Category Archives: 365

July 3: finishing up crafts for our 4th of July bash!I think we stayed up till 2 am almost every night leading up to the 4th working on crafts and watching Anne of Green Gables

July 4th: Happy 4th! My first time to make cheery pie- homemade crust, delicious & festive!

July 5: great day on “the other side” (since we live in a border town we only get to venture to our neighboring town with lots of malls & restaurants for our doctors appointments)… day included a loong doc apt., pizza, Starbucks, a little shopping, swimming, & Chili’s for a quick dinner

July 6: burrito bowls, or as they like to call it Sazon night after a restaurant in Lubbock, at the Remkes

July 7: my view… yup, no longer can see my feet!

July 8: perfecting their “ninjas moves” in photo school while we learned about shutter speed (this was taken with a high shutter speed to capture still motion)

#2 for July 8- had to share both of these! love Chase’s face!

July 9: more practice with shutter speed (this one was taken with a really low shutter speed for a blurred motion affect)

June 23: week 26! Jord is so great to spend 1 hours (or more) writing my boards, rearranging furniture and then taking pics of my belly every other week! about 8 more to go!

June 24: lots of picture editing and blog checking up…

June 25: I made lemon scones with lemon whip cream for a going away tea for a friend before she went home for the summer

June 26: checking out a new local coffee shop during a school lunch break- not too bad for our little town

June 27: red, white and blue nails… getting ready for the 4th!

June 28: Yemeni food.. Lydia let me eat it! yum…

June 29: 2nd time to change our locks since we moved into this house… sad day- got my computer stolen this last week ;(

June 30: 4th of July wreath! Excited for our party with all our American friends this week!

July 1: We started a photo school last week with Jord as our teacher! I am loving it so far and loving reading about photography- this week we worked on the Aperture- notice that the orange pencil is in focus and everything else is blurry- this is caused by a smaller  aperture number, which is actually a larger hole letting more light into your camera!…. sorry for the geek out moment it is just fun to start to understand what my camera is doing as I am taking pictures. This was taken at a f-1.4 (for those that care- ha)

July 2: for our Photo School we are given different assignments- since we talked about aperture we were asked to take pictures of the same object at different apertures- this one was taken at an f-5.6

June 9: starting to get some fun stuff for miss Lydia’s nursery! Jord made the name art for her- i love it!

June 10: some of my local friends threw me a little birthday celebration- so sweet

June 11: i have lots of lists these days… my favorite being our Thailand packing list

June 12: Spring roll lesson from my sweet Chinese friend

June 13: Kung fo panda for Burke and Kead’s birthday

June 14: At the airport in Thailand for our babymoon!!

June 15: our view for the week… and my favorite drink of the week- “young coconut”

June 16: a trip to the closest “town” to our hotel to buy sunglasses for me (yes I forgot mine for our beach vacation-oops)… it ended with some sticky rice and mango with coconut milk poured on top and a ride back to our hotel from a local Thai lady- great day!

June 17: we got a driver to take us around the island and show us some fun Thai culture- this sign at the Buddha temple was pretty classic

June 18: everyday we had the best breakfast buffet at our resort- complete with homemade waffles, omelets, eggs made to order and cappuccinos with a cinnamon stick to stir with- delicious!

June 19: loved the walk ways in our resort– had to watch my step carefully as I walked around.. but loved it none-the-less

June 20: Bangkok for the day/night while we waited for our 2:30 am flight home… this was on a ferry boat ride back from our sunset dinner… yes, it was quite the trip- I was for sure spoiled – stay tuned for more pics and stories!

June 21: again, worst part of vacationing… coming home & a suite case of dirty clothes

June 22: Chase was “nesting” and put together Lydia’s stroller and car seat- he is gonna be a wonderful daddy!

After this I think I am caught up! Enjoy… (I had to change a lot of these to black and white/sepia because I couldn’t figure out how to change one of the settings on my new camera… but then wonderful Jord came to my rescue and showed me the way! ha)

June 2: Henna hands for Miss Hannah!

June 3: my local friend’s sweet son

June 4: Gonna miss this family when they head back to America next week. They have been a huge blessing to us.

June 5: practicing…

June 6: George! Love him!

June 7: my 26th birthday… Jord threw me an awesome “Snap” (cameras) themed party with a photo booth and all sorts of fun details. Can’t wait to share more pictures!

June 8: another great family we will miss as they head back to the UK for a new job. (obviously not the Remkes :)- thank goodness!)

Finally an update! We have had guests for the past two weeks… so its been a little busy to say the least. We got to take our first group of people to the capital and play “tour guide” for them… it was super fun and a great group to take! Now we are enjoying spending time with Jord’s sister and family.. it is such a blessing to get to spend time with sweet friends from back home.

Also, starting on May 31st the pictures will be taken from my NEW camera!! I am still learning how to use it… so bare with me- excited to see improvements! I am still in “training”…

May 21: my view… can still see my feet! (for now..)

May 22: sweet local friends baby… 10 days old!

May 23: Dr. appointment… 101% a girl and a sweet face– can’t wait to kiss those cheeks!

May 24: Coconut iced tea compliments of Janna!… a little taste of heaven…if you live in the states go to Starbucks and order this drink- you won’t regret it!

May 25: Tour of the capital with some sweet friends

May 26: Driving through a small town on the way home and saw these shoes outside the mosque while the men were inside praying

May 27: Still exciting for me to see camels on the side of the road…

May 28: tea & sweets at a local friends house

May 29: love this sweet girl… enjoying some yummy Afghan food

May 30: Lydia is already getting spoiled with fun girl stuff- love it!

May 31: fabric souk (first pic with my new camera!)

June 1: enjoying an traditional Omani meal with our friends that came to visit us for two weeks

May 14: the perfect bedtime snack… vanilla ice cream with cinnamon and decaf tea with milk & honey 🙂

May 15: Fish Tacos… my first time to make them & they were super easy & super tasty

May 16: our friend Traci arrived this week! She will be living with us this summer. Welcome to the Middle East friend!May 17: I have said it before, but Jord has seriously been the best friend to have during my preggo cravings! I said I was wanting cookies with chocolate chips and cinnamon flavor and what does she do- bakes them for me!

May 18: Love this picture of them! (they don’t normally pose with a heart love sign… they were doing a project for Drew’s mom)

May 19: this new dessert I made was a huge hit… put sugar cookie dough in a mini muffin pan, then mix cream cheese, sugar & vanilla together to the frosting and put blueberry (or other fruit- fresh or canned) pie filling on top!

May 20: Happy 5th birthday beautiful girl! We love you kead!

*realized most of these are food pictures… you can tell what we have been up to!

May 6: What a blessing it is to have friends with 3 little girls with adorable clothes! Yey for hand-me-downs!

May 7: Date night… Salmon, salad and brown rice… delicious!

May 8: Chase practicing being a “girl dad”! He is gonna be great at it!

May 9: LuLu Hypermarket= new amazing grocery store in our little town… we are happy campers here friends!

May 10: My new “preggo-momma” shoes! It was decided as we were walking around the mall all day that I needed more comfortable, “safer” shoes for this pregnancy. So Jord went with me and we found these… maybe not something I would normally buy, but I am so glad I did! My back and feet already feel better.

May 11: A day of organizing my closet with clothes I can still wear and rearranging the rest of our house (hope to post pics soon)… sorry for the terrible pic… forgot to take one- so this one was taken late at night.

May 12: Happy 32nd Drew! We are thankful for you!

May 13: First Momma (“to-be”) Day! Chase made me breakfast in bed… love him!

Internet was cut of again for a few days, but is back up and running and hopefully we got all the problems with it worked out…. we’ll see! Here is what we were up to last week!

April 28: lady mcnugget’s first girly clothes from mom & dad! (dad picked out the rolling stones shirt- I want to put a black tutu shirt with it!)

April 29: Behind the Scenes: Jord and her artist skills at work on our weekly baby bump pics!

April 30: Homemade buffalo wings, fries, ranch and homemade cole slaw with some friends- great meal.great company

May 1: Had a British friend over for tea… he asked if all American have “tea boxes”- I guess this is not a British tea tradition!

May 2: I seriously teared up with my first bite of this PBJ sandwich… we didn’t have great bread here, as in there are no preservatives in the bread so it molds quickly, it is crumbly, mostly just white bread and is not soft at all– which makes for a terrible PBJ sandwich in my opinion. Anyway, I had heard about this fabulous bread from several freinds that can be found here every once and a while, but never found it myself, until Jord shared this goodness with me… I think I have had a PBJ everyday since. Oh how I have missed you!

May 3: Jord and I went to my old neighbors, husbands, cousins, wife’s wedding (yes, you don’t have to know the bride or groom here to be invited to the wedding… they love for anyone and everyone to come!). It was fun getting all dressed up, people watching (they great way dressed up here for weddings) and the best part was the photographer showed up late, so they asked Jord to step in as photographer for an hour! She did a great job!

May 4: Spent the day in Sohar at a friends house, this is the only pic I got before my camera died… such pretty flowers!

May 5: I threw a small birthday party for my local friend… this chocolate cake was a success!

April 22: Went to a party with some local friends (21 girls all gathered in a room for a dance party & dinner outside after- so fun even though I was not allowed to dance since I am “with child”)… they love their shoes here!

April 23: This sweet girl turned 2 last week! Can’t believe we knew her before she was one!

April 24: 1 of 4 numbers I got while I waited to see our doctor & get an ultrasound… they have the number system down pretty good at our hospital

April 23: It’s a GIRL cupcakes! (more details & pics on this later…sorry if you are just now reading that we are having a girl… announced in on facebook last week, but not here yet) I made these for our Arabic language teachers for them to find out what we are having… they were so excited about it- first time anyone has done this for them!

April 26: Back stage before my sweet ballerinas performed their recital for a room full of proud parents!

April 27: Babies everywhere! Went to a friend’s baby boy shower this weekend. So fun to do something very American… apparently no one else in the world, but us throws baby showers.

am a little behind on blogging- seems like we have had a super busy couple of weeks & lots of internet problems! Trying to catch up! Enjoy…

April 14: We bought a few flowers to plant in our “hosh” (yard in Arabic). Amazing what a little color will do for the soul 🙂 Just hoping we can keep them alive in the heat of the summer!

April 15: Yes, that is a DISHWASHER! Chase surprised me with it a few weeks ago- what a sweetheart! You have no idea how much this blesses me… oh how I have missed having one of these! I will be even more thankful for it when I will want to just be holding our baby girl & not washing dishes 🙂

April 16: my staple take-out here… Chicken wrap with this creamy cheese stuff  and a strawberry/mango smoothie… pretty much all I want to eat if I don’t cook.

April 17: Dress rehearsal for my sweet ballerinas!

April 18: Aren’t our boys handsome? (esp the one on the right?!- only a little bias) they were headed out for a local wedding

April 19: Sleepover with these sweet girls! We have promised them a sleepover at our house since Christmas- finally we were able to deliver while Drew & Jord enjoyed a night in Dubai!

April 20: A quick trip to Dubai to pick up a group studying language this week.

April 21: making recital hairpieces… brings back memories… can’t wait to do this for my little girl one day!