The Cat and a Sad Goodbye

Blog Post About May 2021

This cat gets in the strangest sleeping positions.

...But she IS cute...at least for now.

Her mom came by for a visit, but this picture is the only time we saw Aoife looking at the cat outside. The rest of the time, she acted like it wasn't even there.

Granola and smoothie bowls on the balcony

And just like that, May 7 came, and it was time to say "goodbye."

We stayed up late, past midnight, waiting to take her to her flight, 

which would leave around 3am on May 8.

Bye, Kylie. Thank you for visiting, and we look forward to seeing you at Christmas (which is now just around the corner)

 

The Painful and Delightful Memories of Colorado

Blog About Fall 2020

Keira and I got back from Virginia on a Tuesday, and Karis and I left for Denver, Colorado, the next day!

We were meeting another mother and daughter there, so we sent them a picture of us in the airport.

They kindly reciprocated :)

We met in Denver, rented a car (which is going to be a big part of this story), and we found a middle eastern place to eat.

I still get amazed at digital maps! I remember driving with my family every summer, and I loved being in charge of the map...the paper map! But on those handy-dandy maps, it didn't say, take this exit for great middle eastern food. There was NO way to know what was in the city!

I can't remember if the food was good or not :)

I think we had problems getting it down.

October 28, 2020

We drove to Breckenridge. It was the off-season, and we had so much fun walking around without it being crowded.

Narnia vibes

October 29, 2020

We walked everywhere the first day, but the first morning, when we wanted to drive around and find a coffee shop, the car wouldn't start. We were in a garage, and not many people were around. Karis and her friend walked to town, and I walked down the road where I saw intermittent traffic, and I stopped 8 cars (3 wouldn't stop) to ask for a jump. Most of them had rentals as well, but one nice gentleman stopped and said he could help. I told him where my friend was waiting, so he drove to give our car a jump. He even gave us his construction business card in case we needed him again (since we didn't want to bother him, we never did, but we should have). We drove into town, did some sight-seeing, and after a few hours, we went back and the car wouldn't start again.

I'm not going to drag this out for you, but let me give you the highlights. I found a family in the parking lot who helped us, but we were concerned about making our drive back to Denver the next day. The car rental company said we could take it to the nearest rental place and switch it out for another car. The kicker was the rental place was in the OPPOSITE direction of Denver by an hour. 

SO, we opted to get a jump in the morning from some maintenance men and drive straight to Denver without turning the car off. When we stopped to eat lunch, someone remained in the car with it running, and everyone else got food and brought it back for the driver. In Denver, we had planned to eat out with a friend that night and spend the night before flying out the next morning, but we couldn't with this particular car.

SO, we drove all the way out to the airport, told the story to the car rental place, and they apologized, gave a SMALL discount and said they would upgrade us with a nice car. This is not what we wanted. 

Small car, BIG discount works better, right? 

Anyway, we drove away in a LARGE SUV Denali.  It was nice, but it was awful at the same time. 

Trying to park that thing in downtown Denver was NOT fun or easy!

Needless to say, we left with some memories :)

October 30, 2020

The Second Coming (of family)

Blog Post about Summer 2020

Doug, Kylie, and Caleb were left behind to finish things up after the lightning-fast move. 

Doug had to take our air condition units off the wall at our old house and put them in storage. 

He hired a crane to take the water tanks off our roof and move them over to our new house. 

Then Doug had to get permission from our new landlord to put a western toilet in our new house and turn the bathroom door around because the door swung inward over the squatty area.  The landlord really wasn't excited about it, but he agreed to it.

In the meantime, Doug was watching the news. He was waiting for commercial flights to start up again, but instead, things seemed to be getting worse.

So he booked flights on a charter to get them out on June 28, 2020.

And guess what?  

On the city's instagram post the day they were boarding the plane, these were the posts:

"NEW ROUND OF LOCKDOWN IS EXPECTED TO IMPOSE FROM TOMORROW."

"LOCKDOWN FROM 6:00AM - 0:00AM TILL JULY 4"

"PHARMACIES, SUPERMARKETS, GROCERIES, AND BAKERIES WILL REMAIN OPEN DURING LOCKDOWN DAYS. 

LOCKDOWN PERIOD: JULY 29 - JULY 4. 

LOCKDOWN HOURS: 6:00AM - 00:00AM 18 HOURS"

Coincidence?  I think not :)

So, while they were boarding, I was watching more instagram posts come through and feeling so thankful.

The next day said, "AIRPORTS THROUGHOUT OUR REGION WILL REMAIN CLOSED TO COMMERCIAL FLIGHTS UNTIL JULY 15th."

I'm so thankful that Doug felt led to buy tickets and get out, because realistically, commercial flights did NOT come back on July 15th, and it would have been a long time until he found one. The charter flight just happened to be the best option.

On the day they left, the Covid numbers in our region read:

Total confirmed cases 5,533

Total recovered: 1,634

Total deaths: 180

Total active cases: 3,719

I am more than aware these numbers pale in comparison to what was going on in America. I was keeping track of the numbers there, too, and this screenshot from May 30, 2020, was one month before we flew back.

 

Group One, Now Boarding

The next day, we lined up with all of the weary travelers who had been stuck inside for much of Spring.

June 21, 2020

We hadn't been out much where masks were required, so this was our first experience wearing masks for an extended period of time.

It ended up being over 40 hours!!

We also weren't expecting the full-body-wear the flight attendants had on.

Or the odd feeling of being in an airport with seats blocked off and so few people.

No water fountains.

But a lot of tired.

This particular airline usually gives people a hotel to stay in if the layover is over 6 hours, but not this time. Charter flights and Covid changed all that up.

Our layover was 18 hours.

Our second flight was to Chicago, and then we were delayed getting to Dallas because of rain. 

More time with the mask.

But we finally made it to Texas!

We were three hours late, but our sweet friend Jamie picked us up and had Chick-fil-a in a cooler, keeping it warm for us.

I think this picture says it all...

 

Hedgehog Café and Coming Home

My friend Hayley introduced me to the concept of a Cat Café when I was in Dubai.  She told me about it, and I laughed because I thought she was kidding.  I couldn't get my head around going to a café for the sole purpose of having a cat to pet and sit in my lap while I ate a meal.

I like cats, but I don't like their hair getting everywhere (plus cats have been known to cause my eyes to water, my skin to break out, and my airways to close off - no big deal).  The amount of hair flying around our house from me and the girls is enough, why would I want more? 

In my mind I just knew I would never go to a cat café (because I might have an asthma attack), and that was pretty much the last thought I gave to it.

Enter Thailand.  

We had the opportunity to go to a Hedgehog Café, and I seriously couldn't believe my kids were excited about it, but they were, so we went.

You purchase a certain number of drinks and a dessert, and then you get some hedgehogs brought to your table.

They set us up with bowls of mealworms with tweezers and a few hedgehogs to annoy feed and love on.

The waitress told us the names of each hedgehog, and my children quickly became attached naming their favorites.

The fun didn't stop there.  Soon it was feeding time for the guinea pigs.

A lady beat some grass against the wood, and out they came, crossed over a bridge, and entered into a "feeding area," where many small children abused fed them.

Keira was gentle and patient - even as other kids came and stole grass out of her hands!

We stayed for quite awhile, and it was one of my kids' favorite things, so I'm so glad we did its. 

And yes, I did hold one hedgehog for a very short amount of time.  I thought he was going to skydive off my hands, so I quickly passed him off to Caleb as all the kids laughed at me.

Too quickly, our time came to an end, and we left the lush green of Thailand's hills to return to the vast desert in the Middle East.

 

Summer was officially over.  Time for school to start.

While I was Away and Then Onward to New Things

While I was in Texas, Keira and four of her ballet classmates filmed another segment of "teaching beginning ballet" for a TV station

She also had her end-of-year evaluation and scored well.



She also made a new friend and had a play date.

When the older girls returned from Texas, we had a week with them before we headed off to Thailand.  We had some meetings, and additional classes were arranged for all ages, so we all went along on our first trip to the East.

The first thing we noticed was how green everything was.

Quite a contrast from when we landed back in our home country after our trip.

In Thailand, we stayed at a large hotel

With green views

And interesting script everywhere.

(I'm kind of glad this is not the script I'm learning)

 One of my favorite things about overseas meetings is the coming together of different languages.

These booths have interpreters for different languages represented in the room.

We also tried some new fruits we had never tasted before.

Mangosteen

Dragon Fruit

And some fruits we didn't try...

?????  I have no idea.  You are welcome to chime in.

 The people here worship so differently from the people where we live.

It was definitely an educational experience for all of us.

 

One of my favorite parts was meeting new people from different places (I found a kindred spirit from Scotland) and seeing my kids connect with new people so quickly, simply because they all live overseas, which puts them in a unique category of similarity.