Idol Nights.....

I have always been an American Idol fan! I jumped on the bandwagon in Season 2.  I absolutely love it and can't understand how anybody can't!  Evan is as obsessed as I am and Whitney and Brad just endure it as best they can.  We have continued our Idol tradition here in Saudi Arabia.  We get it two night a week just like in the States only one day later.  So we get it every Thursday and Friday nights.  We get together with three other families EVERY week~ the Masons, the Mosleys and the Stratfords.  We rotate houses and cook lots of food and it's just a good old time. 

This past week it was at our house.  We laughed how we all ended up Saudi-style with the guys in one room and the girls in the other. 

Here are the girls. The cute lady below is "Nana", Brent Mason's mother.  This is her second visit to Arabia and we all just love her. 

Gwen, Debbie, Donna and Abigail.  Below, Leanne and Tori.

Now on to the boys room, here is Evan,

and Brent, Rusty, Brad, Wade and Christian.

Sorry to Whitney who was the photographer and didn't get in any of the pictures.

We all have our favorites but we all agree that at this point it's sad to see any of them leave!

That's right!

Apparently in Arabic, there is no "guh" sound.  I learned this a long time ago when I was ordering myself a silver necklace that was to say Gwen.  I had the choice of them spelling it like J-wen or like Quin.  I chose the latter. 

Last week we called in take-out from Tandoori, the restaurant very near our house.  I placed the order, they asked my name and I told them Gwen.  They spelled it the best way knew how.

I hung this one on the fridge!

Oodles of Oods

This instrument, my friends, is called an Oud or Aoud.....pronounced "ood".  Don't you just love that name??
–noun

a musical instrument of the Middle East and northern Africa belonging to the lute family.

 

All of you who know Evan, know that he is obsessed with all things musical and plays many different instruments.  Today, Brad signed him up for Oud lessons.  He'll go for an hour and a half once a week until summer.  He is beyond excited!  Now we begin shopping for a reasonably priced one.

If you want to know what one sounds like, go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJYe4g_kUj4

Hopefully I can post a video of him playing in a few weeks!

Spotlighted......

http://thefrancks.typepad.com/team_francks
(scroll down to March 31, 2011)

Hi Friends! Sorry I haven't updated in awhile. I'm not sure if it's me, my computer or blogspot but I'm having a plethora of problems posting. We'll see how this goes. Well, my dear friend, MaryRuth has a new feature on her blog called Tweet, tweet, let's meet. She featured moi this week. Check it out. I have to add that it is because of MaryRuth that I am now the biggest blog stalker of all time. Many years ago, we got her Chistmas card and in it was a web address to her "blog"- a word I was unfamiliar with. I read hers, read her friends (many of whom I still read- Catherine, Hillary, Emily Kate...)  A few years ago, I started my own. I love it!

 

Continuing our American Idol tradition here in Saudi Arabia is a blast. This, in my humble opinion, is by far the best season ever. We get it here on Thursday and Friday nights. Three families and ourselves get together EVERY Idol night and whoop, holler and eat yummy food!

Hopefully I can get this problem solved with blogger and can upload my pics soon! Thanks again, MR!

I'm Back......

Ooops! What in the world has happened to my blogging? It's been two months now. So much has happened lately that I'm overwhelmed with the thought of trying to capture it all with words and pictures. So, I'm going to just touch on some highlights and go from there.

• The middle of December found us boarding a big plane to bring us back to the good old USA for the Christmas holidays.
• Brad, Whitney, Evan and I flew to Miami and rented a car. We drove down to Key West for a few days. We ate some good food and saw some sights then on to Orlando for some real fun.
• Drove up to Orlando. Checked in to the condo and met up with Victor, Stephanie, Devon and Emily (Brad's sister and family) We dropped off the kids and headed to the airport to pick up the other kids. Taylor and Ivy and Piper flew in around the same time so Brad and I went our separate ways to find them. Bought Piper a Minnie Mouse at the airport. Calder didn't fly in until the next night. It was SO great to gather them all up and then we headed back to the condo. Jerry had reserved two three-bedroom condos right next door to each other. They were beautiful!
• Brad's parents, Mary and Jerry, flew in later that night. Brad's brother, Brian and wife, Cindy had arrived that day, as well. Now everybody was there.
• Took Disney by storm! Everybody hit it hard. Covered it all, Hollywood Studio(where our favs are Tower of Terror and Rockin' Roller Coaster) Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom....The funnest thing was Piper being there. She was really, really good and it was so fun to watch her loving every minute.
• Ate Christmas dinner at Golden Corral but even that was good. It was a huge buffet with all the holiday trimmings.
• Spent a wonderful week there then put the Huntington's on their flight back to Vegas and the Graves back to Arkansas. The other Pogue's (Mary and Jerry) were headed to Ft. Lauderdale to go on a cruise. Said our goodbyes and flew back home to Louisiana!
• Spent a relaxing ten days with our family and friends. Nothing set in stone to do, no wake-up times, no committments.....very relaxing, enjoyable days. Some eating, some shopping, some movies.
• Put Taylor in a plane back to Idaho for winter semester. He's signed up for snowboarding class (along with his real engineering classes) and is spending all the free time he has on the mountain and loving every minute of it.
• Flew back to Saudi in time to rest a couple of days and send everybody back to school and work. Chelsea was glad to see us when we picked her up at the kennel. She knew we had had fun without her. The best thing about this trip is we got bumped to Business Class for the longest leg from Dallas to London....it was fab!
• Found out the happy news that new Baby Huntington will be a BOY! Piper will be the beautiful big sister to a bouncing baby brother in June!
• Evan tried out for the school, Dhahran Academy's fall production of The Crucible. He found out he got the role of Giles Cory and he is really excited. They started practice Thursday and it will be a busy couple of months with practice almost every day.
• We also got word that Whitney has been accepted to BYU-I! It's nice to feel like we have a plan now and can make summer plans. Yay, Whit!
• The kids are heading into mid-terms this week but after that, have their trips to Switzerland and Bali to look forward to. Evan to snowboard in the Alps, Whitney to snorkle, hike and bike in Bali. What's wrong with this picture?? I've never been either place. Someday.....

So, that's basically what's been up! If you ever look at my facebook, you knew most of this anyway. Now I feel like I can start from 'now' and I'm not behind anymore! (It will also help to change my Christmas background to something else!) Love y'all and thanks for reading!

Piper says.....

I'm gonna be a......... Another cute little adorable baby to love. So excited! New Huntington due to arrive around June 30! I've had this post ready for awhile just waiting for permission to post! So excited!

Our trip to Dubai.....

The kids and Brad had a week off of work and school due to the Hajj Eid. (remember we live in Arabia!) We decided to take a little adventure and drive to Dubai. We know several families who have driven it and didn't really want to spend money on plane tickets. It was about an eight hour drive through the desert but the roads were fine all the way!Google image of the city and also the Palm in the ocean where the Atlantis hotel sits. (no, we didn't stay there....just visited) It was amazing. All the land was filled with VERY high dollar real estate. It made us wonder who are all these people and how do they all have this much money. Evan ran into a friend outside the Atlantis....how random is that??Back to the beginning, we got up early on Friday and left about 4:30 in the morning. The sunrise was beautiful. We watched it rise over Hofuf.

We drove and drove and drove through nothing but sand for what seemed like forever. Really, just nothing for hours and hours. If we go again, we will pack more food. We weren't hungry but it was unnerving to see that nothing was available. We got through customs fine into the UAE then drove through lots more sand.....got to our hotel late in the afternoon. It was called the Golden Sands 10. It was a high-rise apartment building basically, nice and clean but no frills. It had two bedrooms and baths and a living area and kitchen. Whitney thought we should have stayed at a fancy hotel for just one night instead of the cheap on for four.....but we disagreed! (trust me our four nights here was a fraction of one night at most others!)

We spent our days shopping, going to museums, eating yummy food and seeing some movies. Rumor has it that Tom Cruise and the whole cast of the new Mission Impossible were in the mall at the same time as us. They are filming there. We didn't see them but the mall was buzzing about it. We saw Secretariet which was really good.

I took a picture of these workers because as we drove by it Evan said...."I used to have a Hot Wheel just like that but I never thought about putting people in it."

The highlight of Whitney's trip was Ski Dubai. It's an all indoor ski mountain with lifts and runs....just amazing. They provide all the equipment in the fee. She skiid for about three hours and loved every minute. Evan opted to use his money for something else since he's going to Switzerland in February to ski. And since he hadn't skiid before, he would have had to pay alot more to have the training class.

This water feature in the FestivalCity mall was cooler than the picture shows.

One night we went to Global Village. It's a big fair thing where vendors come from all over the world to sell their wares. Whitney got a henna on her arm from an African lady.

The biggest disappointment of the trip was not being able to go up in the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world. We waited until the last day and they were sold out of tour tickets. We did drive along side it and looked up. It is unreal how tall it is. That's a must if we ever go back.

We ate some yummy roasted corn from Global Village. Got up early Tuesday morning and headed home after a quick stop at McDonalds. Here are a few sights we saw on the ride home. Brad and I laughed later while looking at them that they didn't seem odd and they seem like they should! Traffic slowed down for this fellow. Luckily not many cars on the road. Can you imagine hitting a camel with your car??
The only stress of the trip was that Dubai is growing so fast that many highways were new and the GPS didn't recognize them. Brad did an excellent job of getting us around. I'll close with a quote by Whitney....."Dad, I'm sure if you wore a thobe and drove a BMW, you'd be more respected and less honked at!"