Category Archives: friday5

friday5

or monday5…. either way- my weeks keep zooming by as I chase my CRAWLER and pack up our house to move by the end of this week! So I am thinking for now this may be an ‘every other week’ project till we are more settled, or a ‘whenever I a get around to it’ project, but nonetheless I want to keep it going.

1. summertime

Watermelon is sold on almost every major street corner during this time of year. So tasty!

2. life lately

I know I have said it lots on here, but we have one busy bee! I love it, but it leaves me one tired momma at the end of the day. She is crawling everywhere and now starting to pull up. She looks so big peering into toy boxes (even if its the wrong toy box- this one is for older kids that come over..) and picking out which toy she wants to play with…

3. whole fruit 

Fruit is served at almost every visit. Usually whole fruit sits in a basket next to a bowl of water, an empty plate, and a knife. After the greetings and small talk the host sits down, washes the fruit and then begins to cut the fruit in front of you and places it on a plate. Once way too much fruit is cut they begin to tell you to eat, eat while pointing at the plate, they will continue to randomly tell you to eat though out the entire visit. This is their way of honoring and serving you, their guest. Very different from our culture of “my house, is your house”, serve your self, eat when you want and however much you want.

4. lipstick kisses

This is Lydia relaxing after about 8 local women kissed, hugged, “mashallahed” (praise be to God- a phrase they use to compliment you without sounding jealous or like they want what you have), and photographed her. This is a common occurrence when we are out and about. I often walk by a group of women who, in Arabic, comment about Lydia and how cute she is and so I stop and greet them and start talking to them in Arabic (which 9 times out of 10 they are shocked that I am speaking to them in Arabic) and then proceed to let them plant big kisses on my baby’s cheeks. Luckily Lydia eats it all up and just smiles and lets them, at least for now.

5. gates 

I want to share two things about gates… one, I love the way the look here. They are so ornate and beautiful. This one happens to be the gate to our new house! Two, inside these gates and outside these gates are two different worlds. Inside, is my “safe place”, my home, my little America and outside the gate is a foreign world, although much more familiar than two and a half years ago, but still a world that is so very different… a world where people speak differently, where I have to cover my arms and legs in 110+ weather, one where I have to choose to enter into- some days are easier than others. Even though I love the people here and feel much more comfortable than when we first landed it is still a daily choice that I have to make to enter into the world outside my gate.

I often wonder if there are women here that never step outside their gates, not because it is a foreign world to them, but because culturally it used to be the men that did all the errand running, carpooling of kids, working outside the home, etc. Times are changing now and more and more women are working and doing daily tasks on their own, but I still wonder how many of the older generation are used to just staying in and tending to the home. What a different world than the one I came from.

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    friday5

    So I have already missed a friday5… oops… Last Friday I was throwing a bridal shower for a friend and taking care of a puppy for another friend… so the day came and went and I never got around to post anything and as the week went on I just decided to wait till this Friday to post again.

    1. Rain clouds

    Last week it rained in our very dry desert for about 5 days (maybe more) straight! It was glorious! It cooled the temperatures down, cleared the dusty air, and made my heart oh so happy. I think it was record rain for out here. This picture was take on the road to S0har…. a few days later on this same road we had to pull over and wait because it was raining so hard- so strange, but so wonderful.

    2. ruins 

    Lydia and I wanted to get out of the house so Chase took us on a drive around our town (again on a day we had clouds!). This is a pic of some old ruins that people used to live in probably about 50 years ago. This area was hardly developed (only 10 miles of paved road in the whole country) in the 70s- it has come a long way in development since then.

    3. football

    A.K.A. soccer… is a popular sport and played all over the country in the middle of mountains, along the beach, on the side of the road. Kids, teenagers, and adults all head out around 5 pm and play till the sun goes down. Not a bad view to play soccer in!

    4. trash

    Thought I would share a not so pretty picture of the area we live in… unfortunately lots of the bushes around town end up looking like this… one, because of the wind that carries the trash from the dumpsters and two, because the local people here are not too concerned with keeping their environment clean and aren’t fans of using trash cans. When you camp or picnic in the wadis there is usually a lot of trash (diapers, food, bags, etc..) all over the place… it is sad that it gets polluted because the surroundings are so beautiful here.

    5. bait jadeed!

    That’s right! This is our new house! We are moving to the coast at the end of this month!! It all happened so quick. We went down to look at houses on a Saturday and then again on Tuesday and that night (after only seeing 2 houses) we decided the first one we saw was the one for us! Chase did his thing and got us a great rental price. We feel so thankful and so blessed that it all fell into place. And we are a 3 minute walking distance from the beach! And if that wasn’t good enough, our best friends, Drew & Jord will also we living a 3 minute walk from our house starting in the middle of June!! I was in shock for the first few days and now that the reality has set in, we are super excited… now I just have to get a system down for packing with a scooting (almost crawling) 7 month old- who is into.everything!

    *bonus pic*

    6. new best friend

    Lydia and Posey, the puppy we watched this last week. Lydia LOVED her (she would giggle and get so excited whenever they were in the same room) and Posey was SO great with Lydia… even when she was pulling at her like this pic 😉 It made me excited for the future of having a dog again because of how much she loved her, but I also realized we are so not in a stage of life where we are wanting a dog… a week was plenty for now.

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      friday5

      I have been tossing around a few ideas in my head about how to change up our blog a little bit to document our lives out here, along with keeping you all up with whats been going on and for it to not always be just about Lydia, as I am sure you all just tolerate love looking at our beautiful daughter, you would appreciate some other things as well! (well, maybe the grandparents are ok with it just bing about Lydia, but still…)

      And since I haven’t started a 365 photo project again this year (one day I want to do it again cuz I miss taking pictures everyday, learning new things, and documenting our daily lives, but now is just not the time), I was thinking I would do a friday5. Which will consist of five fun things from the week and will be posted (hopefully) on Fridays- hints the friday5 🙂 Some of the things I post will be mundane everyday things, some will be of our life out here in the desert. I hope to start taking pictures of the culture and country that we live in again, to get excited about the small stuff that makes up the people, the smells, the sounds, and the tastes of where we are living during this time of our lives. It is easy to just get stuck in the mode of living; laundry, dishes, cooking, baby care, trying to speak Arabic and be understood and all the while forget that we have been given an awesome opportunity to experience something really cool and interact with some really great people- I mean how many people get to say that the lived in the Arabian Peninsula?! I know that I will still be posting about Lydia often, but hopefully this will be a nice break in between 🙂 (and maybe, just maybe you will hear from Chase some too!).

      So, without further adieu, here is my friday5.

      1. a trip down the coast 

      Right now we are in the process of doing market research for our business and in order to get a better feel for the country we took a trip down the coast at the beginning of the month to check out potential locations for business and to live. (I hope to have more info coming on this soon!) It was so great to take a trip to explore Oman and especially be close to the sea! Many of the people in Oman along the coast are fishermen by trade and so as you drive up and down the coast you see fishing boats, nets, fishermen and sometimes even their catch of the day!

      2. excellent hosts

      The people here are superb hosts and put anyone in America to shame when it comes to honoring their guests by serving them their best food, fruit, hottest coffee/tea, local dates and sweets. Anytime you visit a local home you can expect to be served some sort of food or fruit along with a hot beverage or juice, whether they have a ton of money or hardly anything. The picture above is of a local chicken dish with a soup-y bread underneath, it is only made in the home and it can’t be purchased at restaurants! Pretty tasty.

      3. a local commodity 

      Frankincense is grown all over here. It used to be a major commodity that was exported all over the world in ancient times. It can be smelled today in the malls and when taking a walk outside from our neighbors houses when they are burning it in their homes. Above is a picture of a frankincense tree in bloom!

      4. embracing the culture

      Lydia has become quite the popular one among my local friends or just the random passer-by. I have to be very trusting and comfortable when it comes to taking Lydia out into this culture, they love to hold her, kiss her, and take her from me. They often try to walk away with her to show their other family members or friends, I have to tell them that she will want me near to her to give me an excuse to follow them. This is something I am still learning how to let go and trust, but it does warm my heart to see how much they love her and to see her giggle and smile for them. Once on a local visit a friend gave her a taste of honey! I about screamed NO, but it was too late, I just said a little prayer of protection, hoping that she would be ok and not have any reactions- thankfully she did not- I am learning that anything goes when it comes to kids here. I am embracing some of the things, letting go of some and not joining in for others.

      5. local visits 

      I am trying to get in a more regular routine of visiting my friends with Lydia. It is a tricky balance because they of course always want me to bring her and I want to bring her, but often times visits don’t start till 8:00 pm and she usually goes down between 8:30 and 9…. I am ok with her having a later bedtime if she has taken an afternoon nap, which sometimes is still sporadic. I have also struggled with feeling like I have nothing to offer my friends if I don’t bring Lydia with me- she consumes most of my time, is most of what I think about and lets me honest is way more fun than me… although I need to get over this and be confident that my friends loved me before Lydia and will still want me around even if she stays home with dad. Plus, I don’t love leaving Lydia much right now anyway… learning the balance.

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