I'm a Chiquita Banana and I'm here to say....

Last night I was trying to decide what to make for dinner.   Sometimes I get sick of regular old dinner so I thought French Toast sounded good.  Sweet instead of savory.  As we were making it,  I put out a banana to cut on top of mine since I love banana on my french toast.   Trey saw the banana and said "How do you make those caramelized bananas on top of french toast?"  Really, I don't know but I figured I could guess and try.  We threw a good bunch of butter in the hot pan, some brown sugar and chucked in the bananas.  Wa..la!  It tasted great and just like you get at a little breakfast restaurant.  I think I'm getting closer and closer to my dream of opening up a B & B!  I know that I'll have something good to serve my guests.

Drivin', Drivin' in your car.....

I just realized that for the first time in 6 years, I actually had to drive to work today.  

This weekend we fully shifted to our new apartment so today we DROVE to work.  It doesn't matter if you drive, take the train or ride a bike, but the part I'm trying to get at is that I left my house and didn't walk a matter of 3 feet to get to my desk.

In NC when I worked for Saddleback and even at the end of my time in Massachusetts, I worked from home and traveled around the US.  Then in B-town, we worked out of house but went out on field visits.  And since arriving here, we have lived on campus and I walked about 50 steps to get to my desk. 

Today I actually had to get in the car, put on my seatbelt and drive 5 minutes!  It felt like the first day of school again.

I loved it.

Do you like crystal gel for your nail?

A few weeks ago a friend and I went to a shady ladies shop for a pedicure....it was really cheap so no complaining here, but it was a funny experience.

The experience was sort of like this video.

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

Today I was thinking about the photo books that I made from our life in B-town.   I'm curious to go look at them again this summer.  It is great to have them to think back and remember our last 3 years.  We had some great times and really have some great photos.  Some of the experiences and things we saw, I could have never imagined but am so glad they happened.  We just were talking about the time that estrogenized (i'm not sure that is a word) a goat!  Remember that video. Ha ha.  Anyway,  I made our books at My Publisher. 

Then at the end of our 3 years, I turned my blog posts from our time there into another book but compiled all 3 years into 1, where with my photo books we did one after each year.   I love how that book turned out, too.  That book I made through Blurb.com and I was super happy with them.

No matter what you're doing, if you keep a blog about your job, kids, travels, whatever, compile it every so often because no matter how much we love technology, it's great to have this for 20 years down the road.  Looking through a book about the past seems much more enjoyable than scrolling through a screen. 

I think back on these books as I think about our life here and future.  There are some things that I want record and remember here, but there are sometimes that a camera isn't as appropriate.  We've been to a few weddings but the camera is a big no-no in the Women-Only party.  If I bust it out, I'll definitely get a talking to....so we won't be getting any footage of that except maybe Trey can get something with the men. 

Anyway, it gives me a desire to want to experience and tell you about interesting things that we see on this side of the world.  We can experience much more than just Gulf culture here.  We're learning about Indian, Sudanese, Pakistani, Afghani, etc. so hopefully as we continue to meet people and experience new things, we'll post some more interesting topics. 

Last week on Thursday night, Social Activities Committee from the hospital hosted a fun night of Ice Skating.  It's nice to think about something "cool-ish" when it's 110-120 degrees outside.  Don't you love the cartoon guy in the above picture. 

Beautiful Joby. She works in HR.  

Cool Ahed.  This guy is from Syria and a lot of fun.  But he was a baby and wouldn't leave the side of the wall and never really ice skated.

Really almost none of us knew how to ice skate ( I think I've only been like 3 times in my life) except Trey and a few others...but we all got more comfortable as the night went on.....EXCEPT Ahed...Trey was trying to get him to hold his arm but it didn't work.

You see Ruel in the background? He works in HR.  Even he took his arms off the wall and ventured out to the middle.  Trey is still trying to convince Ahed to skate. 

We had a great time.  It will be nice when we can plan fun events outside but for now, we're stuck with things inside but this was pretty fun!

We started opening the boxes!  I'm seeing things that I haven't seen in 3 years.  Almost all of this was packed in Trey's sisters basement.

I totally forgot we had some of these things. It's fun to think about where we got them, who gave them to us.  Like those pomegranates I have from our last home.  The yellow vase was given to me by my friend Betsy back when I turned 23 for my birthday.  It's fun to think about those things!  I found a few other things that we bought in our travels or wedding gifts.  

I realized that most of the stuff we shipped was either for our kitchen, bedroom or a few decorations. 

It's definitely coming along. We put our bed together and started to open some things up so that we could get rid of the boxes and paper.  

We're down to only a few things left to unpack.  

Trey and I were talking about how glad we were to have our stuff.  It doesn't define us, but I think tells a lot about us. It will be nice to have some of those things with as we make our home our 'haven' here and host co-workers and friends from all around the world.

Beautiful Day in the neighborhood......

Today was a good day.  I feel like we got a lot accomplished but also got some relaxation time in there so we don't have a horribly tired start to the week. You know those kind of weekends.  Yesterday and today we were at the house trying to unwrap things and gradually start to move things into place.

Why was it such a good day?

A)  Ikea came and put together the rest of our stuff.  They are so much quicker than we would ever be trying to find the right screws for the right hole.  To put together a few items would be fine, but we had about 20 items.

B)  We went to the gym and then went to the pool.  We've never actually been to the pool since it always seemed too hot out, but we went swimming at about 5:00pm and the sun wasn't blazing as much so it was actually pretty nice.

C)  The kitchen man finally called back and will be coming tomorrow to finish the kitchen supposedly.  They use this word INCHALLAH here after any promise to see you tomorrow or later or something along those lines.  It means God Willing.  Its true.  But after hearing it so much, it starts to just sound like "hopefully" to me.....so I'm not always convinced.  But I'm hopeful.

D) It's 7:45pm and Trey is already in bed so I can hog the computer to write some blog posts and catch up on emails.

Last night we went to a wedding.  I bought a 'local' Kandora and it has a lot of crazy heavy jewelry sewn onto the dress but I love it.  I'll take a picture up close for you some time.