A Qatari Lunch

One of the students that is graduating soon, invited all of his senior teachers as well as the principal and vice-principal, and the counselor and their families to his house for lunch. We decided to go, and for some reason decided to bring the kids.  Though they did well after lunch, before and during lunch was a bit rough with Miss A.  The lunch was a late lunch; we came at 1:30 and didn't sit down to eat until about 2:15.  The kids had lunch at our normal lunch time, so that by the time we ate it was snack time for them.

Anyway, it was a fabulous experience, other than Miss A being overwhelmed sitting on my lap in the majlis (a majlis is where guests go, it's kind of like a parlor).  We were the second group to arrive.  I really had to take cues from what Steve did and our hosts as to what I should do.  I never offered my hand to shake hands as I knew that that isn't as socially acceptable between men and women, but I would accept if they offered.  Some of the young men there did put out their hands when we greeted.  I was surprised, but shook hands as it's no big deal for me to do so. I had a few minutes to sit with the student's mom and talk with her.  Then as other guests arrived, she had to welcome them.

Miss A was very shy and just about lost it while sitting on my lap, then Steve came and got her (we were in the same room, but I was sitting on the opposite side, not quite sure if there really was a men's side and a women's side, but that's kinda what it looked like).  She was happier with Steve, of course. Big E did great.

Servers went around the majlis offering luqaimat, which is a deep fried dough ball, then dipped in a sugar syrup.  Some of them had sesame seeds on them, others had been rolled in coarse sugar (all the sugar here is very coarse), and a third kind has a different kind of syrup on it, but I don't know what it was. They're really good and I already had found a recipe for them. So I think I'll try to make them.  They also offered arabic coffee, which looked like hot orange juice, and green tea.  Fortunately, you just had to put up a hand and say no thank you whenever they came by and nothing was thought of it.

When lunch was ready we all went through to the formal dining room.  I wish I could have taken a picture of the spread.  There was so much food on the table you wouldn't have believed it.  In the center there was a whole (cooked) lamb with saffron rice and sliced boiled eggs.  There were two large dishes of shrimp and rice and a tomato rice dish.  There was chicken thighs with chickpeas in a sauce, and a number of other dishes that I dont' know what they were but were good.  There was tabouleh, and salad, and little stuffed breads, and and and.  There was at least two of every dish besides the lamb. I did not try all of it, as there was just too much.  After everyone had finished, some things looked like they had hardly been touched as there was so much. The servers came to offer things, just like in the movies where there are servers.  That, honestly, made it easier as Miss A was on my lap for most of lunch and was not happy to stay sitting.

But she sure likes luqaimat. She tried to stick all of it in her mouth. Miss A warmed up to being there after lunch. As long as no one touched her, she would laugh at what they did to make her laugh.  The assistant principal of the school meowed quite convincingly like a cat and Miss A and Big E would laugh and laugh.  So all in all, I'm glad we went.  It was an interesting and fun experience. Not many expats get the opportunity to enter a Qatari's home, much less be invited over for a meal. If there's ever a next time though, we might find a babysitter and save us the trouble of trying to politely calm and entertain two little ones. ;) 

These Kiddos Keep Growing

We survived the week without Steve here.  Miss A didn't react too much when he didn't come home from work each day.  But now her attachment to him is stronger.  :)  I'm okay with that.

I can hardly believe that we've been here for 9 months already. Look back always makes time go by faster.  And having something to look forward to.  We're setting off for summer vacation in 35 days! We'll spend a week with Steve parent's who are in Frankfurt serving a mission there.  It's nice that senior missionaries have less strict rules.  We can visit them, they can take a week off to spend time with us. They can skype.  Then it's off to the good old USA.  We arrived on July 4th before the fireworks, so if we haven't passed out already, we'll do some small fireworks.  Sparklers anyone? I'm so excited to start the summer. I think the next 5 weeks might be a bit boring in comparison to what we have to look forward too.

Big E and Miss A have grown so much in the last 9 months. Big E has started to pretend in his play.  Often he'll say, "Mom, pretend you're the mom horse, and I'm the baby horse and, we're picking fruit and snickers off our tree because snickers are your favorite." (And yes, he knows what candy bar is my favorite, and not because I eat them all the time.  He also knows and remembers that pumpkin pie is my favorite kind of pie, even though we haven't had it since Christmas. Sometimes in our play he'll hand me a pretend easter egg and say, "Here's an Easter egg for you. It has half a pumpkin pie in it." Yumm!)  He's really into baby animals right now.  He's always the baby horse.  If I'm not told to be the Mom horse, then I'm the baby sheep. There's a ball that came with some stacking cups. He's always called that "baby ball".  Big E's attention span has increased enough that I noticed. We put together the train track and then built houses in the center and bridges over the train track using the building blocks. He requested that we leave it up and then went back to it after a little while.  He's never done that before. He's always moved on once he's left something.


I am learning how to play pretend.  It doesn't come easily to me and I'll admit that I get bored.  But I'm working on it, and hopefully Big E won't notice my boredom.

Big E loves to be outside running around. It's hot outside now (95 right now at 2:10pm, but it's already been up to 100 a number of times). So outside play is limited to after dinner when the sun is almost down. He's beginning to like swimming, though won't wear any kind of life vest.  He'll use a tube and hold on to that.  He usually won't go near the deep end. And at the main club house, the kiddie pool is separated by a wall from the main pool so he can't just walk over. He's grown taller too.  His head is completely out of the water in the kiddie pool now.

When I bake, Big E is the first to come and help. He loves to help me make bread and watch the stand mixer mix.  He'll even show with his finger how it does planetary motion. When he's excited about something, he jumps up, but it's more like a hop on one leg, I guess.  It's kinda hard to explain how he does it.

Big E doesn't often sit down to read on his own, but still loves me to read stories to him.  He's usually willing, though, to take turns reading pages.




We've been practicing writing a few numbers. He likes to write on the white board. So I'll make dashed numbers that his has to trace. He thinks that's great fun.
Miss A gets paper and washable markers while we practice writing.  One day, by the time I had made the letters for Big E to trace,


 Miss A looked like this:


Miss A is a little fireball. She still screeches a lot. And not always because she's mad.  She's learning words, finally. She says, "baby", "up"(though not frequently), "psss" (please), "uh oh", "moo", "wa sis" (meaning "what's this?" she'll point to things or pictures in books and say it), "maaa" (it's kinda like a cat's meow, she'll say it while she crawls around on the floor. And I'm counting it as a word because it's associated with something specific.) and one of my favorites "wow!" (when she says it, she raises the pitch of her voice as she moves through the "o"and then goes back down. Many times when she says it, he eyes light up and she's truly excited. And sometimes she'll put her hand on her cheeks.).  There are others, but at the moment, I can't think of them. She watches her big brother and loves to try to do what he does.  She has started pretending much earlier than Big E, probably because she has someone to watch. Big E didn't start pretending to be an animal until we moved here. Miss A is frequently a cat. She also likes to carry around a stuffed Woody that my mom gave to Big E, and a little doll.  If she doesn't have either or both of those in her arms, she likes to carry a cloth bucket that we have.  She'll put some treasure in it and put it on her arm or shoulder like a purse or hand bag, and then walk around in it showing the contents to me and then walk away.  She'll come back and do it again.


She knows what she wants still.  If she wants to color, she'll get a coloring book out and take it to her seat at the table.  And then get my attention to get the crayons out and get her up in the chair. (The chairs are a bit too high for her to climb up onto the chair with her booster seat on it. But she can climb onto the chairs and from there the table.)

Miss A's attention span has also increased noticeably.  She's much more willing to sit and listen to stories now. Before nap or bed time is a good time to read to her.  She'll sit, relaxed in my lap and listen to stories. I love it. She's also bringing me books and handing them to me when she wants me to read them to her.  She's has also sat for 20 minutes with me and we read every book that was in the basket in the dining/living room. Big E was outside playing as so I could skip around and shorten stories as needed for her and if she didn't want to finish, she could just close the book and put it aside. I love that she's to this stage now.  Reading books to my kids is one of my favorite things to do. We are fortunate to be able to use the library at Steve's work.  The selection in english isn't huge, but it does add some variety to our collection.

Miss A likes to play in the dirt in one of the house plants.  And only one.  She leaves all the others alone.  One evening I caught her with both hands and one foot in the pot, attempting to get the other foot in as well.  I wish I had taken a picture before removing her. She'll come to me know and show me her hands and say "uh oh" when she's been playing in the dirt.
And yet, she's girly enough to want to wear a head band, though this is how she put it on herself:


As I mentioned at the beginning, Miss A's attachment to Steve has only increased since he's been back from Spain. If I so much as give her a hug after family prayer before bed, she bursts into tears and reaches for daddy.  On Friday, after church, Steve picked her up from nursery (by the way, she's in nursery now!) and was talking to someone. She had a dirty diaper, so took her to go change it and did not want to go with me.  She tried to cling to Steve and when I got her loose, she began to scream and reach as hard as she could for him. People were giving me looks of sympathy, until I told them that I just took her from dad, and then they laughed. 

Steve is off to Spain right now for a "Week Without Walls" trip for the students.  He didn't sign up to chaperone, but was assigned to go.  I guess that's what you get when you're responsible and the principal knows that he's not going to sneak off to get a drink of alcohol. (Last year at Qatar Academy, which is the sister school to the one Steve works at, the high school went on a week without walls trip and one of the teachers went out for a drink.  S/He got fired immediately and was sent straight back.) But, hey, for the price of watching some younger high school students all day and taking 2 hour shifts at night sitting in the hallway to make sure no one sneaks out of their room, he gets pretty much an all expense paid trip to tour Spain.  All he has to pay for is lunch every day and anything else he wants.  I'm a bit jealous.  I wish I could go with him.

But instead Big E, Miss A, and I get to come up with our own fun. As it's already back up to close to 100 each day this week, I think we'll be spending a lot of time at the pool.  We might spice things up and go to the Education City Clubhouse pool instead of the little one in our compound.  So many options. :)

To be honest, this is the first time that I'll be alone with both kids for a whole week.  I know that it's do-able, many women do it all the time and for much longer. But I'm used to driving to my parents and spending time with them whenever Steve had to go out of town for conferences and such.  So I'm not used to single parenting. I'm sure I'll get tired of it quickly and then by the time Steve gets home, I'll have a rythme.

Here's to hoping this week goes by smoothly and quickly. 

Today, Big E gave his very first talk in Primary. I can hardly believe that he's old enough to be in Primary, let alone stand in front of everyone and give a short talk.  He didn't get so nervous that he wouldn't say anything.  He spoke quietly, but that's just fine.  He did a fabulous job. I'm so proud of my big boy. 

I Love to See The Temple

The whole reason we went to Germany was to go to the temple.  The temple is a special place of worship in our church. We try to go as much as possible.  But living in Qatar has made that a very difficult task.  The closest operating temple is in Ukraine, but it's not much closer than the Frankfurt, Germany temple. Rome would probably be the shortest flight, but it's still under construction. So our ward (congregation) is assigned to go to the Frankfurt Temple.  That doesn't mean we can't go to other temples, but it does mean that since the Frankfurt temple has housing for those who travel far, we have priority for that housing.

Anyway, there were 27 members of our ward with us at the temple.  Steve went early in the morning and we asked the youth to watch our kids so that we could go together with the whole ward when everyone went.  The workers at the temple were so kind.  They had everything ready for us in English. Going to the temple was so rejuvenating and peaceful. I am so glad that we were able to go. There's nothing like the peace of the temple. And it was more meaningful to share the experience with members of our ward, and for some of them this was their first time in the temple.

This was my first time going to a temple outside the US.  It was another testimony to me that the gospel is the same in every language and in every country.  Culture plays no role in the doctrine, and it is for everyone.



After a few sessions in the temple, we all met as a group to go have dinner together. The sister in charge of finding places to eat did get an address for the restaurant, so we had quite a time trying to get to the restaurant.  As it was very cold, we all piled into the cars of those who rented a car.  Someone at the temple tried to give directions to the restaurant, but the map on the back of the temple schedule card didn't have all of Friedrichsdorf, and there was construction which prevented us from going most direct way.  After about 45 minutes of driving around and stoping to ask for directions a few times, we finally found the restaurant.  We enjoyed good company and good german food.

We flew home on Saturday.  I wasn't impressed with Lufthansa's check in process. You only had the option of self check in, which is normally fine.  But we hadn't had access to the internet and couldn't check in online or check flight info and I didn't print that part out for some reason.  To check in, you could put in your flight confirmation code or scan your passport.  But the lady helping said that it has trouble with American passports.  So we had to go to the desk, but that meant talking to the guy who checks to make sure you already have your boarding pass before dropping off your luggage. It was a bit of a hassle, but we made it.

There was a little play area for the kids near our gate, which helped pass the time.




The flight wasn't too bad.  Big E and Miss A did well.  We got home around 9:30 pm and went straight to bed, not ready to jump back into work and routine.  But we had a fabulous trip.  I never thought I'd be able to travel and see other countries.