Happy Birthday Aimee

Happy Birthday to you...
Happy Birthday to you...
Happy Birthday darling Aiiiiimmmmeeeee...
Happy Birthday to You !

Aimee celebrated her 9th birthday on March 31st 2008.
She was thrilled with her gifts and not overly concerned that she wouldn't be having a party.
It was explained that she would be having an awesome time and loads of special experiences in Thailand. It is always so difficult to arrange something because her birthday falls either during or just before Spring Break each year and so many people are travelling. Thanks for being so understanding and cooperative my baby.

Our Adventure !

The closest IKEA, quite possibly my favorite store, is hours away in Riyadh. They have been building one down the road for the last 'forever' but it is finally showing signs of completion so maybe by the summer I can visit that one.
In the meantime, we visit the one in Riyadh. To add to the adventure, we decided to take the train from Dammam to Riyadh. Armed with my handy dandy IKEA catalog we trekked off to the train station before 6am. Sadly we didn't get everything we had planned as some items were not in stock. We did have a super-fun time though and will definitely be doing it again.

Girls and Retail

Isn't it funny, the little things make us smile.
The girls recently needed shoes and so it was off shopping and after a day of attitude and "You always say NO" or "I never get ...." it was all smiles.
Our girls, well mostly Aimee LOVE shopping !
Here Lucy is quite happy posing in the luxurious Thai Silk gowns they got at Christmas time - perfect at posing aren't we hehehehe, this was for a Read-the-day-away at school where the kids laze around in PJ's all day reading.

Annual Reading Month

The month of February is historically reading month at DEMS.
Of course there's the reading challenge - with keeping a daily record of minutes read; book buddies; book swap; mystery readers and more. The highlight though is always the last day when we have a character parade and finish off with the school enjoying stories read to them by the library staff and other teachers.
This year we went "old-school" hehehe
Actually it was just easier to pull out the princess outfits and of course what teacher doesn't have a witches hat stuck in a cupboard somewhere.
We have Aimee as Cinderella and Lucy as Sleeping Beauty and Tracy as Liewe Heksie.

Now that reading month is done, is this the last we'll see of reading for the year ??? Hope not hehehehe

Al Hada - Home !

We live on Al Hada which is a smaller compound on the larger compound. Oasis bought the compound last May and there have been some changes. Notably the name of the larger compound is now Oasis Gardens, not Al Bustan anymore.

We have also had some changes to the gardens. They removed some of the more invasive trees and replaced them with HUGE palm trees. We are told they will clean up the rest of the gardens but that is yet to happen.

So here are some views around the compound and then of course our street - Walnut, and our house, Walnut 1.