WE GIVE THANKS

Another Thanksgiving in Abu Dhabi.  I can hardly believe this makes 3.  The day was chaotic, as most days seem to be.  I was cooking and relaxing and listening to music when suddenly...our guests arrived!  Yikes, this has been a lot of fun but I still need to bathe, peel potatoes, cook the yams, make the gravy, carve the turkey, make a chocolate pie.......

Luckily, our guests were the Oswalds, my good friends Jennifer and her two boys.  So I just put her to work doing all the yucky stuff while I had a bath...(Not really that bad, Thanks Jennifer).  She seemed to take it all in stride.  It's more fun to cook with a friend anyway.

  Jennifer and her two kids and husband just moved here in August.  However, Jennifer and I met on the www thanks to my blog.  Jennifer was preparing to move her family around the world and through a trusty Google search ran across the abudhabicooks blog.  After that we were pen-pals or keyboard pals whatever you wish.  They now live here and we did our best to help them enjoy their first Thanksgiving abroad.  We also had a new couple from our church, Jason and Camille. (No kids for them yet.) We also had our friends from the compound and church, Lynne and Christina.  It all worked out.  We all over ate and had great conversation.  Another Thanksgiving come and gone.  Another year of blessings of great family, fabulous friends, and good health to be grateful for.  We are truly blessed and truly thankful EVERYDAY of the YEAR.

Thanksgiving Ski Day

Give Thanks for Snow!

Like any true Utahn, Cairo spent Thanksgiving morning working up and appetite for turkey by skiing!  Her friend Valentina, invited her to go take a ski lesson at Ski Dubai.  Since we moved here, Cairo has wanted to ski in the mall.  I have ethical problems with our children learning to ski in a shopping mall.  We come from the Greatest Snow on Earth!!! It falls naturally from the sky (ok, sometimes assisted by a snow machine) onto beautiful tall mountains and resorts that we reach by driving up canyons.  Not by driving in speeding traffic, risking our lives on the freeways of the UAE!  I've adapted my thinking.  Learning to ski on any slope is more fun and more critical than which slope it is.  Our lives here are made up of compromises and exceptional experiences.  This one was both.

Thanks to Yoca, my friend and Valentina's Mom for taking them to Dubai and for documenting the experience in photos so I could share in it.  I was home cooking turkey.

The Dr. is a Rockstar!

Every year The Dr. gives a speech to the students of Abu Dhabi Women's College.  Every year he gives this speech in their native language, Arabic.  Because National Day falls on an Islamic holiday this year.  The campus celebration and the speech took place early.  This year he went totally native and wore the traditional clothing as well.  The students went crazy.  Press the play button to get a sense of what it was like in that auditorium.

The college invited some children to come and enjoy a dog show and have pony rides during the festivities.  

In this part of the world, touching noses is a traditional way of greeting someone you care about.