October Recap!

Sorry for not blogging much lately...we have quite living as tourists and finally are settling in to a normal routine. Also, I hate to bore everyone with more sun and sand pictures :). Fall has arrived with mild temps in the 90's! We have yet to see any rain and palm tree leaves really don't change color. Our week is filled with soccer and homework just like home. We had parent-teacher conferences and the kids are doing great...they both just need to work on neatness (BOYS!). Halloween was celebrated with trick or treating and a BBQ, which was lots of fun. We all now have resident visas so we are not illegal aliens anymore (although alien is still debatable). I had an interesting experience at the Iranian Hospital getting my visa medical work. Not that I stood out being a blond but thank goodness Steve was with me because on the TV they were playing an anti-American propaganda video in the waiting room...needless to say a little odd. But the one thing about being a woman over here is you have your own lines for everything, so I got to go ahead of about 35 men. There are even women only lines in the grocery stores!!! Now that visas are done, I can get a drivers license and legally drive my new Murano. I love the beige interior, sand blends nicely! We spend our weekends going to brunch with friends and going to birthday parties. We have another dune bashing trip planned for this weekend and we are less than a month away from heading to India for a wedding (a friend of Steve's from Acxiom).

We attended the newbie course on dune bashing. They learned how to drive in the sand, go down large slip faces and recover each other when stuck!

Standing at the top of a large dune ready to learn to drive down!

The Hummer got stuck only once!!! and Steve gave me whiplash when we hit this dune!!

There were wild camels everywhere!

Jacob is attending the Manchester United Soccer Academy. The coaches have all played nationally and it is an intense 45 minutes of skill drills and then they have scrimmages.

Drew has soccer too and I will post pics soon!

For Halloween we went to a coworkers of Steve's villa. Lars and Andrea hosted a BBQ and really did up Halloween. The kids trick-or-treated around their neighborhood.

Batman and spider ninja!This was one of the other dads dressed up...Drew was a little frightened to get his treat off the table!

The ninja bobbing for apples!

Andrea decorated her garden and the kids racked up the candy!

And here is a beautiful fall sunrise seen from our bedroom window...