The American Ambassador

Kurdistan....

2011-11-23T09:19:00.000-05:00

2 weeks ago, we had the opportunity to go to Kurdistan which is in the northern part of Iraq and it was a fabulous trip. Last year, a little girl came to the hospital from Kurdistan to have surgery on her club foot. It was great to follow up with her and to meet her family. Kurdistan reminded me a lot of Palestine and we really enjoyed our time with the people there.

A couple doctors from Oasis went along, too. It was freezing but a nice change.

The kids loved Trey and appreciated the fact that he was willing to wrestle with them.


Warshin is the girl in the front. Her personality is so different from when we first met her before her surgery. It's great to see how a change like this can make such a positive impact.

The whole family and a few others.

The mountains in the back were towards Iran and had snow on them. It was so beautiful to see.

They gave us traditional Kurdish clothing. They had them made just for us.

It's a beautiful day.....

2011-11-19T02:32:00.000-05:00

I'm been absent a bit on here due to a crazy schedule AND nice weather! Yes...the nice weather is finally here, folks! And we're taking full advantage of the fact that the evenings are cool and the sun doesn't burn off the top layer of your skin anymore. So we've been outside as much as possible.

We've had a lot going on these last 2-3 weeks but it's all been good and fun stuff that I'll update the blog with over the course of this week. I was doing so well updating on a regular basis but then I got out of the habit and it's hard to get back into it. I know that I'll be glad to have these updates some day to help me remember our days in the UAE. So here goes the first quick update of the week.

1) We threw a birthday party for our pastor at our house. It was nice to have the church folk over and of course to eat foods from all around the world since everyone brought something to share.

2) Min and I started golf lessons here at the Rugby, horse and golf club. We had our first lesson last Monday and are excited for our 2nd one. He said we're naturals! Just kidding...but by the end, we'll be ready to join the beginners tournament, I hope!

Golfing....

2011-10-31T05:55:00.000-05:00

On Saturday night for a hospital social activity, we took the staff to a local driving range.

Don't I look like I know what I'm doing?!

It was so nice and green out there.

This is probably not a good way to drive golf balls--2 people to a section.

Probably some serious injuries could happen...not probably...surely.

I always enjoy going to the driving range at home on summer evenings.

I think Min and I might start taking lessons.

All had a good time and enjoyed being outside as much as I did!

Min getting ready for the next UAE Women's Golf Pro tour!

You take the good, you take the bad.....

2011-10-30T12:02:00.000-05:00

I feel like I finally have my LIFE back! The summer sucks every bit of energy, life, happy mood, etc out of you. But now the weather is back to normal temperatures and the nights are perfect. We've been outside as much as we can be. This weekend we spent a lot of time outside (more to come on that in later blog posts) and we've been back at the pool in full force.

Tonight Min and I went for a walk outside and then headed to the pool for night swimming. It's quiet in the evenings, they have pretty lights on the trees around the pool and the hot tub is always on! Mmmm..I love it!

So what have we been up to since being back from the States?

Apparently I've been learning how to put on an abaya. I forgot about this photo and just found it tonight when I was downloaded all the pictures from my camera. Some women wear this kind where it is one piece and the thingy goes on your head, too. Sort of like those baby bath towels that have the head part built in. We went to visit our friend in Oman and her mom just started putting it on me one day before we left. Always fun to try.

And our grill cover came back home...on its own! I don't know how or what...but it was a miracle. It flew off the grill by itself in one of those crazy sandstorms in late August. We thought that we were going to have to buy another one. Then one day, we walked outside of our gate and there it was! Ta-daaaa!! Woop woop! Trey called it an Eid miracle. My hair in this pictures sure looks like an Eid miracle, too. I think that "sand storm" was still blowing or something.

And last weekend, we got invited to one of the UAE teams football (soccer) matches in Abu Dhabi. It was nice because we got to sit in the VIP section. I don't think that I would go if I couldn't....only because the spectators are ALL men. No problem. We did it in Palestine. But no need to do it here. It was fun, though and again...great to be outside! There was an air conditioned part with nice chairs and big windows looking out onto the field, but we wanted to be outside. I tried to wear team colors as you can see....always trying to be the best spectator:) It was a lot of fun. I hope that we can go again. I think we're going to try to find a way to get ourselves invited to a game here in Al Ain. I don't know how, but I'll try:)

Check, check, check.....

2011-10-23T08:10:00.000-05:00

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and we have been busy with events for the community.

We hosted an event at the local mall, at a local college for women, for some of our VIP patients and then this weekend we have a Breast Cancer Walk. Our slogan is "Get Fit, Fight Cancer" so we are trying to encourage exercise and a healthy lifestyle.

It's been a good month of education for myself and for those in the community.

Here are some nurses from the hospital along with my co-worker Debbie. We had nurses at each event to teach women how to self breast examinations and answer any questions that they might have.

We're all about the presents and prizes at events. We were donated gift certificates to hotels to give out as prizes. We also bought some gifts to give out at each event. We got them pedometers, little make up bags with the pink ribbon and a pretty towel that has our hospital logo on it. Everyone loves getting gifts and winning a prize! As you can see, we also bought pink boas and pink scarves that I found at the $1 section of Target for our staff to wear at each event. Puts us in the mood and keeps things fun!

Friday....

2011-10-21T07:27:00.001-05:00

I love Fridays. It's the first day of our weekend and it usually involves some type of relaxing, going to the grocery store, getting coffee, cooking/baking something and visiting friends.

I did almost all of those things today but we're off to visit friends now in our town and then across the border in the city/town of Buraimi. Should be fun.

This is what I did this afternoon. I love baking to give it away to friends.

I wanted to bake:
1) for our friends that we are visiting
2) because it is Fall and we MUST make pumpkin things
3) I want to give some away at work. People like trying new things and I like making it for them so it is a good partnership!

That is pumpkin bread, pumpkin choc. chip bars, gingersnap cookies and another kind of bar cookie. They are all so quick to make that you can whip them up while the other is baking.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Pumpkin Cookies....

2011-10-18T10:12:00.000-05:00

I post this recipe every Fall and a couple people have been asking me about it. I got this back in 2005 from friends at Duke and it's been a family favorite every since! If you haven't made them, do it! You won't be sorry....unless of course you hate pumpkin...and even those of you who hate pumpkin, should try these. The cooked icing will make you just want to lick the icing off of every cookie. I haven't made them yet, but I need to very, very soon. They're calling my name.

Pumpkin Cookies with a warm Vanilla Icing

¾ c. butter Cream together the first 3 ingredients then add:

1 c. brown sugar

1 c. sugar

Add 2 tsp baking soda to 2 cups of pumpkin

Then add pumpkin mixture to butter mixture

Sift all dry ingredients together and then add to above mixture:

3 c. flour

3 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

½ tsp ginger—optional

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes

Frosting:

1 c. brown sugar

½ c. butter

½ c. cream or milk

Bring to a boil and remove from flame. Add ½ tsp vanilla. A pinch of salt and powder sugar until spreadable.

Add warm milk if thickens while standing.

I dip mine into the icing while it is still hot instead of spreading it onto the cookie.

Store cookies in refrigerator.

There is a season turn, turn, turn......

2011-10-17T11:30:00.001-05:00

I love Fall and I know that many of you do, too! I was glad to have the opportunity to spend some time back home with the cooler weather.

Now that I'm back, I am trying to play a mental game with myself and pretend it's Fall here, too! It is COOLER than before....but again, that is all relative.

But I did put my Fall wreaths out....and we finally got our picnic table out so that we can begin enjoying our winter evenings outside! That is the prettiest time here.

Sorry that the pictures are dark...it's night and I don't have a flash on this thing.

Take a look, it's in a book.....

2011-10-16T10:23:00.001-05:00

I am back in the UAE and officially over jet lag. It's always my goal to make it to the first weekend and then I can sleep in and let myself relax as much as I need to. It was a good weekend of visiting friends, relaxing and reading.

Yup, I said reading. If you know me, you know that reading isn't on my top list of past times. I'd rather be in the kitchen pretending I'm Martha Stewart. But my MIL gave me her copy of The Help for the plane and I just couldn't put it down! Every night I came home from work and read it...and read it. I loved it! I want to read more good books like that. Now, I just have to find them. Did you read it?!

Also, it's time for all things pumpkin and apple! I made pumpkin bread and pumpkin chocolate chip bars. I found them on my friend, Jen's blog. I think this pumpkin bread has been on her blog for the past couple years and I've made it ever since. It really is a good recipe.

You can find the recipe here. It's called Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread. I took it into work and people asked for the recipe. People who probably never made pumpkin bread in their life. It's that good. Although, I think almost anything pumpkin or apple is pretty darn good tasting in the fall.

Chestnuts roasting by an open fire....

2011-10-07T09:23:00.001-05:00

The other night it was pretty chilly so we lit our first fire of the season at my parents house. I wanted one before I went back. We needed trey the wood cutter to help us but we managed.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Who's your daddy......

2011-10-06T08:04:00.001-05:00

Who has a dad like Martha Stewart? I do! Yesterday I left him with the project of making me two fall wreaths for my front doors back in the U.A.E. I do what I can to make it feel like fall. I knew that he would do a better job than myself. Turned out fabulously. Can't wait to hang them up.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Salad.....

2011-10-05T07:37:00.001-05:00

The other night we were hungry and my mom and I were talking about what we wanted to eat. We decided to make a salad with grilled pears, warm goat cheese and toasted walnuts. Then I made a vinegarette with olive oil, balsamic, honey, orange juice and mustard.

Mmmmm, that was good.

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Introducing J.J. .......

2011-10-04T06:53:00.001-05:00

Last week I went up to Massachusetts to visit Treys family and to see the new baby in the family. J.J. Our new nephew was so stinkin' sweet. He loves his Auntie Jessie and just likes to be held. We went out for a walk on a beautiful day and took him to one of my favorite shops -- the Christmas Tree Shop which is where I get all of my fabulous junk for my parties.

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Tea for two....

2011-10-03T15:33:00.001-05:00

Last week I had my high school girlfriends and their moms over for tea. It was a really nice time and special that we have been friends for all these years.

We set the table like a real tea and made tea sandwiches and scones.

Fun times at home.

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Baby, baby.....

2011-09-28T07:27:00.001-05:00

Yesterday my roommate from college came down to visit. She is having her first baby girl in January so my mom and I showered her with some gifts. Lots of baby books and some other things. Books are the present that keep on giving year after year.

Then we made some good fall food. Apple crisp and squash risotto.

To grandmothers house we go......

2011-09-27T07:15:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, I went to visit my nana and pop pop. I do this on every trip.
I didn't get a photo with nana but I did with pop. He was sick so we ended put taking him to the doctor but we still made our traditional outting for breakfast.

Fall things.....

2011-09-26T05:49:00.001-05:00

I think i figured it out! I don't want to act like an old lady and stop learning how to do things so i had to google it after i posted my question.

A few things I love about the fall......

Pumpkin spice tea and pumpkin muffins.

More to come!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

2011-09-23T00:33:00.000-05:00

I'm off to the States tonight. It's good to get home so often. I can't wait to smell the clean air and see the colors and feel cool weather! Sooooo excited.

I'll update while I'm home. Should be a really good time as always.

Trey will be here and of course everyone invites him over while I am gone because they feel badly for him. He'll enjoy the peace I'm sure. He said he has some things he wants to read while I'm gone and he'll probably make pasta 6 out of 7 days.

So excited but hate the long plane ride.

Give me 2 Pina Colada's.....

2011-09-20T11:17:00.000-05:00

We've had an empty space in our living room since we moved in. We kept thinking about what we wanted there but we finally found it. Some of my readers might not think it was a necessary piece for our house, but it is. We do a lot of entertaining and enjoy having a good time with friends.

We were looking one day and found a wine cabinet that we liked. The only problem was that it was open with no doors. With the amount of dust here, I could only imagine how dusty our wine glasses and bottles would have been. Until we found this one. We love it.

My parents bought this antique Whiskey/Scotch set for Trey last year in Boston when we were checking out some stores. It's beautiful and has an etched sailboat.

It even has wheels which means we can move it around the room as we'd like. There is a sliding glass door right next to it, so when it's cool outside, we can open up that door which goes out to the patio and position this just right so that people can come in and out and help themselves.

The thing I love is that the top counter opens up to make a longer bar-like thingy so you can use it a few ways. If we turn it around we could put some high stools by it.

And as you can see, above the new cabinet, we put a picture of Sheikh Zayed (the founder of the country). Man of the locals will have a picture of him in their home and so we thought we'd join along for fun.

Come on over. Drinks on us.

Show your support......

2011-09-17T05:12:00.000-05:00

Last night our Oasis guys football (soccer) team played against NYU Abu Dhabi campus. It was a blast and felt like we were actually going to watch a football game in the fall....minus the chill in the air, sweaters and blankets. We were sweating like crazy. Abu Dhabi is sooo humid compared to Al Ain.

A very small fan supporting his daddy.

The Oasis team showing their support for CURE International.

The CURE logo was on the back of their shirt.

We lost but I think everyone had fun all around. Considering we have a team with a mixed age range --some men have been married for a bit meaning that they have some bellies that probably weren't there when they were in college. NYU brought a large team so they had fresh players for both halves. We might need to do some Get In Shape boot camp for the Oasis team before the next game.

Shake, Rattle and Roll......

2011-09-15T00:59:00.000-05:00

Every morning since March, I make a fruit (with lettuce) shake for breakfast. I love my fruit shakes. They are easy, tasty and a good healthy breakfast.

This means that my blender gets lots of use. I bought a fancy, shmacy mixer when we moved here which has been well worth the money due to the amount of use that sucker gets from me, Trey and Melissa. One of us are always making something and especially on the weekend it probably gets tired.

This mixer has the blender attachment which worked like a dream....until one day it got tired. The motor works great but it won't turn the plastic thingy-ma-bob on the bottom of the glass container anymore. I tried to figure it out, but gave up because I realized that I had a blender attachment on my food processor.

Ever since oh probably June, I've been using the blender that goes onto my food processor (thank you Jenna--that thing also gets a ton of use!) . Then just this week, it decided to get tired, too. Not the food processor --that still works. Just the blender. The motor works great and even the plastic thingy-ma-bob that turns the blade, turns when I do it with my hand....but not when I put it on the base. What the heck.

I hate extra gadgets. I don't want to buy another blender. So I started using the food processor now. But the liquid shoots out the side sometimes which makes an agrivated girl when trying to get ready for work in the morning and you end up with mango-strawberry-romaine-lettuce water on yourself.

Anybody have this same problem? The motor on the actual gadget works. The blade turns when I do it by hand. It just won't work together when I put the glass blender canister on the base. Do I need to get the plasticy thing on the bottom replaced somehow?

So the shakes. What do we put in our shakes?

Romaine, spinach or another kind of lettuce I can find here
Frozen fruit such as mango and strawberries. Those are my favorite. I add blueberries sometimes too because they are so good for you but they can make the shake a bit "grainy" in my mind.
Banana--this smooths the shake out
Water. We tried coconut water but it didn't make any difference so I just do plain ol' water
(You could do yogurt, but I don't because I am trying to ditch dairy due to sinus stuff here and Trey doesn't really like yogurt.)

These boots were made for walkin.....

2011-09-14T04:05:00.000-05:00

So.....say you were going to buy cowboy boots. Even if you hate everything cowboy, just pretend for a second with me. Put a little Garth Brooks on and imagine..........

You could buy one pair. What would you choose?

Do you go the traditional brown leather route?

Or do you go the fun route and bust out the teal and Harley Davidson pattern? Really, it looks sort of like a pattern on a motorcycle...don't you agree?

Or do you play the line and go with a traditional style but a bit of a reddish boot?

My opinion was to go all out and get the teal boots.

I like it, I love it, I want some more of it......

2011-09-13T07:07:00.000-05:00

I think I'm the # 40,965th person sucked into Pinterest. Another time waster. It actually is a great site where you can save the things you love! I have already pinned so many ideas for decorating, recipes, etc. There are so many thing that I have found that I love on the internet and then I try to remember where I found it....and can't seem to find it......well now the problem is solved.

Why Pinerest is more valuable than Facebook:

You can still stalk people but all you are stalking is their ideas, not their family portraits, past boyfriends, latest gossip, etc.
It's keeps your mind active.....gives you new ideas of things to do......Facebook makes your mind stale. If you don't agree, your mind is probably already stale.
Keeps you organized for party planning.
I can already start planning out the inn.....thanks to Pinterest I can save linens, house styles, decorating tips, recipes, etc for my future Inn at the Sea.....what was the name again!?
You don't have to reinvent the wheel.....find someone elses idea you like and steal it.
I'm just a sucker for anything like this. I'm pretty sure Martha is, too.

Are you sold?

It takes some time.....

2011-09-12T06:49:00.002-05:00

So we've been in our house for oh let's say over a year. Most people probably would have put all their pictures on the wall, bought lamps, you know...the things that make it feel homey.

Well I was saving a few of those things for no apparent reason. This weekend I decided that I wanted to stay in and get em' done. I borrowed our neighbors drill and got to it. Here is Home Depot Girl above--in her special outfit. Please ignore it. I had just gone to Zumba and was feeling extra energetic and wanted to finish the projects before the work week started.

I fixed up the office a bit (which also doubles as a spare bedroom and storage) and bought lamps. It's amazing what lamps will do to create a good atmosphere. I'm sad that I haven't had them over the last year....but you know, I got over it quickly.

Rain down on me.....

2011-09-11T10:49:00.000-05:00

IT RAINED YESTERDAY!

Trey came home and said "It's about to rain." I didn't really believe him because usually it rains about 1 second and stops.

Then I heard it. I took a look. Then I kept hearing it. I took another look. It was legitimately pouring. I ran outside for a photo to prove it to you!

It smelled like rain. It looked like it in the sky. The air felt like it. It was just how it should be. Then my husband told me to step outside into the rain for a better picture...and I almost took a digger as you can see from my face above.

It was a great day at 4:00pm on Saturday!

New Hospital Update.....

2011-09-08T03:40:00.000-05:00

The new hospital is really coming along! It's going to open up next spring and we are all excited to see the doors open. I want to show you some photos so that you can see the progress along with us.

I went to visit another hospital here in town last night. Oh man, I think our current hospital and new hospital feel so cozy and warm compared to that place. It felt so institutional and like a hospital from WWII or something. I hope I never need to go there. Ship me back to America.

Our new hospital should be fabulous. State of the art equipment. State of the art medical and administration staff:) A coffee shop. All the things a hospital should have. The start of the "ski jump" looking design piece at the entrance has been started. Can't wait to see this finished.

The clincs are in the lower building to the left.

I am working on volunteer teams who will help us move from our current hospital into the new hospital. Also, I get to work on the interior decorating stuff which I love. It's been so fun.

We'll keep you updated.

Grease Lightning....

2011-09-07T12:58:00.001-05:00

I've never really had a desire for oil in my hair....UNTIL NOW! My hair is falling out in clumps here. It's sort of gross and I talked about it to my sister-in-law the other day. She said hers does the same and that other American women were saying the same. What in the world?! Is this normal in a very dry climate or do you think it is something bad in the water?

It's normal for some hair to fall out each day and especially when you wash it. I understand. Yup. Normal. I'm thankful for a full head of thick hair which helps make me not so nervous about this situation, but if we live here for even 2 more years, I might start having"thin" hair.

So the Indians may have some good tips here. They do weekly hot oil treatments. Any suggestions what might help me out here? Has anyone ever had this problem back home or know a hair dresser with some good suggestions?

If this post grosses you out, sorry. It's reality here and I need help.

Happy Labor Day.....

2011-09-05T06:51:00.000-05:00

HAPPY LABOR DAY

to all those back home.

Hope you have a great day being outside and eat at least 1 hamburger.

We labored at work today. I even forgot it was Labor Day weekend at home.

I think I'll go make burgers on the grill.

Chowda'

2011-09-04T09:58:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was dreaming about having clam chowda' while sitting outside by the water in New England on a warm summers night.....

But then I came back to reality and realized that I was stuck in the desert where the weather is one bajillion degrees still....and I'm afraid to eat clams from here (what do they know about clams!?).....and it's nothing like New England.

So I made Chicken Corn Chowda'. And I did say it like that. How can you really get into the moment if you don't say chowda' properly. The recipe is from a New England friend and she got it out of an old New England cookbook so it felt pretty close.

So here's the recipe for you.

1 to 1 1/4 pounds bone-in chicken breast
2 cups water

1 rib celery, cut up
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp salt
-milk (see directions)
1/4 c butter
1/2 c diced onion
1 c diced celery
2 tbsp flour
2 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 (17 ounce) can cream-style corn
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp pepper

Combine chicken, water, celery, bay leaf and salt in 3-quart saucepan. Bring to boil; reduce heat and simmer, covered, until chicken is tender, about 25 minutes. Remove chicken from brother' cool, discard bones. Dice chicken; set aside. Strain broth; add enough milk to make 3 cups; set aside. Melt butter in 3-quart saucepan; saute onion and celery until soft but not brown. Blend in flour, gradually stir in milk mixture. Add potatoes; simmer until tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Stir in chicken, corn, salt, and pepper; heat through. Garnish with chives.

Fiesta Bunco Night......

2011-09-03T07:07:00.001-05:00

We had a blast at our Fiesta Bunco Night last evening! I think everyone else would agree with me.

So everyone is asking, "What is Bunco?" It's a dice game that is super easy to play with anybody and everybody. You play 4 sets and in set are 6 rounds. So in the first round, your goal is to roll 1's on the 3 dice, in round 2 you want to roll 2's, in round 3 you want to roll 's.....get it?! Pretty easy, right? Then, for example, if you are in round 4 (the round where you are trying to get 4's on the dice) and you roll 3 4's on the dice (there are only 3 dice) than you get a BUNCO.

Are you with me? There are 3 tables with 4 people sitting at each table. So 12 people total. There is a Kings table, a middle table and losers table. Depending on if you lose that round or win, you move up and down to the different levels of tables. Alright, that's enough. Google it or go buy and throw a Bunco party for your friends if you want to know more! It's fun and easy. Promise.

Now comes the Fiesta part! We had a salsa contest. Each party member had to bring a home made salsa of their choice. We had 3 categories that we voted on.

The best overall salsa
The hottest salsa
The best tomato-less salsa

We even had a picture corner with all sorts of props.

And there's always a few characters in the group....... meet Ty and Cheryl. A sweet couple from Connecticut. Ty reminds us of Trey's dad and is also making comments that crack us up.

Then it was time to announce our winners! There were Bunco winners and Salsa winners. Crazy Ty above won the best overall salsa, and senorita Cheryl above won the most Buncos. They were the happy winners of a TRIP TO MEXICO. Just kidding. But they did go home with a portable grill and cooler. I would say that they are ready for a fun winter b-b-q at a park. Poor Brent--the guy with the toilet paper on the right. He could not get away from the LOSER's table at Bunco. But since he had the most losses, he too won a prize.

Min has been working on making this pinata for a while. It was a fun way to end the party. Who doesn't like pretending they're back at their friend Susie's birthday party from 4th grade?!

Mexican Bunco Night.....

2011-09-02T09:07:00.001-05:00

Tonight we are hosting a BUNCO night at our house! I am so excited because I haven't played this in a long time. And we have a Fiesta theme to go along with it.

Some pictures of our getting ready.

The pinata getting stuffed.

We did all kinds of fun colors of cupcakes.

Bunco and Salsa winner prizes.

The picture corner. I hope to show you some fun pictures tomorrow.

The die and timer.

Picture corner.

The buffet is ready for the salsa competition. Bring it on.

On the road again....

2011-09-01T00:33:00.000-05:00

I think I have seen almost every part of the city of Al Ain these past few days when we have been visiting for Eid. Each year on both Eid's (Eid Al Fitr and Eid Al Adha) we will visit long time friends and patients of the hospital. We had about 14 women go visiting from our staff. We are like the UN when we go visiting (Hungary, India, New Zealand, Philippines, America, Argentina, Iraq, Jordan and others that I"m probably missing).

We also visit the Shiekha's. Sh. Zayed founded this country so essentially we visit some of his wives, daughter-in-laws and kids. It's pretty fun going into those huge palaces-- but man, they should just give me a week and I would help them decorate a bit. Decorating is not everyone's forte here.

One thing Min and I were laughing about last night is imaging if our family all lived in a compound together. Here, once you get married, you live with your husbands family. On the compound could be your in-law's, their parents, your husbands sisters who didn't marry yet --or who might never marry, an aunt who maybe lost her husband and decides to live with you, servants, maybe a chicken and I'm sure there would be a few others in there.

So that would put me in a compound with my husband, Trey's parents, his granny and her husband, his Aunt Louyse, brother Jared, possibly Virginia's dad and the dog Luke. I'm not sure how that would go down......family, what do you think?!

Min and I were also sure that there would be a garage full of everyone's junk. We're all good at collecting things.

Think about your family doing this?! Does it make you laugh....or cry?!

It's the end of the......

2011-08-29T14:03:00.000-05:00

Ramadan ended this evening. We are now into the celebratory time of Eid. The roads are packed this evening (I can hear the beeping cars outside of our house) and everyone is getting ready to celebrate.

This means:

We get to go visiting a lot of friends of the hospital over the next couple days. It's sort of a like a marathon and we will drink more tea, fresh juice and some things which we might know, in one day than we have probably had in the last few weeks.
We can drink again out in plain site. Woop woop. It's hot here and carrying around a water bottle is necessary.
Places to get coffee in the morning or middle of the day will be open again! Even though we don't do this every day, it's just nice to know it's there if I am feeling extra sleepy in the office.
Sad part: Our 6 hour work days are over. We go back to a normal day after the Eid holiday is over. Sad, sad, sad. It's enjoyable to go to the pool for the afternoon or to leave work early and take a nap. It's sort of a like a whole month of afternoon vacation days. Well, until next year.....

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood....

2011-08-28T08:00:00.000-05:00

So it sounds like all you peeps back on the east coast might be feeling like this right now.....

I sort of wish we were there. It feels like a snow storm on tv. We're getting such as much coverage on CNN International as you probably are. That's all there is! No other news. My favorite are the reporters that are standing in 2 inches of water or who are half blowing over to prove to us that there is a hurricane on the east coast.

On the other hand, we over here are still melting.

It was still 47 degrees C on our car temperature gauge today.

A friend told us the other day that it would be cool in about 3 or 4 days. Hmmm,

I'm having a hard time believing here. Either she's A) Optimistic, B) we think "cool"

means something different, or C) all the heat did something to her brain

and she doesn't know what she is saying anymore:)

So this what we feel like....

It's the end of the season and I'm almost fully melted.

You put the lime in the coconut.....

2011-08-27T04:07:00.000-05:00

Have you ever been looking so forward to a recipe that you have wanted to make for a while.....you make it and it turns out EXACTLY how you expected it to be. Then it makes you want to shout "I'm an amazing cook!". Yeah, well that happened this morning. Honestly, the opposite happens sometimes, too. Or maybe you're a bit more humble and never say those kind of things.

You ready for what Min and I made for our Saturday morning breakfast?!

COCONUT CRUSTED BANANA BREAD

A breakfast restaurant could be successful on this recipe alone.....well and in my humble opinion, some eggs benedict.

Are you ready for the rather easy recipe?

First you need to get your butt of the couch and make

yourself some chocolate chip banana bread. Any recipe.

You can make your grandmothers recipe that your family has been making since 1875,

you could steal from Betty Crocker or you could invent your own.

But don't let yourself cut it the night before. It's a bad idea.

Then you just want to eat the banana bread all alone.

Slice your loaf up

Get your pan ready with a bit of butter and some cooking spray

Put the coconut out on a plate.

Whip up an egg mixture of eggs and milk.

Start dipping your bread into the egg mixture like regular french toast.

Then bath it in coconut and start frying it until it is golden brown.

Can't you just taste it now?!

If you're good at multi-tasking while cooking, I recommend

you make these caramelized bananas to go on top.

It was a bit rich but well worth it. C'mon, that's what the gym is for.

Put some butter in a pan and add brown sugar. I just kept adding butter

and oh a little more butter until the consistency was what I liked.

Then I threw in the bananas and let them get a little soft and that was it.

Make your french toast all pretty on a plate so that you feel like

you are eating breakfast at the Ritz Carlton, light some candles,

get your coffee and start filling your plate......

Can you taste it!? Every bite was as delicious as it looks.

EVERY BITE!

The watermelon crawl.....

2011-08-26T09:00:00.000-05:00

What do you do on Friday night at 5pm?

Enjoy a watermelon martini. Delcious-o! I know it's Friday morning for you all back at home and you wish you could be having this right now.....but soon it will be 5:00pm for you, too.

Grab yourself a watermelon and ice on the way home -- pull the alcohol out of the cabinet--throw it into the blender and enjoy yourself a good drink.

We're off to an Iftar dinner this evening at a friends house. Ramadan will be over next week which means we can drink water again on the street but our we go back to normal work hours. That is the hardest part.

Goin' to the zoo, zoo, zoo.....

2011-08-25T01:08:00.002-05:00

On Sunday night when we returned home, this is what we found on the chalkboard in our kitchen from Min. Apparently, we live in a zoo. Poor girl. Drinking the Pioneer Woman's iced coffee in our fridge for those things is worth it! I'm just sayin', the iced coffee from Pioneer Woman's blog is so fabulous. What she says lasts her 3 weeks, lasted us 1. I never used to drink coffee. Now I'm addicted. I'm trying to do half decaf, half regular to eventually get myself to mostly decaf and then nothing by winter. The heat makes you so exhausted here that you need some caffeine to keep going.

Anyway, on to the above chalkboard.

1) Min had to get the cleaning team from the hospital to come clean up the dead cat. She was so freaked out by herself that she couldn't do it. I'm with her! She said she went inside while they were deciding how to get it. It was in our courtyard area by the hose. Maybe it was looking for water. All you cat lover, don't think about it. I'm not a cat lover so it's easy for me not to think about it:) She keeps making the face of what it looked like and I just can't stop laughing.

2) Cockroaches. Unfortunately they are reality here. Not the kind that you get from being dirty. These are the big suckers that come through the pipes if you don't flush your toilets daily or use the drains. So when we go away we have to spray stuff and then plug up the drains. By the time we get back, the water in the toilet is all dried up due to the heat! That even happens sometimes in our guest bathroom if we haven't used it in a while. I try to make a conscience effort to flush it each day because I don't want to see any animals in my house but if I forget, sometimes I have a dried up toilet and then I tip toe around the bathroom to make sure that I don't see any cockroaches. If I do, you'll hear me! I just start yelling and Trey just starts walking towards the special spray immediately to save the day.

3) Lizard. Hmm....I don't see many of them so I don't know where that came from...but it was outside on our porch. Hopefully it is eating all of the other bugs that I don't want in the house.

All of that deserved the iced coffee in the fridge. Min, you can have our iced coffee anytime!

More of Italy.....

2011-08-24T06:21:00.002-05:00

Here are a few more pictures for you of our time in Rome and Tuscany. You will see picture of me below at a vineyard with a speaker. We went to this one vineyard that was sponsored by Bose and had speakers all over playing classical music. He really believes that it helps the grapes and that the wine tastes different. I think he's been on Good Morning America or something like that. He said that he has talked a lot about it in the US. Pretty interesting. We thought it tasted good....we bought 2 bottles. There are a few wines that only come from that region of Italy so we wanted to be sure to get a couple bottles to have.

I see trees of green......

2011-08-23T09:31:00.000-05:00

We are home and getting back into the swing of life again after vacation. Isn't is hard to jump back into reality immediately? Man, I was used to sleeping in and staying up late, taking a nap if I wanted to, drinking espresso twice a day, eating gelato when we felt like it, a good glass of wine with our dinner.....oh the life of vacation!

I wanted to post some of our HDR pictures that Trey took while we were there. Enjoy the view of the countryside, beautiful hills and churches of Italy.

I think Italy is a place I could live and a language that I could learn. Anybody else with me?! People were fabulous, the food is good, so much history, beautiful scenery, good shopping....oh I could go on and on.

Who Says You Can't Come Home

2011-08-21T12:07:00.000-05:00

It is nice to go away but, it is always good to come home to your own bed! I will be posting some good pictures as the week goes along each day.
On my way home now- just getting on my connecting flight!

Knock You Naked Brownies from the Pioneer Woman

2011-08-20T01:00:00.001-05:00

Min made these brownies from the Pioneer Woman. And they truly are delicious. Check out the recipe and trust me these are worth all the small steps it takes to make them! Here's the almost final product... they still needed the powdered sugar layer!

In a Small Town

2011-08-19T05:28:00.000-05:00

As John Mellencamp would say "I can breathe in a small town"! This small town we are staying in is such a breath of fresh air! Here it is, just some people hanging out in town, the pace of life is perfect here! I am still waiting for a grandma to invite me to cook with her... no one in sight yet.

Look at these people out for a stroll in the afternoon! Drinking espresso and eating gelato- I don't think I would ever get sick of this stuff.

We really are having a fun time together, as if there is ever a boring moment with Trey!

And here I am in front of this pretty, old church, taking advantage of the wireless internet. And yes, it's from the Ipad 2 that Trey gave me before we went home in June. You really should get one! They are so much fun.

"I wish I was a little bit taller, I wish I was a baller..."

2011-08-18T02:17:00.005-05:00

We made it to Trevi Fountain and I threw my coin and made my wish. And, no I didn't actually wish to be taller but, Trey may have wished he was a baller. I don't know, after all you aren't suppose to make your wish out loud or it won't come true!

When in Rome Do as the Romans

2011-08-17T02:16:00.004-05:00

We found a bit of wirless internet! While the Colosseum was not on my list of things I wanted to see in Italy, it should have been. Look at how beautiful it is. The construction of the Colosseum began in 72AD and still it stands in the center of Rome.

The structure was capable of seating around 50,000 spectators at one time. While today there are no gladiator shows happening, at it's peak the Colosseum was used for public entertainment hosting plays and even executions!

According to legend, the ancient Olympic Games were founded by Heracles; the Roman Hercules, a son of Zeus.

Now, bare with me for a moment...

I told you I live in a dream world sometimes...

What do you think? Think I could have been in the ancient Roman Olympics?

This guy might have had a better chance than me!

Cowboy Take Me Away

2011-08-16T08:16:00.000-05:00

Here are Trey and I in the airport! The hot summer weather and Ramadan (this month while Muslims are fasting) was a perfect time to get away for a vacation.

The day before we left for vacation Trey surprised me with a present. Look at this beautiful necklace that he found at a cool jewelry store here!

Burnin' Rubber

2011-08-15T09:02:00.014-05:00

You know how in New England we put snow tires on our cars for the winter months and then change them back to regular tires when the snow all melts away? Well, a similar thing happens here. Because the roads get so hot our tires have to be changed more frequently. Our car went to get new tires and check these things out!

Only problem is- we got the car back and there was this huge oil footprint in the passenger side of the car. Now, about 4 weeks ago our car was detailed and all cleaned up! It made me so happy. I guess next time it should be new tires then the detailing!

On to better things- this granola recipe from Min's college friend! Let's call it The Best Granola You Have Ever Tasted In Your Whole Entire Life- is that too dramatic?

The Best Granola You Have Ever Tasted in Your Whole Entire Life (for short we can use the first letters TBGYHETYWEL):

1 cup oats

1 cup wheat germ

1 cup oat bran

1 cup coconut

1 cup sesame seeds

1 cup flax seed

1 cup flax seed meal

sprinkle cinnamon and vanilla over all ingred.

1 cup honey

1 cup canola oil

Throw all that stuff in a bowl and give it a good mix!

Bake at 300 for 40 mins on a jelly roll pan. Smell the vanilla and cinnamon filling your kitchen- it smells like you are baking a cake!

I also added almonds, dried blueberries and dried cranberries- get creative add whatever you would like. A bit of advice though- don't skimp on the honey, it's not as good without it all!

Then try your best to let it cool before you start picking out those huge junks that lump together!

Sunday Morning Breakfast Recipes

2011-08-14T05:43:00.000-05:00

Good Morning! Don't you just love the weekends? We sure do! We love spending lazy mornings in our pajamas and cooking delicious things to eat!

What's your favorite breakfast recipe? Can you share one with us?

One of my favorite breakfast recipes is this French Toast Casserole. The best part is you can make it ahead and all you have to do in the morning is throw it in the oven and you can lay in bed while your house is filled with the aroma of goodness! These are the sorts of recipes we can use at the Inn to trick our customers- they will think we have been up all morning baking!

French Toast Casserole

1 loaf of firm white bread (or Texas Toast) cubed

10 eggs

1- 8oz package of cream cheese
1 ½ cups of half and half

¼ cup maple syrup
½ cup melted butter

Cube and layer half of bread in 9x13 pan. Cut cream cheese into small pieces and spread over bread. Cover with other half of cubed bread. Mix eggs, half and half, syrup and butter. Pour over bread cubes and press to soak. COVER AND REFRIGERATE OVERNIGHT.

Bake 45-60 minutes at 350 degrees.

Serve with maple syrup (be sure to get the real stuff, you New Englanders know what I mean) Mmmm... good!

The Starfish Inn

2011-08-13T00:17:00.002-05:00

What do you think of that for a name for the big dream? The Starfish Inn, a little take off from the Dragonfly Inn on Gilmore Girls!
The Starfish Inn would definitely have to be in a beach town, close the ocean, close enough you can smell it. I love the ocean on the North Shore of Massachusetts and I would gladly be an in keeper in Essex or Rockport one day. Imagine waking up to this each and every morning- not too bad huh?

Although, the ocean means no views like this one of the gorgeous mountains. The leaves in the fall in New England are another reason that the Northeast is a perfect spot for my Inn. What would I call it if it wasn't near the ocean? The Firefly Inn? That will need some thought.

At the Inn there will always be freshly baked cookies, scones and fancy cupcakes to have with your afternoon tea or latte. Trey will be the first to test them everyday, I'm sure of that!

The gardens out back will have flowers that bloom through the spring, summer and into the fall! It's not a real dream world if a girl doesn't have perfect flowers! Anyone out there want to sign up to be the gardener yet?

Meet The Office

2011-08-12T02:53:00.000-05:00

I want you all to meet my office. A typical day at work for me is never really typical. In my office building there are about 5 different departments, my department- Special Projects, an OBGYN doctor, the Home Visitation Nurses, the Quality Department, the Staff Education team and the Marketing Department.

Here I am- each and every day I take my vitamins at my desk- it really helps to leave them on your desk- you never forget to take them! Trey and I are like children and we take the gummy vitamins but, these are the adult version. It feels like you get to eat fruit snacks every day.

My officemate Deborah is from India and is newly married to a guy in our IT Department. I am learning so much about Indian culture from Deborah! Their culture gives a whole new mean to liking your in-laws!

Here is Shiny, she is one of our good friends at the hospital. She also happens to be one of our really smart friends, she works in Bio-Medical Engineering, doesn't it sound fancy?

I never thought I would have a job where I would eat lunch with my husband everyday but, here we are in the office at about 10am and Trey is eating lunch. He is usually starving by about mid-morning and comes to my office to grab his lunch! I don't know how this kid can eat so much food!

When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie.......

2011-08-11T01:58:00.008-05:00

We're off for our vacation. I can't wait. We will have lots of pictures to share with you as we go along or after the trip for sure. I hope that we can get to some internet cafes along the way.

What I hope to see/experience along the way:

Wine tasting at a vineyard
Walking through an olive grove
Lots of good gelato and espresso at sidewalk cafes
A sweet Italian grandmom who invites me into her home and teaches me how to make ravioli and her special secret sauce --if that one comes true, you'll definitely hear about it!
Visiting small towns and churches in the hills of Tuscany
Shopping!
Throwing a coin into Trevi Fountain.
Seeing sheep and a farmer as we drive through the rolling hills
Renting a bicycle with a basket on front--I'll buy some fresh bread and cheese just to put in the basket because it's always been my dream to do that. That don't happen around these parts:)
Finding a piece of leather --a bag, shoes, something-- that I will keep for a long, long, time.

Hangin' Around.....

2011-08-10T01:44:00.002-05:00

So what do you do when it's 50 degrees C. or 120+ F. in the the middle of August?

We go to the pool a lot....for short periods of time. Today we ran over after work for a 30 minute swim. It's too hot for me to be out there too long, but a dip feels nice. Last week, I went with Min and a friend and I decided to try something special for you.

Here I am getting ready. I'm trying to position myself correctly. You'll see in just one minute.

Introducing your Olympic synchronized swimming star. I finally got one arm in the air.

That took a lot of work.

Ummm.....alright, I can do it. And she gets 2 arms in the air......then she starts to drown.

Not a good thing when working on being an Olympic star.

I decided that it's best if I stick with these sort of things!

Getting my nails done! We can mostly only do indoor activities right now since it's about 1 bajillion degrees outside. Trey and I are off on a fun vacation this week (more to come about that) so a trip to the nail salon was definitely needed for my toes and nails.

I decided to get crystal gel on my nails tonight since it is supposed to last for 3 weeks and help them to grow a bit. I couldn't resist and I must leave you with this video.

And I look too good to be wearing this.....

2011-08-09T02:04:00.011-05:00

I want to introduce you to a friend of ours. His name is Mr. Saleem and he is our tailor here. We love Mr. Saleem because he makes clothing that we love for about 1/3 of the price that we could buy it. I had a few dresses made, a skirt and a shirt for my vacation to the States. If you bring him a picture or something you already have, he can make it so well. You can even draw him a picture and he'll do it.

So when I was in Lebanon, I found this great store that I loved but every dress was over $200. I wanted 3 dresses in there. I took the catalog from the store home with me. 2 weeks ago I went and bough the fabric at our favorite 3-story fabric shop. You can either show them the picture and they will direct you towards the best fabric or you can search around the store on your own until you find something that you like. Last week, I brought my handy dandy catalog with me, showed them the dresses and they directed me to the basement where I found the lightweight cotton I needed along with a jersey stretch fabric that was necessary.

Then I was off to Mr. Saleem with my catalog and new fabric. I'm always a bit nervous to see how it actually turns out. One of the dresses needed a crooked pleat across the front but he did it well. When we have our initial talk about what I want made there are a lot of words flying around like "same-same" (this means that you want it exactly the same) and this last time he kept saying to me "self-same" (he used this word to mean the fabric should all be one color). Sometimes I get nervous about all the same-same and self-same stuff......I am wondering if the product will come out in any way the SAME-SAME as I have in my head. Was that the correct usage of the word?!

Then I couldn't find the exact ribbon I needed for around the waist, but he took 2 ribbons and made his own rendition which turned out okay in my mind. Not my favorite, but okay.

Didn't he do well with the ruffles?

We've become professionals at changing in the car since he doesn't have a changing room. He used to --well, that is debatable as it was barely big enough for me to remove a dress over my head without hitting my arms on the ceiling, but it was still a place to change. It's a good thing we have tinted windows here on the car:)

This is dress #2. You can't tell but it's a jersey knit at the top with a crooked pleat along the front. It's a cute dress but the ribbon isn't exactly how I wanted it to be. That's not his fault, it just doesn't exist here. At home it would be super easy to find, but then again we wouldn't be living in the Middle East if EVERYTHING was EASY to find.

Anyway, tonight, I decided to bring my dresses home for the final try-on and I loved them. My favorite is the navy dress with ruffles. He did those with flat fabric. It's amazing. He did such a great job. Dress number 2 is fine also and if I wear a sweater over it and a scarf around the neck I think I will like it more.

So, each dress turned out to be roughly $40-$50 for the fabric and the tailor. Not so bad from $200+ to that. I'd say I won on this one. 1 point for Jessie.

I'm a chiquita banana......

2011-08-08T02:51:00.002-05:00

This weekend, Min made 2 good recipes. She made a chopped salad that had radish, green onion, cucumber, hot pepper, chickpeas, dill and yogurt. She chopped it all up and then added the yogurt in. It was really tasty and we ate it with chicken from the grill.

Then we needed a treat. We always need treats actually. Min froze banana halves. Then she melted all natural peanut butter in the microwave and covered the bananas with it. Then drizzled melted chocolate on top. Mmm...mmm. Tasty. They weren't the prettiest looking dessert you ever ate, but they tasted good. I guess that is if you like bananas, peanut butter and chocolate. If you don't like them, you lose. And I have one more left in the freezer!

She's like the wind.....

2011-08-07T06:24:00.000-05:00

Last night, our hospital Social Activities committee sponsored ice skating at a local rink here. We had a lot of fun but almost none of us know how to ice skate really well. In the beginning, more than half of the group was holding on to the side wall but eventually everyone let go and were moving right along.

It's funny that I was trying to help people skate as I can barely stay up myself. I was working on teaching myself how to skate backwards last night. Not so good at that one.

I need a little help from Nancy Kerrigan.

Wave Your Flag

2011-08-06T07:02:00.000-05:00

Check out this matching bunting for those ball jar lids I put up yesterday.

The craft paper we used for those ball jar lids came in a package and we decided to use the rest of that paper to make some bunting.

To make this you first need to decide how large you want your bunting flags to be. We decided to do small flags because we had small scrap booking paper squares.

First, fold your paper in half and use a ruler to decide how large the flag should be. Cut the flag out and leave the center fold (do not cut on the fold).

Be sure you find paper that you like- if you don't like the paper before you make the bunting you sure won't like it after!

Your flags should look like these- with a fold in the center.

Using craft string fill the fold of the flags with glue and place the string in the center of the flag. Put just a dab of glue at the tip of the flag to keep the edges closed together. Continue this over and over again alternating your paper colors. Be sure to measure the space between each flag so that your bunting is evenly spaced.

Here is your final product! Let them dry lying flat before you try to hang them.

Find a place to hang your bunting for your next party!

Rock, Paper, Scissors......

2011-08-05T00:52:00.000-05:00

Yesterday when we got home from work, we realized that we forgot the computer in the car.

A) We love the computer and B) it's too hot to leave things like that in your car here. So one of us had to go get it. Who would it be? Remember, it's about 1 bajillion degrees here so nobody likes to go outside more than they have to. I had taken my sweater off and had a tank top on so I couldn't do it and Trey was wearing his European swim bikini (just kidding but I can't remember what he had on) so both of us were dressed inappropriately for letting the world see us. Although, it would be funny to have Trey run outside in a European swim bikini and see what passer-by's do.

So do you know what we do when one of us has to go get something but NEITHER of us want to do it? We play rock, paper, scissors. It's a fair and easy way to solve the problem. You really can't complain when you lose. We have done this since the beginning of our marriage and for some reason I just stink at RPS. I know that you can't really practice but I try:) I lose almost every time. But lately I've been on a winning streak.

Yesterday, I lost AGAIN! Since I had a tank top on, there was a towel close by and Trey threw it at me to throw over my soldiers. I was laughing. Back home you would take me to the loony house if I came outside with long pants, a tank top and a towel around my shoulders. But not here.

I think all the taxi men still stared at me anyway because my hair was lookin' SOOOO good after sweating all day.

Ball jar idea.......

2011-08-04T06:11:00.000-05:00

I was scanning through some websites one day and found this great idea for a party. It's rather simple and inexpensive to create. You start with different colors/patterns of paper and Ball jars.

Trace the lid onto the papers. I got 4 out of each paper I was using. I used origami paper.

We laminated ours so that we can wash them and reuse them for other parties. If you don't care about reusing them, you don't even need to laminate them.

Punch a hole into them for the straw. Stick them inside the lid with the patter facing out.

I think we may add a little ribbon around the jar for an extra touch.

Wa-La! you have your drink in a Ball jar. Fun and easy way to decorate a party.

Try not to let your husband assist in the matter......or you'll end up with pictures like this.

Real good lookin'.

Lady In Red......

2011-08-03T02:12:00.007-05:00

Last week I told you that I received this fabric for a gift and I wanted to make a dress for Eid which is the holiday that immediately follows Ramadan. My goal is to use the fabric on the left. It's a little too flowery for me, but it will be fine for here. We will go visiting lots of friends of the hospital and I want to make a dress. Some will wear pretty crazy dresses (like the prom for us) and others will wear more of traditional type dress. Anyway, I need a style that is conservative enough for visiting families here but also fun and I don't want it to look like crap on me. Silky fabric can be tricky for women with hips! I knwo most people don't set out with the goal of getting a dress that looks bogus when they put it on, but I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, can you help me come up with a style that might work well for me? It needs to be long. It can be sleeveless and then I can wear a sweater or something with it. Otherwise it can have sleeves to be a bit more conservative. I'm not trying to look like a woman in a jean jumper, though --you know what I mean, right?!

I was looking through some dresses at this website. What do you think? Could any of them be made long?

I looked at Banana Republic, too for dresses and found a few I like. Some of the short dresses I could make long and some of the long dresses aren't so bad.

Help me! I need your clothing design help. It's so fun having a tailor who can make a dress just from the picture. You can't imagine how inexpensive it is here either. I can't wait to show you the two dresses I dropped off last week to get made. I found them in Lebanon when I was there but they were way too expensive. I am getting them made for less than 1/4th of the price. It's fun going to the fabric store and then finding designs you like.

Give me your comments or suggestions of places to look.

Visiting Oman....

2011-08-02T01:10:00.001-05:00

On Saturday we went to visit our friend and her family. Our friend works with us and is one of eleven children. They live in Oman which is just a 5 minute drive to the border. We love visiting with their family and playing games with the kids. When we came back from the States this summer we brought side walk chalk and a few other things for them to play with. It's become a tradition to "do" something with them when we go over. The past two weekends we have played UNO together. This game works with people who don't speak the same language so it was a good one for all of us. As you can see from the above picture, Trey loves to tell us when he has Uno (only 1 card left).

This is the wonderful mama in the middle. She is a special woman and has a great personality for handling 11 children around her all the time. In her arms is the youngest and newest member of the family. Shama is between 4 and 5 months old.

They always make fabulous food. They stuffed chickens and put them down in a fire pit on hot coals. Along with it, we had hummus, tabbouleh, french fries, pickles and pita. Yummy!

It's that time.......

2011-08-01T01:04:00.003-05:00

Ramadan starts today in the UAE. It is always during the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar and it is a time when Muslims worldwide abstain from food, drink and other physical needs during daylight hours. It is a holy month of worship for Muslims and a time for them to purify the soul, refocus one's relationship with Allah and practice self-sacrifice and charity. Fasting is one of the five pillars of Islam which are central duties required of all Muslims regardless of where they live.

So before the sun rises, the families will have Suhoor. This is their morning meal before the fasting begins. Then to end their fast in the evening (which will be around 7:10pm to start) then have the Iftar. Your days fasting is broken with prayer and then the Iftar meal which many have with their big families. Many people will eat a date when the call to prayer goes off then go pray. Then they have their big meal.

A lot of food is consumed during Ramadan ---despite the fact that fasting happens all day long. The hours of life will change. People will stay up extremely late, sleep in or take a long nap after work until they can eat dinner. It's extremely hot and tiring on a normal day--but without water, it would be pretty hard. After the Iftar, people stay up until all hours of the night. Malls are open until midnight or later.

Look at these pictures from the grocery store. There are more in these packages than you get at Costco or Sam's Club. Who needs this many mini-donut mixes?! And Tang. I love that stuff!

Labor law says that employees should only work 6 hour days during Ramadan. Usually we work the normal work day but then the law requires that our work pay us extra for working a normal work day during Ramadan (even if we aren't Muslim). So starting tomorrow, we are working Ramadan Hours!! Woop woop!

Dates are a big thing here. There are date palms EVERYWHERE. Now is the season for dates. They are coming out now and everybody serves them to you fresh off of their tree when you visit homes. At the grocery store they had many different kinds that you could purchase the other day. There are 100's of different kinds of dates.

I'll update more on Ramadan as we go. Hopefully we'll get invited for an Iftar meal to a friends home.

All you need is love......

2011-07-31T08:02:00.000-05:00

One project that I have been working on here at Oasis has been to redecorate our guest houses. We have 2 guest houses that just needed a little love and care. A few splashes of paint, some lamps, rugs and a few pieces of furniture would do. One of the guest houses is a fabulous space. It has an upstairs and downstairs (rare here) and a living room on both floors. Sorry this is just an AFTER. I wish I had the BEFORE. It's pretty different.

Lots of windows for natural light and a great space for gardens outside. What guest wouldn't want to stay there? We already had furniture in the house so we just needed to take what we had and make it look good. Our aim was to make it feel like a home, not a frugal guest house.

This is the upstairs living room. The furniture was originally downstairs but we decided it would be best up. I love this burnt orange/reddish color.

One of the many bathroom redo's. I think this house has 5 bathrooms. They love colored bathrooms here. Baby blue, puke pink and tan with flowers. When one piece of the bathroom breaks, such as the toilet, it's hard to find the right color to replace it so then we end up with 6 different shades of blue in a bathroom. We decided to replace all of the bathrooms with all white --tiles, toilet, sink and tub. I love a white bathroom.

Trey's photography work is displayed all around the house.

I don't know why, but I love this cabinet for the linen closet. In these houses, there are no built in closets, so you have to buy them. This closet up close has a nice texture to it (but a funny smell from the stain). It filled in a nice empty space well.

Catch me ridin' dirty......

2011-07-30T04:56:00.003-05:00

We're off to a friends house tonight so I decided to make a summer

dessert that I make once every 2 years or so.

Dirt Pudding

1 (14 ounce) bag Oreo cookies

2 (3 1/2 ounce) packages vanilla instant pudding

3 cups milk

1 cup powdered sugar

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese

1/4 cup butter

1 (12 ounce) container Cool Whip

Directions:

Break up cookies, put 1/2 on bottom of preferred dish and save other 1/2 for topping.
Mix pudding and milk together, set aside.
Mix sugar, cream cheese and butter.
Add sugar mixture to pudding; fold in cool whip.
Pour onto cookies, top with remaining cookies.
Let it refrigerate for at least a half hour.

Don't forget the gummy worms!

I need to find a fake flower to put inside the pot.

I saw a recipe where they put it

in the back of a toy dump truck. Next time.

We're going to have a Mexcan Bunco night at our house in late August.

We're already coming up with crafty ideas. I'll fill you in as we go!

If you have never played Bunco with a group of friends, get yourself

off your tuches (1 point for me--good use of a Yiddish word)

and go buy it. There's always a reason to have a party and celebrate.

Dream, Dream, Dream, Dream.........

2011-07-29T01:10:00.002-05:00

It's always been my dream to own an Inn. Not a Bed and Breakfast, an Inn.

An Inn seems more sophisticated and they tend to come with history and

unique architecture. A Bed and Breakfast can be a real gamble in my mind.

Again, this is all my own opinion and it's coming from a girl who has not stayed

in very many B & B's or Inn's......but I'm having an Anne of Green Gables moment

here and I'm sticking to it.

It will have a patio where you can eat breakfast and gardens where

I can pick flowers to put in your rooms.

And I'll be sure that you have a writing desk for sending a postcard to your mum and

some type of "wing" chair to sit on.

And you will definitely be served an AMAZING breakfast. I can guarantee that.

And even though this doesn't show it, it will have a big front porch with rocking chairs

where you'll sit and enjoy your afternoon tea.

You'll continue to hear about "my inn". I need to come up with a name. The Dragonfly Inn from Gilmore Girls is pretty great, but I can't steal that. So I need to get the creative juices flowing......or maybe I need to find an investor first:) I could try to strike oil in my backyard here.

After all, I live in the Gulf!

The first amendment wasn't written for nothin'.........

2011-07-28T04:12:00.001-05:00

Blogging is fun, but reading the comments you leave is even more fun! Whether you are reading this post through the blog or Facebook, I want to hear your voice. Holla' at your girl. I want to know who reads.

Last night we had some friends over from church. We made pizza and tried to take artsy pictures of them so that you would think that they tasted really good and maybe it will make you want to fly over here and visit us. The truth is that it did taste really good. And I promise that if you come to visit us, I'll make you pizza. You want anchovies and corn? Fine, I'll make it. But first you have to fly over here.

We made b-b-q chicken, buffalo chicken and veggie.

And then like all good church friends, we got competitive

and played a bunch of rounds of Pass the Pigs. That game always makes me laugh and actually I'm not that competitive, I just pretend to be. I rolled my pigs with gusto.

Mosque.....

2011-07-27T00:07:00.000-05:00

We love Fridays here. It's a day of rest and gathering for Muslims. A day where most things are closed until early afternoon. It's a day where families get together for big Friday afternoon dinners. It's a day where you can take a long nap. It's a day that sort of reminds me of Sundays at home.

This past Friday we were invited to lunch with some friends at their house in Dubai. As we were pulling into their neighborhood, we saw this beautiful mosque. Note: we see A LOT of mosques here. I mean, we're in a Muslim country. They're in every neighborhood....or there could be 4 of them. Sometimes I don't even notice them anymore when we're driving, especially if they're pretty small.

But I noticed this one. It had a different flare about it. I felt like we stepped into Morocco or some other part of Arabia for a minute when we saw the design of the mosque.

The women don't always get to peak inside especially if it's not a mosque where a lot of tourists go. It was after the Friday prayer time so it was pretty quiet. I took a quick peak in and saw the sun shining right through the front windows.

Does this picture portray how quiet it was inside?

It was silent and the carpet is always so comfortable.

Remember that Friday nap I talked about? Yeah, well it was calling my name right about then.

We enjoyed some grilled fish for lunch with our friends. It is called the Fish of the Sheikhs.

Since I'm pretty much like a Sheikha, I enjoyed it just like one of the Sheikhs would have.

With my fingers and rice. Then I held it up for the camera. Just like a Sheikh would have.

Match made in heaven.....

2011-07-26T02:40:00.000-05:00

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TERRY!

(That's what they call him here and I like to blend in with the culture, so I call him Terry now, too:)

On Sunday we celebrated 7 years. What did we do? Go to work and then I went to the pool and he went to soccer. That's how we roll around here.

Those things keep us sane which keep our marriage happy.

But we took off today to celebrate by running errands. Isn't that romantic?

Actually to me it is. Trey doesn't love to run errands especially when it's 1 million degrees outside.

But today he did. We went and picked out fabric so that I can make 2 summer dresses I've had my eye on. I'll update you on that later this week.

This kid is always doing things to make me laugh or shake my head.....

but we always have an adventure. Can't complain that life has been boring.

Who knew I would have lived in 2 separate countries by now...except God.

Trey insists that he didn't. Should I believe him? His mom warned me

but I didn't take her advice.

Here's to 7 + 7 + 7 + however many more God has for us years of marriage.

Tea for two.....

2011-07-25T06:41:00.001-05:00

"Perhaps that is the true gift of a teatime celebration: It fills our cups with joy and warmth and friendship. May the echo of the teacups' message be heard not only at Christmas, not only on special occasions, but anytime friends come together."~Emilie Barnes, "A Cozy Christmas Tea"

On Saturday we hosted an Afternoon Tea for friends. The art of special occasions such as these seems to have disappeared with the invention of Starbuck's where you run to grab your coffee and eat a pastry that has been sitting in the cabinet for a day.

A tea is a good time to act like the lady of all ladies! Bust out that cute dress, apply the make up, put on a set of pearls and toss on a hat.

My mom hosts a tea party every fall and she passed along some dainty tea cups along with good ideas on how to host a tea. A while back my mom and aunt gave me special serving dishes that I could use for an occasion such as this. We used jams out of a fancy schmancy jam dish, ate chocolate mousse out of antique clear glass dishes and served up scones an old fashioned cake plate. We combined those things with .25 cent spoons from a local dollar store, hand-me down glasses and a fake lace tablecloth from a local grocery store.....but it all worked!

Preparing for the party, setting the table and making tea sandwiches is just as fun as

having the party itself.

Who can eat scones without clotted cream and raspberry jam? I was dreaming about

this stuff when I went to bed that night--not really but THAT is how good it was.

Since it's about 1 million and 10 degrees here (really only 120F) we thought

welcoming our guests with a glass of iced peach tea was a good idea. It was.

They liked it and so did we.

Our friend Beth has a LARGE collection of books at her home.

She brought a book along about the Titanic. She read about tea time on

the Titanic and the typical menu for First, Second and Third Class on the ship.

It was the perfect addition to our tea time.

And here are your hostesses. Beth also has a LARGE collection of hats.

She was an opera singer so she had all sorts of parties and such to attend.

Boy we had fun going through them and trying on all different styles!

Nothing like a large brimmed hat to wear to a tea. We were having a

hard time getting the picture because we kept knocking hats and THAT

is a big NO NO in hat etiquette, apparently.

We'd love to have you for tea. Just let us know when you're coming.

We'll prepare the clotted cream and jam.

It's my party......

2011-07-24T01:40:00.000-05:00

Last week I celebrated 33 years. It was a great day and enjoyed a party at work along with a party in the evening at the home of friends. Min made 2 great chocolate cakes with espresso icing and my office buddy decorated our office and had everyone put on party hats when I walked into work in the morning.

Our hostess in the evening made this fabulous chicken corn chowder that I love and made it a very special evening. Our hosts surprised me with some good friends at the party (I thought it was just going to be us) and the table was set so nicely. It was the perfect way to spend a birthday. I enjoy being in a home more than going out to a restaurant.

Also, a friend from Oman brought me silk fabric to make a dress with. People here will go buy fabric and get their dresses made. I have to find a design I like and get working on that. I want to be able to wear it for Eid (the holiday that follows Ramadan) for visiting our local friends. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Lebanon......

2011-07-23T01:36:00.000-05:00

Last week we were in Lebanon for a conference. We were able to travel around to a few sites in Lebanon and had a great time enjoying good food, friends and the Lebanese lifestyle.

The Lebanese remind me of Italians. They are relaxed in their attitude, love good food and enjoy life. I think I could live there!

We went out to the Eastern part of the country to a place called Baalbek. Unbelievable temples that are rather well preserved and huge!

We were on our way back to our hotel from Baalbek through the mountains (ski area) and stopped in this little town for lunch. It was family owned and the mother of the family (maybe she was 80 years old) was sitting outside enjoying the weather. She gave us apples from her tree and made us coffee in her house. We also ate in the restaurant. She was so sweet and I would have loved to sit with her for hours.

We went to the Hariri mosque and enjoyed shopping in the downtown area of Beirut.

We never saw this before. This is sheesha/argila/hookah (whatever you call it in your country) that was put into a pineapple and watermelon. I never saw that before. I wonder how it makes the tabacco taste?

Welcome to the world.....

2011-07-20T07:50:00.000-05:00

This post is a little later than it should be, but the pictures came in

while we were in Lebanon last week. We became an uncle and auntie!

Trey's sister Jessica and her husband Jeziel had their first baby last week.

Welcome to the world Jeziel Miguel Gonzalez Jr. --a.k.a. JJ

They are doing well but little JJ is a bit jaundice.

He wears this special glow blanket which is supposed to help bring his

numbers down. Which numbers you ask?

Well if I could spell it, I would give you the medical term. But since I have no idea what I'm talking about in the medical world........ we'll just say the billi----number.

It sounds like 2 names put togther --Billy and Ruben. Maybe that is how

they came up with it. 2 boys named Billy and Ruben had

high numbers. So instead of some super techincal medical term, they decided to just

use their names and call them the BillyRuben numbers.

And if that is NOT how they came up with it,

well then they should have because it's a pretty good theory.

Under Construction.....

2011-07-19T05:34:00.000-05:00

So I am changing up the blog a bit. I was getting bored with it and decided that a makeover of the blog would be an exciting way to make the hot summer days pass.

Now I'm wondering what you think about it. Did you like the old title better? I love the American colors....maybe because I'm away from it. You know absence makes the heart grow fonder.

So what do you think? If you have a better title, please shout it out! I'm willing to give it a whole new look.

Take me to another place.....

2011-07-11T22:43:00.000-05:00

We're off to Lebanon today for a conference. It is about 95 during the day and 75 is the low at night. This should feel like a nice change from 115. looking forward to the pretty ocean and some historical sites. I'll post pictures when I get back.

Baby, Baby......

2011-07-11T06:09:00.000-05:00

We have a new nephew born today! Trey's sister Jessica and her husband Jeziel had their baby boy in the early hours of the morning. We can't wait to meet him......and hear what his name is:)

We're 2 of a kind workin' on a full house......

2011-07-09T13:23:00.000-05:00

This week I hosted my "birthday club" from work at our house. We also had our church group over for ice cream last night after service. Both nights I taught the groups how to play Dutch Blitz and Pass the Pigs. Both fun games. Pass the Pigs always makes me laugh. Seems ironic to play a game called Pass the Pigs in a muslim country, but ya know.

Look at this cute ice cream topping holder I bought from Wilton for our party last night. Isn't it cute. Little additions like this make a party so much more fun in my eyes! Again, the summer survival theme here is PARTIES.....we do whatever we can to stay inside and have a good time. I'll fill you in on the rest of our summer occasions as they come along.

I think we're going to convert some of these folks into Pennsylvania Dutch kids playing this game. There was a lot of yelling and cheating going on......not that those qualities have anything to do with Pennsylvania Dutch folk ....although some would say.......forget it. I'm Pennsylvania Dutch from both sides of my family . Although, sometimes I wish we were party Italian. Something about Italian families and their food is so appealing to me:)

Where in the world is Carmen SanDiego.....

2011-07-07T14:17:00.000-05:00

Trey's been traveling around a lot this year and he still has more to go. So far he's been to 4 countries this year which has been fun for him as he enjoys seeing new places and especially when he goes to places where people speak Arabic. The purpose of these trips is to see if our hospital can help others by bringing them to our hospital or sending staff to do medical trainings at hospitals in less fortunate countries.

Last week he took a trip to Kurdistan in the Northern part of Iraq. It was a fabulous trip and he loved his time there. He said the people were wonderful and the scenery was beautiful. It reminded him a lot of Bethlehem but just a bit more built up. He said that it was more modern than he expected.

Last year, the hospital brought a little girl from Kurdistan to Oasis Hospital to have club foot surgery. Her situation was pretty severe and she needed good medical attention. Overall, CURE does many surgeries for club foot in their other hospitals and through their club foot clinics but our facility has not yet up to this point.

While she and her father were here for her surgery and recovery, we had the chance to get close to them during their 2 month stay. Last week, they were able to see this little girl and her family a bunch which was great. Trey loved this family and they were fabulous hosts.

We have a new orthopedic surgeon coming to our hospital this fall, so our hope is that we will be able to do more of these things. They were able to meet with a mom and her son who had been injured by a bombing. He will need many more surgeries, but the hope is that we could help him in the UAE.

Roll it, pat it and mark it with a "B".......

2011-07-06T23:28:00.000-05:00

My sister-in-law Jessica will be having a baby next month! We're so excited to meet the sweet little boy. My hope is to go home in September to see him a bit. We had a shower for her when we were home in in June and had a really nice time with everyone. The shower was at a country club near there house, so there was no clean-up! That's always nice. She was definitely showered with gifts. It was fun to see all of the new things for the little bambino.

Take me out to the ballgame.....

2011-07-05T10:42:00.002-05:00

When we were home, we went to a Red Sox game. It was a great day. The Sox won and the weather was great. We had a fun time was a family. I hadn't been to a baseball game in a while but it brings back fun memories of listening to the Phillies on the radio as we were driving home from visiting our grandparents or other places on summer evenings. The Phillies announcer had the best voice and would put me right to sleep.

And I'm Proud to be an American.....

2011-07-03T10:41:00.000-05:00

We celebrated the 4th of July a bit early here. On Friday night we had a few friends over for some burgers and picnic food. I love getting ready for the party just as much as having the party! Min and I had fun preparing all the food and dishes, etc. Martha Stewart came through big time on this party. We used all of her ideas from the July edition and found some of them to be rather cute. The cookies didn't turn out exactly how they were supposed to but they looked pretty good to us and tasted even better. So we were satisfied.

The favors. Min printed these off from the Martha website. They give you free templates. It was supposed to be a lemon blueberry bread, but we made blueberry zucchini instead. Tasty.

Summertime Blues.....

2011-06-29T02:28:00.002-05:00

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.....

2011-06-28T02:23:00.002-05:00

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.....

2011-06-26T10:20:00.000-05:00

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.....

2011-06-25T04:01:00.000-05:00

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.....

2011-06-08T14:14:00.000-05:00

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?!

It's so hard to say goodbye....

2011-05-25T09:11:00.000-05:00

Our sweet friends Fazila and Saleem are moving to the US. They leave while I'm home for vacation. They'll be moving to California and I"m excited for them but sad to see them go. They have been our friends since we first arrived and we love doing "nothing" with them. It's good to have friends like that. Fazila is also my office mate so she is always just "there". I can just turn around and say whatever I want to her. Fazila is an amazing cook and Saleem is hilarious with his funny sayings. They are both Afghani but Fazila moved to the US when she was in her early teenage years and then grew up in California. Today when I said goodbye to Saleem, he hugged me which might not happen that often with an Afghani man. He said "You are like our family. We'll miss seeing your face." But we know we'll see them again back in the US....at least we hope! They better come to Boston to visit next summer.

Here are some pictures from their party this past weekend.

I see trees of green......

2011-05-24T12:03:00.002-05:00

We had some plants on our patio that were getting too big for their pots. We have a brick patio, so we thought it wouldn't be too easy to pick up any of the bricks. Pots just seemed easier. Then the plants started getting bigger and bigger....so a couple weekends ago, Trey picked up some bricks and planted the bushes in the ground. I'm excited to see if they grow a bunch. We'll keep you posted. We were both dripping sweat when trying to pick up the bricks with a few tools.....dripping. It's like working inside a sauna.

It's gettin' hot in here......

2011-05-22T11:15:00.000-05:00

I could post about this EVERY DAY!!! The heat will never feel normal to me....NEVER. Bring me back to the northeast. We had record breaking temperatures for May on the weekend....ringing in at a nice 122 degrees. It was gross. I'm not telling you this so that you can think "Oh, man, that's hot. They're suffering." Nope, we chose this. I know. But I just need to whine and complain.

But even today at like 115 with a bit of humidity just didn't feel nice. It just drains you. You want to go to sleep. I actually just want to be crabby about it. I thought Trey would have a much harder time with this than I do...but I was wrong....he wins on this one! He's out playing soccer tonight. It doesn't cool down much at night so he has to fill up on water and gatorade before and after the game.

I think we all just need to become a bit southern. Min has said the past few days that we just need to realize that we can't do as much as we did before. So if we thought we could get 4 things done before, 2 is doing well! Tonight we came home from kick boxing and Min said to me, "Sit down, don't even try to be productive right now."

Anyway, you'll hear about 7 or 107 more posts about this between now and September because I have a feeling I might not make it through the summer without moaning.

America--HERE I COME! It's hard to pack for a trip when it's 120. All I'm packing is skirts and sun dresses-things we don't get to wear here. Then I just looked on weather.com. All temperatures for the next 10 days are below 80 and rainy, which I'm THRILLED for, but just not sure how to pack. I forgot what that feels like.

Pizza Pie.....

2011-05-20T06:44:00.000-05:00

Last week for Trey's Birthday we made pizza. Min's friend Kendra gave us a great and easy recipe for pizza dough. You can find it below.

Once you made the dough and par-bake it, you can make many kinds. Our favorites are:

B-B-Q Pizza -- use b-b-q sauce as the actual sauce, then put chicken and red onion and cheese.
Buffalo Chicken Pizza -- use a mix of blue cheese and buffalo sauce as the actual sauce, then put chicken, celery and onion and cheese.

Kendra's Pizza Dough

2 packages yeast (2 TBSP)

1 tsp salt

2 TBSP sugar

3 cups of luke warm water

2 tsp oil

61/2-7 cups flour

mix salt, sugar and yeast in a large bowl

add the water... make sure water is not hot or cold. if too hot or cold it will kill the yeast.

whisk the above together (should look a little funny)

add the oil

add flour

mix the flour into the liquids by folding the mixture into its self. (i start with a spoon, but as it gets thicker I switch to my hands and kneed it with my hands). The more you kneed the better. Knead for 5 to 10 minutes. add flour as you need. depending on the weather you will need between 6 1/2 to 8 cups - should not be too sticky.

after you knead leave in the bowl to rise for a 1/2 hour. put a slightly wet towel over the bowl.

the dough should have doubled in size. pound the dough down to get the air out and cut into thirds.

take one third of the dough and roll out onto pizza pan. may need extra flour.

put cornmeal on the pan so dough does not stick

heat oven to 450 and bake crust for 4 minutes--I do longer than 4 minutes.

take out, put on toppings, sauce and cheese and put back into oven until cheese is melted and slightly brown.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie with Butter Crumb Topping.....

2011-05-16T08:32:00.000-05:00

I made this the other day for Trey's birthday. It was WONDERFUL!

You can start by making a pie crust. Don't bake it. Then follow the directions below.

Filling

1 egg

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 cups sliced fresh rhubarb (1/2 inch slices)

2 cups sliced fresh strawberries

Topping

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup oats (quick cooking or rolled)

1/2 cup butter

1. Preheat oven to 400F.

2. Place pie shell in a 9 inch pie pan, fold under excess and flute edge.

3. In a large mixing bowl, beat egg. Beat in the sugar, flour and vanilla. Fold in the sliced rhubarb and strawberries. Pour this filling into pie shell.

4. In a medium bowl, mix flour, brown sugar and oats. Cut the butter in until crumbly. Sprinkle on top of the pie filling.

5. Bake at 400F for 10 minutes, and then reduce heat to 350F and bake for 35 minutes longer. Top should be brown and bubbly.

6. Cool a bit before serving with whipped cream or ice cream.

7. Store cooled pie in the refrigerator.

Then I had a little dough left over from the pie crust so I made two little apple tartlets. I took the crust and put it in the little dish. Cut up some apple. Sprinkled cinnamon and added butter on top.

Today is your birthday......

2011-05-14T11:34:00.000-05:00

Trey celebrates 31 years today! It's been a pretty good day. Our friends Fazila and Saleem came over and they brought him a Kafia from Afghanistan (Saleem was back home visiting last week) and a Farsi Dictionary. Trey's been wanting to learn Farsi for a while. I'll write more about his day as the week goes on. I have some recipes to share from today along with another project Trey was working on.

Our good friends. They are moving to the US in June and we'll be sooo sad to see them go!


Our friend Abeer dropped off nice chocolates for Trey for him.

The best thing about the weekend was Trey's surprise to me on Friday morning. Trey woke before me (I think because he was so excited and it's hard for him to keep a secret when he's really excited). At about 8:30am on Friday morning (the start to our weekend), Trey and Min come in and are both quiet. I just look at them and wonder what they are up to. I could tell that they were up to something!

Trey says "I know that it's my birthday tomorrow, but I have a surprise for you today." He drops a clue in my hands that is written on a yellow scrap paper and there my scavenger hunt begins. I go from clue to clue around the house. It was a pretty creative and fun way to get a gift!

The last clue was "I get a lot of reading done here, and maybe now you will, too." I knew right away. Head to the bathroom. (Sorry, maybe too much information) I look around, don't see any clue and have no idea what I'm supposed to be looking for. Trey says "Keep looking." I finally see a thin book-like thing between bigger books on the cabinet. Immediately I knew what it was.

Sorry, you're going to have to deal with our morning beauty in the pictures. Does everyone look busted in the morning like we do?

The I-PAD! What a great gift. I have wanted one for a while but we talked about waiting to look at them again when we go home this summer. Trey knew that I would enjoy having it on the plane for the long trip. So he surprised me and got it for me early! Really, I know this is both of our birthday presents to one another but it was such a sweet surprise. It's been so fun to play with over the last day. I downloaded my first issue of Martha Stewart Everyday Food. I think I'm going to like this thing.

Happy Mother's Day.....

2011-05-08T10:51:00.000-05:00

Happy Mother's Day to a great group of women.

My Nana

My mom

Trey's Granny

Trey's Mom

Lunch Box Peanut Butter Cookies....

2011-05-06T11:04:00.001-05:00

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter 1/2 cup butter, softened 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1/2 cup firmly-packed brown sugar 1 large egg 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350°F. Place oven rack just above oven center.
In a large bowl, combine peanut butter, butter, sugar, brown sugar. Beat well. Then add egg and vanilla; beat with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. In another bowl, mix together flour, baking soda and salt. Stir into butter mixture until well blended.
Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place balls 3 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. If you'd like, gently flatten each ball with fork in a criss-cross pattern.
Bake at 350°F until lightly browned, 8 to 10 minutes. Do not over bake. Remove cookies from sheets; cool on wire racks.

New hospital update.....

2011-05-04T07:00:00.000-05:00

Our new hospital is coming along! We are so excited for next spring when the doors will open. It will be beautiful. I'm sure of it.

I had to go to a training so that I could walk around the site. Then last week I was able to walk around the construction site with some other staff. It was pretty cool to see.....it will be much easier to imagine once the walls are up, etc....but some of the outside walls are going up now.

See the outside wall going up? Pretty exciting.

In your easter bonnet......

2011-05-02T00:18:00.002-05:00

So we gave a good attempt at making an Easter Bunny cake. It was a sad attempt since we didn't have any candy to decorate the face with. Trey decided it needed buttons....the problem is that we only make a face with a bow tie. There's not need for buttons on our bunny cake...but he put them anyway......you'll see them as 3 brown dots (he colored coconut) on the face. We could call them pimples, I guess.

one of our guests decided to add their wedding ring as the mouth. see the buttons by the whiskers?

but it was good! we made a fresh coconut cake and even put the fresh coconut on the outside. i made home made frosting and it tasted D.E.L.I.C.I.O.U.S! Everyone said so. Not just me.

Friends....

2011-04-29T23:59:00.000-05:00

We had a fun weekend. On Friday we went to visit our friend Abeer and her family in Oman. She is the oldest of 11 kids and we got to see 7 out of the 11. We had a great time. Just some pictures from our day.

Zambia

2011-04-28T07:55:00.000-05:00

Trey took a trip back in late March with the students from the Higher College here in Al Ain to one of CURE's hospitals in Zambia. Thought I would show you some pictures.

Goin' to the Chapel.....

2011-04-26T04:39:00.000-05:00

So who's going to watch the BIG wedding on Friday?! I am. Friday is the start to our weekend and it will show here in the middle of the afternoon since we're 3 hours ahead of London. Since it's too hot here to do anything in the middle of the afternoon, this will be a great distraction. I can't wait. Maybe it won't even be as exciting as I think but I want to see Kate's dress and just how a Royal wedding goes down.

So Easter didn't really feel much like Easter. Sunday is the start to our work week here, so we actually worked. We could have taken off but we didn't have church so we decided to work. Our church meets on Thursday nights here since that is the time we can get space at the church on the hospital campus. So we did a Maundy Thursday and Good Friday service combined. So then.....for Easter.....not much. We did our Easter dinner last night instead of on Sunday since Trey and our other friend play soccer every Sunday night. This is not to be missed. Trey and I have an agreement that we will never schedule anything on Sunday nights. It's a pretty good agreement actually to assure that I have one night at home and he has one night of playing soccer each week. It works. Most of the time Min and I end up going to the pool anyway. We love the pool!

I keep on fallin'.......

2011-04-24T03:12:00.001-05:00

On Friday, I had a day surgical procedure done in Dubai. All went well. But I want to tell you about one small piece of our day that added a little humor. I was in the recovery room and Trey came in to be with me and keep me company. The nurses then came in to check on me to make sure I was recovering well and not feeling nauseaus from the anesthesia or anything. Trey caught a glimpse of some blood. I mean, blood is pretty normal in a hospital, right? There are wounds, IV's in the arm, etc. Well, the one nurse left the room and the other stayed behind to help me get comfortable. All of the sudden in the corner I hear some "cling-clang-boom". I look over and see Trey slowly falling to the ground and knocking over the trash cans and needle disposal container at the same time. I realized "Oh, Trey's fainting". I couldn't help him at all. The nurse ran out of the room yelling "Code Blue". I was thinking, this really isn't much of a medical emergency, he just fainted and he'll come back to us in a few seconds. I kept looking at him and then said "You just fainted, you'll be fine." I don't think he heard me until about the 5th time when he was waking up. Then appear about 10 people in scrubs. They start fanning him and making sure the A/C is on high. Way to take the attention Trey! Later the nurses said that they have a lot of husbands who do this. She said sometimes the husbands can really injure themselves so we were glad he was leaning up against the wall and just fell on his side. It was a good little piece of comic-relief amidst a day of surgery.

And I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain.....

2011-04-14T03:34:00.000-05:00

We had rain this week...and it included lightening and thunder! I was inside and I got a call from Min to go outside. It was pouring like a summer thunder storm. I should have taken a picture, but I didn't. You probably see it a lot since it's spring back home.

On another note....did you see that LL Bean came out with a new line of clothing called LL Bean Signature? It's sort of like LL Bean meets Ann Taylor and J Crew. Maybe I'm behind the times but back in the late 90's they had a new line called Freeport Studio and then they got rid of it. But now they came up with this. They have some pretty great looking items...especially some cute seersucker items. Despite some of LL Beans clothing styles, I like their customer service and the quality of items they stand behind. Our family has been faithful supporters for a long time and they give me good memories of New England....so there you go. So take a peak. Maybe you want something new for your spring wardrobe.

He returned....

2011-04-08T04:55:00.000-05:00

Trey returned home from Zambia earlier this week. It was a good trip with lots of learning experiences for all. CURE wrote a great blog about the trip. Please go here to read it.

I wanted to leave you with a few pictures of their trip to Victoria Falls. Trey took a glider airplane thingy up over the Falls. Pretty cool. He didn't buy the pictures but another girl from the trip did, so I'm posting hers.

Old McDonald had a farm....

2011-03-31T11:35:00.000-05:00

A couple weeks ago, we went to visit our friends farm. He had all sorts of animals. Goats, chickens, sheep, peacock, a bull dog that was scarier than anything I've ever seen....and a few other things. I was really impressed with his knowledge and ability to run this farm. We saw chicks hatching from eggs ....and then he sent us home with some other eggs to eat. It's hard for me eat Farm Fresh eggs after I saw chicks hatching.....but Min made crepes the next morning....and we forgot very quickly. They were good.

When we arrived he had bought some snacks--I think he thought Americans only eat crap.

New baby chicks keeping warm under the lamp.

Look at this....a baby chick hatching from the egg.

He gave us eggs to take home.

Min took those farm fresh eggs the next day and made crepes! How Martha Stewart of her!

Mmmm...they were good crepes. We put Nutella and bananas and Cream Cheese and Strawberry Jelly.
D.E.L.I.C.I.O.U.S.