Christmas 2010

Christmas 2010

Christmas Eve

Jack is our family chef. He really enjoys cooking. He makes breakfast for the family most weekends. So his Aunt went out and bought him a real chef outfit.

Christmas Morning

Anna sat on Santa's lap and asked for a unicorn...that was a tough one.The whole family got outfitted in EAGLES gear.Jack's favorite Christmas gift.

Chef Jack prepared the Rebl traditional Christmas breakfast of steak and eggs.Merry Christmas!

Tony Luke's Comes to Bahrain

Good friends of ours in the states emailed us that they had seen on CNN that one of the more popular cheese steak places in Philly had opened a shop in Bahrain!! Here is the link to the CNN piece: http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2010/12/09/get-your-philly-cheesesteak-on-in-bahrain/

Needless to say we were all pretty excited. You can order a steak sandwich over here but they are never very good. Usually it is the poor quality of roll that does the sandwich in. We took the first oppurtunity to go and we were not disappointed. And the rolls were excellent!!

The entire shop is done up in Philly pictures and sports memoribilia.
The moment of truth!!

YES!! AWESOME!!
And the kids washed it down with some local brand ice cream. What a treat!

Jack as Acolyte for Christmas Eve Service

Jack acted as Acolyte at our church for the first time this Christmas Eve. He was very proud and we really enjoyed watching him.

Anna Goes To Build A Bear

Anna used her Christmas money from her grandparents to go to Build A Bear for the first time. We took her to the mall over in Bahrain. She loved it. Thanks Grandmom and Pop Pop!

This is Fixit!! That is the name Anna chose.

Fixit's first bath.
A happy little girl.

Sarah Plays Surfside Golf Course

Sarah joined the RT Middle School golf team this year. She has never really played before but did a nice job. I got to follow her foursome around during the tournament here in RT. The girls were more concerned with talking on their cell phones then playing golf. It was a long afternoon! But look how cute she is!

The Yacht Club

One of the advantages to living on the water is well the water. The Persian Gulf is very salty but beautiful at the same time. It is almost always a Caribbean blue. Just over two years ago a good friend of mine who has since moved to Singapore taught me how to sail. It changed my life and it is now my passion. I love it. Spending my weekends at the beach and on the water is a gift. A lot of the time I go by myself. But lately the family has been coming out as well. It is just a lot of fun. Here is a pic from last weekend. Some Lasers, a Sunfish and Hobie One that was on the water. Too much fun.

Pirate Bernie

Mom and Dad live in Ocean City. Needless to say the family spends a lot of time their in the summer hanging at the beach (or goin to the shore as we say in Philly). Their neighbor is a guy named Bernie. He is a really nice guy with a great family. He makes a habit of hanging a pirate flag in front of his house when he is there. I can't rememeber if it was Jack or one of his cousins who started calling him Pirate Bernie when they were little. Anyway he is known to us as Pirate Bernie. Well Pirate Bernie made the news this week. Thank God he is safe and sound!

Here is the story from the paper:
ATLANTIC CITY, NJ (AP) – Six fishermen rescued by the Coast Guard after three days at sea said Tuesday they feared they would die as their disabled boat drifted farther into the Atlantic with a storm approaching. The men’s reunions with their families were full of laughter and hugs, but less than 24 hours earlier, they admit, they were confronted with the possibility that they might never see their loved ones again. Their boat, a 32-foot vessel called the Black Magic, was taking on water and running out of gas to run the pumps. “I really had thoughts that we wouldn’t see them again. We did have life jackets,” said one survivor, Bernie Otremsky of Haddon Township. “But since no one knew where we were … how long are you going to last like that?” A chain of good fortune gave them a happy ending. The Coast Guard station on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., heard bits of a mayday call. A helicopter that was part of the search team found their vessel, and a Coast Guard cutter slowly towed the boat to shore. The reunion at the Coast Guard station in Atlantic City was joyous. The men’s relatives snapped pictures of the news photographers who were there to capture the boat’s arrival. Otremsky’s three grown daughters laughed at how their dad was wearing shorts and reminded him not to forget the coffee pot he’d taken from the family kitchen for the trip. The six men, connected through family and work, set off Saturday morning for what was to be a 24-hour deep-sea tuna fishing excursion. Sunday night, Geoffrey McDade, a truck driver from Forked River, was planning to take his wife out for dinner to celebrate their 28th anniversary. His son, James McDade, the boat’s owner, was due back soon at the Naval Submarine Base in Groton, Conn., where he’s a first class petty officer.
But around 1 a.m. Sunday, the men realized their boat’s battery was dying after an electrical failure. The group of longtime boaters with mechanical experience tried using a generator to give the batteries enough of a charge to start. They tried rewiring the vessel. Nothing worked.
They soon found themselves with their sandwiches eaten. They started to figure out how to ration the remaining food and water and agreed to do whatever they could to keep the boat afloat. They slept, prayed and worked on the boat. They tried to use the radio to reach someone, even as they drifted farther from the coast. The morale had reached a low point by sundown Monday. Geoffrey McDade said some of the men took photographs of a beautiful sunset, then worried they would never show them to anyone. But the men’s families were hopeful. They had confirmed that one of the voices recorded on a mayday call was Otremsky’s. The men didn’t know if their calls had been heard. When they turned on a GPS unit to report their location, the battery and the radio died. They spent hours trying to put out another signal. Then they heard the whirring sound of a Coast Guard helicopter, which located them 120 miles off shore. James McDade, the Navy man, said he learned an important lesson: “I’m going to give the Coast Guard a lot more credit,” he said. “No more Coast Guard jokes.” His father owed wife Sharon an even more special late anniversary dinner. “I’ll forgive him,” she said, then jokingly reconsidered:
“We’ll see what I get.” And Ray Somerville of Woodbridge said he’s no longer eager to go so far off shore. “I’ve been on the water a lot of my life,” he said. “Going out there is a whole different thing to do.” And the six of them — who also included Jerry Lewis of Trenton and Edward Silcox of Langhorne, Pa. — didn’t catch a single fish.

Jack Wins!!

We are very proud to announce that Jack was elected to student council treasurer yesterday. He beat out two others - a fifth grader and a fourth grader. Here is the speech he had to give. He was awesome. Turn it up as the volume level is a little low.

Jack for Treasurer!

Jack is running for student council treasurer. He has to do a campaign speech (video soon to follow) and put up campaign posters. We decided to put his picture on Saudi money and put it on a paper with a catchy slogan. The money turned out too funny. Good luck Jack!

Rock Me Like A Hurricane

We have had a rash (no pun intended) of people getting bit by funky insects lately. Two have ended up in the hospital with infections. One poor guy got bit on the rear by a Brown Recluse Spider (while home in Louisianna on repat) then came back and ended up in the hospital here for over a week. Nasty. In the past month FOUR scorpions have turned up in my gymnasium. I am a little creeped out when I am sitting in my office. I keep waitng to get stung on the keester. That would be painful. Apparently this variety is pretty poisonous. This picture was taken last week and another one turned up over the weekend.

Jack Makes A Bet

So one day last spring Jack was having a conversation with his teacher. Here in Saudi people tend to hang with the people they work with. Our closest friends are people I work with and one of our closest of those friends was Jack's teacher last year. To make a long story short Jack's teacher (our good friend) has a daughter that is a couple years older then Anna. They were looking to get rid of some old toys and gave Anna a Disney princess scooter. This happened to come up in the conversation Jack was having with her and she made Jack a bet. If he were to ride the little princess scooter to school she would make him cupcakes. She said the magic word and he accepted. I was standing at the end of our street as Jack came home for lunch and snapped some pics. Too funny. He totally owned it. And the cupcakes were great!

The Ras Tanura Giants

This was the year that Jack went from coach pitch to kid pitch baseball. We were lucky to have gotten the field that sits on the beach. Practice twice a week can be tough but when you get to stand there and listen to the waves it makes it pretty darn easy. I was the coach of the team and we had a rough season. We lost all our games but with three games to go we beat our arch rivals the Ras Tanura Dodgers and then two weeks later, took down the best team in the league to cap off our season. We peaked at the right time I guess. Jack played second base and was pitcher. He did a good job.

You might notice that he is wearing blue in one shot and black in another. He switched teams mid season as they needed me to go over and coach the other team. They knew how good I was at baseball...not!

Sarah's 11th Diva/Rocker Birthday Party

For Sarah's birthday last year she had a Diva/Rocker party. It was a really good party. Singing, dancing and a scavenger hunt around camp. I think she had a good time.

First the girls had a pizza party in the back yard.

Then Marie organized a scavenger hunt around camp. We borrowed a couple golf carts, broke the girls into teams and sent them on their way. They had to sing and dance at each house they went to in order to get the next clue.

We finished the night off with a dance party. I think I was the most Diva looking dancer out there. Aunt Ceci would do a dance move and the girls had to copy her move - they had a blast!

The Tallest Building in the World - Almost

On the way back from Bali we had to connect through Malaysia. We stayed overnight in Kuala Lumpur and decided to make the best of it. We headed out to hunt down a great Indian restaurant that was recommended by friends (the beauty of expat living) and then decided on a very limited time frame to try and take the train downtown and see the tallest buildings in the world - The Petronas Towers.

Getting on the elevated trains in KL turned out to be quite an experience in itself. I had seen video of Tokyo where they have guys shoving people into the trains and that is basically the way this was. We were crammed into the train so tight you could not move. Did I mention KL is hot. We were very freaked out. Marie was convinced we were going to get shoved off the train without one of the kids and I was conviced someone was going to pic pocket me. In the end the train was so full we were not able to get off at our stop and had to go to the next stop and get on coming back again. We finally made it to the towers and it was worth it. I had not had a chance to recharge my camera batteries from when we left Bali so I knew they were close to dead. I did not realize how low they were. I snapped the picture ( reason we made the effort) and the camera clicked and then turned off. I wasn't even sure I got the picture until we got home. But I did. It turned out pretty cool. The kids were standing on the steps above me and I was looking up at the towers. A great shot.

P.S. - We found out the very next day that the Burj al Kalifa opened in Dubai and took over as the tallest building...about two hours before we got to the Petronas Towers. Rats!

We're Back!

So it is quite obvious that we have slacked with our blog during the last year. Great Grandpa made it very clear to us that he was quite disappointed with that fact. Therefore I have made it my goal for this year to be more diligent in keeping this blog up to date. In the mean time here is a quick look at what we have been up to so far this year...

New Years In Bali - Indonesia

I turned 40 last December and therefore as a gift was allowed to pick where we were going to go on our trip for the year. I enjoy the whole island life/Jimmy Buffet vibe so I chose Bali. We have only ever heard great things about it and it seemed pretty exotic so off we went.

Bali is a volcanic island in Indonesia. Indonesia as a country is Mus

lim. Bali however is Buddhist. It is beautiful and has a very peaceful vibe. We spent 10 days on the island and hit three different locations. Nusa Dua and Legian on the southern coast of the island and Ubud in the lush green interior of the island. Here is a map as a point of reference. We were going to be about as far away from Philadelphia as one could get.

As a family our favorite spot was the town of Ubud in the interior of the island. It has kind of a hippie, artsy feel to it. Lots of shopping and my favorite - good eats! The highlight in Ubud for Anna (our little animal lover) was the monkey forest. This is a forest/park filled with hundreds of monkeys. When I would go for my morning walk down little side roads I would soon find myself being accompanied down the road by two or three of th

e little (and not so little) guys. Needless to say Anna was in heaven.

Once done in Ubud we headed back to the beach in Legian. The following is a series of pictures for our resort. Pretty darn nice. We were in heaven.

Sarah gets her hair braided on the beach.

Family pic.

Kids taking surfing lessons.

One of the nights we went to a place called Jimbaran Bay. There are loads of seafood restaurants right on the beach. Here is a picture of the beach and a great shot of Anna as the sun was setting.

Forget about it!

Overall an truly unique and unforgettable trip to the far side of the world.