Did You Know...

Mason skyped with his 4th grade class back home in Texas the other night, and it was such a treat for all of us!  He visited with his team of teachers and their classrooms: Mrs. Thorne, Mrs. Gallegos, Mrs. Emmons and Mrs. Baize.  The kids played "20 Questions" and it made me realize there are a lot of things that people may not know about Dubai.

Mason skyping with his 4th grade class back in Texas (notice "Frick and Frack" in the mirror)

Weather - We are here during their "winter" months.  December is still warm, but January is the coldest month of the year with temperatures in the 60's.  February is typically the wettest month with an average of 15 inches.  Temperatures start to climb back up in March/April.  Mason had a baseball game today and the temp was 66, cloudy and windy.  It was chilly, but he's played in much colder temps including a game in the sleet and rain one cold weekend in November!!

Mason plays for the Rangers, and the baseball season is from Dec - Mar

Taking advantage of the "winter" months, with a bike ride through Safa Park!

School - Mason attends ASD, The American School of Dubai.  The hours of school are the same as back home, but the ASD campus houses all grades Pre K - 12th grade.  There are approximately 1600 students represented by over 55 nationalities.  Mason's school back home is very similar in size with 1700 students, except there are 4 different campuses.  In 4th grade at ASD, he has one teacher for all subjects, while has four teachers back home in Fairfield.

Dubai is a very clean place.  There are cleaners everywhere, including this guy that sweeps the curbs out front of our hotel.

Advertising is very popular here.  If there is an empty space, it will be covered with some sort of advertising, be it a building, walls, etc.  They also construct billboards to cover up construction sites. And according to this advertisement, if you buy a home at a Damac property, then you are guaranteed a new Lamborghini!

According to the Guinness World Records, over 150 were set in the UAE.  The world's tallest building is the Burj Khalifa, The JW Marriott Marquis is the world's tallest hotel and one of our favorites is the Dubai Aquarium at the Dubai Mall, which is the world's largest suspended aquarium. 

Mason taking in a view at the JW Marriot Marquis' Prime 68 Steakhouse

Eva, Liam, Cash & Jake at the Dubai Aquarium underwater tunnel, which is the length of half a football field!

Construction - Between 15-25% of the world's construction cranes are in Dubai. There is construction everywhere you look, and they always excavating something!!

Construction well under way at the City Walk development

There are no street addresses, zip codes or area codes in Dubai!  Street names are always changing and the spelling is not consistent! Makes getting around pretty interesting!

The Dubai police fleet includes a Lamborghini, Ferarri, Bentley and a Mercedes G Wagon!


Sales of oil make up approximately 6% of the Dubai economy.  The local economy is based mostly on tourism, real estate and financial services.

The local people, called Emiratis, are just 15% of the total population.  Majority is split between India, Philipines, Pakistan and European countries.

The official religion of Dubai is Islam, and the call to prayer occurs five times a day: pre-dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset and evening.  Be it a mall, airport, beach, etc, you can hear the prayer broadcast out over a loud speaker.  Sometimes it sounds like a chant or can be more song like. It is very common to find an arrow on the ceiling in your hotel room, which indicates the direction of Islam's holiest site.  Dubai is well-known for it's tolerance and respect of all religions.  Besides mosques, the city houses many other places of worship including churches and temples.

Our Christmas and New Years 2015

My boys have celebrated the last 4 Christmas' in Dubai.  Before that, Mason celebrated his first two in California, one in Texas and 6 in Dubai.  This is crazy to me because I celebrated Christmas in Geary, Oklahoma at my Ma-Ma and Pa-Pa's house (mom's parents) for the first 28 years of my life.  My mom never missed a Christmas at her home in Geary until my Pa-Pa decided to move to Plano, so that was nearly 60 years with her family in her childhood home!  There are days I think my boys are missing out because they have not had a traditional Christmas, but then I remember that the most important thing is that our family is together.  Before we leave for Dubai, we host a Thanksgiving Dinner with our extended family and friends. The kids also exchange gifts with their cousins and have a fun-filled day!

This Christmas Eve, our friends the Appleby's, hosted an awesome traditional dinner with turkey, ham, stuffing, roasted potatoes and veggies, and a gingerbread house for the kids!  That evening, the kids took a plate of cookies for Santa down to our hotel lobby with a note telling Santa to take the "lift" to the third floor!  Santa was able to find his way to our apartment, but the boys actually slept in that morning until 8:30!!  We decided to spend the rest of our day at a hotel located on the beach with the Yarbrough family!  It was such a relaxing day!  Kids swam, played putt putt golf, ping pong, ordered lunch from the pool swim-up bar and played on the beach.  Does it get any better?!? What a day!

CHIRSTMAS EVE DINNER!

 Chef Charlie Appleby

 Boss Lady: Sharon Martin (Ailsing's sister!)

 Rod & Sharon

Me and My Irish Bestie, Caroline :)

CHRISTMAS DAY

Kids opening their presents on Christmas morning

Ninja Cash

Jake's upset about losing the baseball dart game! (They are also into mismatching their pajamas these days!)

Kids fell asleep en route to the beach; I had no idea how this day was going to go down!!

 A game of putt putt golf

Santa even made a visit (ironically it was the same Santa that the kids visited with at the Ice Lounge!)

 Happy 2016!

Mason & Rod played football on the beach

Surfer Dudes! Cash, Mason & Jake!

My Cuties!

 Liam & Jake

 Jake, Cash & Liam

 Silly Boys!

Cash

Jake

Eva Yarbrough

Cash and Jake wave jumping!

We spent New Year's Eve day at the beach with friends.  The water was a bit chilly, but it's so clear and beautiful!

We decided to stay in on New Year's Eve and watch the fireworks from our place.  We live across the street from the Burj Khalifa, and they have a fantastic fireworks show.  However, we got word around 9:30 that The Address Hotel was on fire.  It's less than a mile from us, so we rushed outside to see the scene!  It was pretty scary, because nobody knew what caused the fire and it continued to grow and spread around the building.  We just knew there was no way the fireworks show but would continue, but in typical Dubai fashion, the show must go on and went on as planned!  

 Here is a view of The Address Hotel fire from our hotel

Photograph of The Address fire on the right, and the Burj Khalifa all lit up on the left

 Images after the fire.  The boys' school is located across the street

 I found this image online.  Our place is located in the bottom lefthand corner (white buildings with maroon rotundas). The Burj Khalifa is the world's tallest building, and The Address is the white building to the left of the Burj.

We took the kids to Meydan for racing on New Year's Day
Shyla, Jake, Erin, Cash & Emily

Rod and the kids are watching Erin & Emily's daddy Charlie, the Godolphin trainer, while he was being interviewed on the big screen.

Like sands through the hourglass...(April 2015)

I just came across this post that I wrote back in April 2015.  We were in the midst of packing, when I came down with a bad case of pneumonia and never got around to posting.   These were some good memories though, and so much fun to look back on...

Post from April 2015: Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of our Lives!  It's hard to imagine that we are wrapping up another 20 week stint here in Dubai, which has completely flown by! I'm sitting in our apartment amongst partially packed suitcases and trunks trying to determine what stays in Dubai, what goes home, what gets donated and what goes in the trash.  We spend approximately 40% of our year here, so we have acquired a lot of things over the last 7 years.  Since we stay in a furnished apartment, we bring over mostly clothes from the US and leave things in Dubai such as toys, kitchen items, toiletries, Christmas decorations, kids scooters and the ever-important Apple TV in large metal trunks!

We have been blessed to experience another successful year in Dubai.  Godolphin did extremely well in the Winter Carnival.  They were the champion trainer, owner and World Cup winner (for the second year in a row!)  

World Cup winner Prince Bishop was ridden by William Buick

 Godolphin exhibit at the Dubai Mall with the World Cup trophy in the glass case

Rod and the boys at the Godolphin stables

Watching the horses on their evening walk 

Mason remained busy with his school work and baseball.  The school has been very accommodating with our schedule, and his second grade teacher moved up to third and was his teacher again this year!    He worked with an awesome baseball instructor that really helped his confidence with pitching and hitting!  He also managed to wiggle his way into the ASD Varsity baseball practices!  I noticed him one day after school out on the practice field with the varsity team and was their bat boy for a few games and scrimmages!  He was thrilled!!  Mason is excited to get back to Fairfield and play with his league team and with the TX Knights traveling team!

 Mason ran the final leg of his relay team during Field Day.  Safe to say his team won!

 Mason practicing out in left field with the Varsity team

Mason got to attend the Baseball Factory 3-day Training Camp

The twins seems to be happy wherever they are!  Their preschool was a great experience for them, they learned to swim and their new favorite food is fish curry!  Go figure!  They love to play, wrestle and box with Mason!  They love to dance and sing songs and know the words to more children's songs than I ever knew!

Successful swim lessons with Ms Rita

 Jake with Ms Rita

 Cash with Ms Rita

 Playtime in the pool...

Usually turns into wrestling