Summertime Blues.....

So what are we doing to combat the summertime blues since we're stuck inside all of the time?!

HAVING PARTIES and pretending we're like Martha Stewart!

Here's 2 new recipes we made this past week for a dinner party.  The cupcakes are in July's edition of Martha Stewart Living and the Chicken and peaches recipe can be found here at the Food Network.  It's actually for pork, but works the same with chicken. I added the grilled peaches myself and man are they mmmm, mmmm, good!

Look at the cute cupcakes. Min actually did all of the hard work of making the cupcakes. They were a pretty long process. It makes a lot, though so you could really cut the recipe in half. 

We used American flag papers. Yup, proud to be an American. 

 

They were a chocolate chip cookie cupcake.  You actually made choc. chip cookie dough and put it on the bottom before you poured the cupcake batter on.  Then they baked together.  

 

Martha has it that you make baby choc. chip cookies to decorate on top, but we also wanted to decorate with these cute watermelons and limes.  Some of the fun things we brought back from home!

What else.....

What else did we do while we were home.  Saw friends from NC right near Fenway.  We also went to a Red Sox game at Fenway but I don't have the pictures from that yet.  We'll get them.  I'll keep emailing my poor sister-in-law everyday until we have them. I think we got some really really fun pictures there of our crew.

 

We were in small group with both of these couples.  Holly and David (David had to go back to work) and Erin and Michael both moved up to Boston after moved to Palestine.  It's fun to connect with them when we go for a visit.  Erin was essentially in labor that day at lunch, so this is probably their last picture with "just the 3 of them" in a photo.  She's a trooper. 

We are the world.....

Last night at the hospital, we held an International Dinner for our staff.  Everyone had a lot of fun getting dressed up in their traditional dress, watching performances and eating food from all around the world.  Oasis Hospital is very much a family-like atmosphere so we always have a good time when you get us together. 

3 Americans.  I probably could have done a better job of dressing "American" but a white polo and jeans seems pretty American to me.

PJ and Ruel.  2 fun guys from Oasis Hospital.

The crew in their "wear".

This was a traditional Filipino Dance.  All of the performers did a great job and it was so fun to see some traditional dance from the Philippines and India.

Back to life, back to reality.....

So we're back in Al Ain and getting back into a normal pattern again.  Jet lag takes so long to get over--at least for me.  I'm not one of those people that can just slip back into a normal sleep pattern.  It always takes me about a week and I loved getting to sleep in yesterday and today.  The first few days back to work always feel like someone drugged you or you got run over by a truck. Seriously.  

Home was TOO good and so fun.   I spent a week at my parents, then went to Massachusetts to Trey's family, my sisters and saw friends.  Then back to my parents for the end.  I didn't really take many pictures....I was horrible about it this time so I don't really have any to post, but it was a great trip.  I have some fun pictures of my sister-in-laws baby shower and our trip to the Red Sox game....those are coming. 

We saw our Gordon friends.  We get together for a weekend every summer but this year we just did a day-thing.  So fun as more kids come each year and we catch up on life with one another.  One of these times, we're ditching the kids so we have grown up conversations without chaos around the room.  (Cleary, I'm the one without kids!  Promise, their kids are cute, but you only get to have 1/3 of a conversation usually and then something happens.)

I left beautiful 80 degree beautiful weather and came back to 115.  Not nice.  Not very welcoming.  Makes you want to hop back on a plane.  But it's where we live for now, so we try to cope with by having lots of parties and making the indoors fun! I brought back all sorts of things so that we could host fun parties this summer and make the heat go by quickly.

America, America.....

Oh man, I love being in America.  We're having fun!  It's been a great 2 weeks so far.  I leave in 8 days.  The weather has been good overall, warmer than normal but sunny and we've been outside a lot which has been nice. 

Last week I was in PA seeing my family and some friends.  Then this week we're in Massachusetts with Trey's family and to see some friends and my sister.  Trey's bro Jared, graduated from high school last night which was great. 

We've been b-b-q'ing every night.  Riding bike. Taking long walks. Shopping...and more shopping!  Maybe we should move home for every summer......whatya say?!