Author: Robin Chartier

Last night we went to the International Day celebration at TAISM (which I will post photos of tomorrow), but this post is all about Camille and her camel love. Since camels are her favorite animal, when we saw that they had camels available to ride, Josh and I thought we’d give it a shot.

Look mama! Camels!

She wanted to make sure everyone was as excited as she was:
Do you see?! Camels!

checking them out . . .

They’re coming! 

Seriously, she was so excited she could hardly stand it. Josh and I were cracking up. 

Since Carter refused to ride (I guess once you’ve ridden a camel, the novelty is gone), our neighbor Chloe volunteered to take Camille for us. 

And . . . there it is. The screaming and crying for mama. I have to admit when the camel gets up, he pitches forward and back and it is kind of scary. Even Chloe was afraid she was going to fall off. 

But then with some minor encouragement (namely me, shrieking “camel! camel!” that you hear in the background of this video — my poor ears) she settled in and started to enjoy it. 

I love this camel face

The camel love is still alive.

Then it was Caleb’s turn to ride with our Flat Stanley (the paper in Caleb’s hand). 

Flat Stanley is a paper guy/doll that a class will send to different location around the world. Stanley “visits” and comes back with pictures and information about the place he visited and all the fun things he did. 

We made sure Stanley had a great time. 

If you’re related to me, you heard the news yesterday that we won’t be traveling home this summer. You know that whole US budget problem thing that has been happening for a while now? Yeah, it affects us too. Hydroponic plant, hydroponic plant . . . taking my roots wherever I go . . .

Moving on. We are excited about living in Bahrain and the idea of taking extra time to explore the capital city of Manama instead of hurrying back to the states is appealing. Maybe not as appealing as relaxing in my parents’ backyard surrounded by my favorite Trader Joe’s foods while petting my cat, but whatever.

And by going directly to Bahrain, we won’t suffer a temperature shock like we would if we were in 115 degree humidity, then spent time enjoying California’s lovely 75-80 degree days and then had to go back to 115 degree humidity. It will be much easier not having to adjust to those sorts of temperature swings. It’s practically providential.

Another bonus? Those pesky goodbyes. Since we won’t be going home to visit, we won’t have to say goodbye to everyone as we leave again. This change of plans is looking better and better all the time!

If you really know me, you know that this is all tongue in cheek and after the initial surprise wore off (Hey honey, guess what? We’re actually not going home this summer!), I can truly say that I am content. One of my favorite quotes is from the 1995 award winning film,* The Brady Bunch Movie, where Mike Brady tells the kids that they don’t need to worry about losing their house because “wherever you go, there you are.” That’s how I feel about things. As long as I’m happy with who I am and happy with my family, it doesn’t matter where we live or where we’re sent.

*award given by me in the category of Best Parody of The Brady Bunch

Of course it would be nice to go back to America and see all of our friends and family, and it would be nice to have the family reunions we were hoping to plan, but we don’t know enough about where we’re going to anticipate what will be nice about this new development. And who knows? We may get word next week that makes this change of plans null and void. Aren’t you glad that you have me in your life to keep things exciting?

I was at a women’s conference last weekend on the book of Ruth and during a “get to know you” time around our table everyone was sharing where they were from and how long they’ve lived in Oman. I shared that we had been here almost a year and were moving to Bahrain this summer. Hearing that, one of the women was surprised that we were here for such a short time and asked how long we’d be in Bahrain. She seemed a little worried that we were only planning to be there for two years. Then my friend added that Oman was just one stop in a long string of moves, including our extremely short time in Egypt. To that she responded, “My goodness! You’ve been uprooted for a long time!”

I figured out how to play Netflix on my Macbook for baby while I read and blog on the other half of the screen. The last few days she’s been saying “TV? TV?” and pointing at the screen. Since I don’t know how to work the TV and it is currently stuck on snow (don’t ask — it has 3 remotes that all do different things, it’s hooked up to Arabic satellite, the computer, and the sound runs through our stereo, and since I can’t watch Project Runway or Top Chef on it, it’s as good as dead to me) the TV is out of commission until Josh comes home.

But I realized that I could open a window in Chrome and start Netflix, then resize the window to make it smaller and open a resized Safari window. She gets to watch in the top left corner, I get to play in the bottom right. We snuggle and are both happy.

a screenshot — technology love

On the Netflix homepage she says “up? up? up?” as she asks me to keep scrolling through the shows. She settled on Shaun the Sheep, which is perfect because there isn’t any mindless kid-show dialogue to endure, just claymation-style animation with music and sheep sounds every once in a while. It’s cute, funny, and not annoying. win. win. win.

snuggled on my special chair — everyone is happy

Mama’s girl now loves coffee, chocolate, and TV. I’m so proud. She also loves music, but I can’t take credit for that one. That’s all daddy.