few months (guys he works with are going to babysit it in their covered garage all summer –YAY), and say his farewells. Then he hops on a plane to Los Angeles and we start on Phase 2 of our grownup lives.

When we arrive in CA we are on “vacation,” but it’s more of a working vacation. Josh will check in to his temporary unit, but he doesn’t have to show up for work each day. They add him to their roster and then he goes off and takes care of all the retirement paperwork/medical appointments on his own schedule. We’ll also be working on paperwork to get visas to go back to UAE. I have to go to the courthouse to get an official copy of our marriage license and he has to get a copy of his college diploma and then we have to get both of those items certified/attested/notarized by first the State Department and then the UAE embassy here in the US. When we get back to the UAE we will have to get them translated to Arabic, but that shouldn’t be difficult (inshallah, right?), since every person working in UAE has to have this done as part of the employment/residence process.

These days, I’m tired. I fell asleep at 9 last night and woke up at 8:30. That’s not jet lag, just fatigue. I’m glad I have a few days to rest and do nothing. Recovery for my body and my brain.

One of my favorite places on earth is up at Camp Hammer in the Santa Cruz mountains. Our life of globetrotting and living in the Middle East might seem exotic, but if you asked any of my kids to pick where they would choose to live permanently, they would all pick this patch of land surrounded by redwood trees.

Calvin gets to live the dream this summer as he has a job here as a camp counselor. I finally got to see him this past weekend when I picked him up at the end of his first week with campers. He came home for 24 hours to do laundry and catch up with us after 6 months apart. He had a great time with his first cabin of 4-6th grade boys, though his voice was raspy after cheering them through team games all week.

After church on Sunday I brought both older boys back up to camp as Calvin was starting session 2 and Carter gets to be there as a camper for the next 2 weeks (same place, but different camp program). And yes, he may be younger, but Carter has finally surpassed Calvin in height.

Now I’m the shorty next to the two of them. As we took this selfie outside Calvin’s cabin, Carter asked, “Are you squatting Mom?!” and then laughed at how short I looked and proceeded to call me “Squatty Mommy” until I left for home.

We are all soaking in as much green scenery, blue skies, and woodsy air as we can before we return to the desert.

Happy birthday to my favorite girlie!

 

Since we have been traveling and busy moving I promised Camille that for her birthday this year we would go shopping together instead of opening presents. Since she keeps saying it’s been the “best birthday ever” I think I was successful in keeping her from feeling shortchanged. We went to Claire’s and she picked out earrings and a kitty-cat headband and then we went into sequin and sparkle filled Justice to make her joy complete. Of course she also fell in love with the glitter diary and the light-up ‘C’ for her new room in our next house . . . in spite of what it looks like, she actually did have to make choices and leave some of the store behind.

Since I’m a bad shopper this was a fun and painless way to buy her birthday gift. She ran around the store pulling out things she loved and I got to exercise veto power as needed. It’s hard to believe she’s only 8 because she shops like a pro even though we never go shopping in Abu Dhabi. Never. I’ve even figured out a way to have most of our groceries delivered.

Her brothers bought her a make your own lipgloss kit

and she’s been busy writing in her diary. She said she’d let me read some of it, but not her brothers (she picked this one over the others because it has a lock on it). We ate ice cream for dinner since no one was hungry after eating Trader Joe’s snacks all afternoon and then played cards to try to stay awake until 8. 

 Night-night glitter girl! I hope 8 is great.

I love traveling with Carter. He always seems to know exactly where to go, when certain paperwork is needed and everything goes smoothly when he’s along. He helped his little sister scan her passport and coached her through the eye scan (hold still, look up) as I was passing through the security gates myself. After boarding, he handed me the tickets and as I was about to tuck them away he reminded me, “leave them out. They are going to want to check them one more time at the door to the plane.” Of course. They always do. He organizes the tickets into the correct passports the way his dad always does, instead of using my system of bunching them all together and then fumbling through one by one, always getting the one I need on the last attempt.

In Amsterdam he zeroed in on our next gate, leading the way and checking the boarding times. He’s always my gate finder, zone seating rememberer, and carrier of any extra bags. With him doing the navigating all I have to do is make sure we all stick together and keep everyone fed. When I stopped to get a bottle of water, he followed, handing me a boarding pass at just the right moment because I always forget that they need to scan my ticket when I buy something at Duty Free. Generally I get denied and then am irritated because I have to go back to our seats and dig it out of my bag or I just don’t buy it at all.

When we finally arrived in LAX we had 3 hours to get our bags and clear customs before checking in for our Southwest flight to San Jose. We were fast off the plane and then Carter steered us right toward the diplomatic line for customs and we breezed through for the last time with those black passports. Once we picked up our luggage we had to hike all the way to Terminal 1 from international. Right as Josh was texting me this info Carter told me, “we need to go upstairs to departures and then walk over.” I don’t know how his internal GPS knows the right way to go, but it works.

Once we made it to domestic we had to pass through security again and every one of our backpacks was pulled for extra screening because we had left our computers inside. There were no signs and the guy told us to take off our shoes, but nothing else. I explained to the lady that we were sorry, but we didn’t know because every airport is different. The screening lady rolled her eyes and sneered, “At every airport in America, TSA requires that electronics be screened separately. You should know that.” Maybe, but I’ve only flown domestic one time in the last 8 years and as Carter pointed out later, “Even Uganda has signs about their electronics policy and they really don’t care.” Truth.

At the end of the summer our plan is for Carter to fly Camille and Caleb back to Abu Dhabi solo and I have no worries about how they will fare with him in charge. They are less likely to get lost with him leading the way than with me.

Finally on our last leg after about 24 hours of travel. So happy to finally be in California. Only 1 hour of flying left!

Hello, California coastline! We flew following the 101, the same as if we were driving, but at 6xs the speed. After arriving in CA we were supposed to pick up the rental car that Josh had reserved for us, but issues arose and I found myself without a way to get 4 people, 4 backpacks and 6 suitcases all the way to Santa Cruz.

Thankfully I had enough mental reserves to figure out (after considering several options) that the easiest way would be to call an Uber. Of course, I don’t have Uber on my phone anymore since it’s illegal in Abu Dhabi and my phone kept failing on my attempted downloads. I deleted a few apps (bye Netflix!) to make space and it worked on the 3rd try.

Then it took 3 tries to get a car that would take us all the way to Aptos and have room for our luggage (sorry Prius, that’s a no-go), but bless the guy in the Hyundai that made it all fit and dropped us off at Apple Lane 75 minutes later. Thankfully the kids were champs throughout it all and patiently sat on the curb while I sorted out the transportation problem. When we finally made it home I dropped the luggage and crawled in bed. I thought I’d be feeling victorious, but that last change of plans took all of what was left of my adrenaline.

Unfortunately when you fall asleep at 7, you wake up at 4 am looking like this:

We were up with the chickens and they had breakfast waiting for us. Sweet home California!