Too late she cried ...

As an update to the prayer request made, Bruce is resting peacefully now.
Sadly he passed away last night.

"Bruce went to the United States for a medical assessment. The doctors there determined that he required heart surgery to replace one valve in his heart and to repair another. That surgery was performed on October 25. He had a difficult 24 hours following surgery, but then appeared to be recovering well.

On October 30 he developed septicemia. His seemingly good recovery reversed very quickly and within hours he was placed on life support. He passed away in St. Louis on the evening of October 30th."

This is a very sad time for us, obviously especially his family.
For me, Bruce was not only my principal but a very special friend who will be sorely missed. I honestly don't know if I'd be where I am if it weren't due in large part to his encouragement and support. Struggling with the selfish feelings not wanting the outcome to be as it is, we must be joyful when we are reminded that he is finally at peace, having no more pain or suffering.

Bruce, I'll miss your shoulder to cry on, your discerning ear, your friendly smile and your hearty laugh. It'll surely take some getting used to not being able to just pop in and say Hi or to run something by you. But ...
It's time to say Goodbye, enjoy heaven, I hear the view from up there is pretty magnificent !
Totsiens, Masalama

Please continue to pray for Norma, Ryan and Carrie - his immediate family, they need all the strength we can give them.
And also our school family because indeed that's what we are and it feels like our "Dad" is now gone.

Prayers PLEASE !

URGENT, SHORT AND SWEET -

MY PRINCIPAL, MR. BRUCE HUDSON NEEDS YOUR PRAYERS.

Less than a month ago he left Saudi to go back to the US for heart surgery.
He had his surgery almost a week ago. He was critical but stable to begin with. A day or so later was doing much better, even got up. Suddenly however, yesterday he took a turn for the worse.
He is fighting but its a serious up-mountain (forget the hill) battle.
He NEEDS your prayers, his family NEEDS your prayers.
God can work miracles, we've all seen them, this is what we need now.
We NEED him to come out of this.
Thankyou, and God Bless all of you !

It's finally a bit cooler.....

Eid Mubarak !

Well I'm back from Oman, wonderfully enriching experience over the two days.
The family is all good and Uncle Lerry (as the girls insist on pronouncing Larry) is staying with us while Andrè is away. He arrived in kingdom on Sunday night last week and is getting settled at the moment.
Before Andrè left however we did have a day or two and with the weather finally cooling down, we enjoyed some time outside.
Girls playing, of course dad's car parked in front of the house was just too tempting and had to get 'washed'. Camping across the street was also very necessary once the adults had disappeared inside again. Fun was had by all hehehe

And then Andrè had to leave us but not before I took the girls for a haircut :)
Lucy requested it and Aimee got coerced into following her lead hehehe
....MUCH easier to get washed an brushed now !

Best I clarify quickly - Andrè has gone to California for 10 days - work related (if it was a holiday I'd have some serious problems hehehe), will be back on the 31st, just in time to watch the girls while I go to a two day conference in Bahrain ! And then its Halloween :) our compound celebrations are on Friday the 3rd so watch for photos thereafter :)
It's Eid right now so we're at home for the week - hopefully getting some time to catch up on work.
Have a great week everyone, til the next posting I guess.

Rugby in Bahrain on the Weekend

Okay everyone, so here I sit in Oman for two days at a NVS conference. The family is safe and sound in Saudi.
The first few days of this week were hectic as I prepared to go and that's why all these photos from the weekend didn't get loaded :( better late than never though
right ?!
We spent much of Friday in Bahrain for rugby. While I am writing this I am trying to think about what happened on Thursday and the week before that but its all quite frankly a blur.
So we arrived at the rugby club expecting Andrè to be running touch only .... our mistake. Last minute as he was about to get into the pool with the girls, he was asked to ref the U16 game. So Andrè being Andrè, off he ran :)

Here Aimee and Lucy are playing in the pool anyway.

Andrè looking rather 'commanding' on the field - he's the one in the lumo-yellow rugby jersey :O.

Didn't get any very successful shots of the main game while Andrè ran touch :(

And then it was into the swimming pool for everyone to cool down before we headed back home to Saudi, off to bed and school in the morning.

Belated Happy Birthday Mally

Well Blogger is not being the friendliest this side so its a belated birthday wish here Malcolm. Happy birthday for yesterday.
(seen here with my big sister Kim, for those of you that don't know hehehe)
Hope you had a fabulous day, wish we could have celebrated with you all.
Before we know it though we'll be seeing you at Christmas :) Yay !
love hugs and kisses always
God Bless
Tracy, Andrè, Aimee and Lucy
xoxoxoxo

Just a fun one to show the new 6 year old enjoying some cake this evening after supper.

Doesn't she just look soooo comfortable the little madam hehehehe

Team day today at school, hence the yellow ensamblè :)

Lucy is in the Golden Falcons team, Aimee is a Blue Camel and Tracy is a Red Stallion !
"We think Mom is pretty good actually allowing the us to wear the colors of a team other than The Stallions on team day, afterall everyone knows.... Red Stallions Rule !!!"

Have a great day - weekend tomorrow ... Yay !!!

Birthday party for Lucy

So we invited all 20 of Lucy's classmates to her birthday party on Thursday. Only HALF responded ! Not a problem less 5/6 year olds to deal with hehehe :)
But seriously made the party-prep a little tricky. Two of the boys live on compound and so their slightly older sisters asked to come along. This brought the expected total to 12 children, I can live with that !
Here we have the girls pre-party, while we put chairs etc. in the front garden.

We had arranged a bus to collect us after 30 minutes and take us across to The Mad House.
This is one of the facilities on our compound. What has happened is management have taken one of the sets of squash courts (so 2 sets of 3 remain in use) and filled it with a huge indoor play area. There's a tunnel from one court/playground through to the other too which adds even more fun.
It's great and the advantage is you can book it out for private use as we did for the party !
We headed over there for just over an hour and the kids ran riot - which of course they can do in there !

Back to the house for a quick game of pass-the-parcel which went so well we didn't have time for musical statues before sitting down for snacks/lunch - yes I had been up from veeerrrry early getting it all sorted (party started at 9am), energy for cooking/baking is just not very evident in my house !

The cake was a real flop ! Had baked two to form an "L" and decorate. BUT... when moving the one half, it just fell apart ggrrrr. So thankfully small number attending, we could make do with just the, that wasn't up to much itself (iced and name on in smarties by request only) and the cupcakes I'd baked as well.

Finally they all sat, quiet as mice with their mouths full of food - and we ask "Why didn't we start feeding them as they walked in the door ????"
Blow out the candles, sing happy birthday, party bags and off they went home.

Check out the photos below for a sneak peak at our fun morning.

Done for another year !
Happy Birthday Lucy
xxx