Dubai Aquarium

Today we spend a leisurely morning going through the Dubai Aquarium situated at a new shopping mall, which has been abtly named "Dubai Mall"! The aquarium was nice, yes, just nice but the Cape Town aquarium is so much better! The one aspect which makes it great for the Dubains (not sure what we call ourselves here!) is the huge, and I mean huge glass wall of sea life swimming while you can shop.

The family gang (Vaughan, Nicky, Rowan, Fi, Ella-Rose and Madison) all meet at around 10h00, except the Glanvilles - well, we were late! We couldn't find the appropriate parking section and landed up on the otherside of the mall. It took us all of 20 mins to just park and walk otherwise I am sure we would have been on time. Anyway, not important! It took us about an hour to walk through the aquarium to see everything. We then went off to the food court (all that walking! not!) made us hungry so we went for a brunch. We are yet to find a nice place in Dubai (besides the hotels!) that sell a nice English breakfast (bacon - which is normally not on the menu and eggs are hard to come by!). So we ended up eating fast food instead!

Here are some of the pics I took (except obviously the one with all of us! :).

Oooh! What a good looking family! Love this picture of Bryce, the seal was posing so nicely for this pic too!

Until next time...

Happy New Year!

Well, can you believe we are into the 4th day of our new year! If that's true, I would hate to see how fast this year is going to fly by! So my wish for you in 2009 is...

May your New Year be better than your old year.
May your goals be in reach and your dreams soar.

May you receive many joys & blessings in 2009.

I was reading the newspaper this morning (believe me I don't get to do this often) and read that John Travolta's son passed away on Friday morning, he was 16. They think he hit is head on the bath which caused a seizure. Apparently he did have siezures on the odd occassion. I felt so sad and reflected on how so many tragedy's happen everyday and we sometimes need to take a step back and be grateful for life and what it offers, no matter what curve balls are thrown our way!

On to a happier note, we celebrated a very quiet Christmas with my brother, Vaughan and sister-in-law Nicky and lunch with our South African friends, Crystal, Bruce, Celeste, Jolene, Colin and their two friends Matt and Amy. It was a great day. We started off with going to a church service. Then we went to take some pics at the Burj Al Arab (just to prove we were in Dubai!). We came home for a very belated omlette breakfast which Peter made and then we opened presents (the boys were very patient to wait so long as it was around 13h00 before we started present swapping!). Here are some pics taken through the day...

We celebrated our first New Year's Eve with friends of ours with a good 'ole spit braai! Not much celebrations going on though because the Sheikh of Dubai banned any outdoor celebrations (usually there are fireworks on the beach which a lot of the hotels let off as the New Year arrives) in support of the war going on along the Gaza strip. Well, that didn't stop us South Africans (and I am sure many out there too in Dubai) who had small house parties! Not sure that anyone would have seen much fireworks even if there were as there was such thick mist that came in, it was wonderful! Cool!

At least the New Year did not bring in a hangover and we celebrated the day just relaxing at home.

So...2009...what will this year bring us...well, I suppose we will have to wait and see!

All I wanted for Christmas....

was a humungus Christmas tree for our house! Every Christmas time I put up our tree which was about half a metre high and it took me all of an hour to put it up and decorate! Well, my wish came true 3 days ago when we went shopping at one of the big shops here called Carrefour (a supermarket chain from France). They were having a 50 % discount off on all their Christmas decorations and I managed to get the last tree (just waiting for me!) on the shelf which was 2.4 metres. It almost got stolen out of my trolley too!

Not thinking much of how big a 2.4 metre tree was when buying it until I got it home and put it up the next day! The thought when buying that yes, it will be big but boy...that big! It took me about an hour to just put it together - luckily the branches are colour coded. Not like the small trees you buy where you just fold out the branches and start unfolding the smaller branches...no, not that easy!

Anyway, the point is I am still very happy about my Christmas tree, it also took about 3 days to decorate. The decorations were also on a 50 % discount so all in all I was quite chuffed about my bargains!

Thanks Row and Fi for the loan of your small Christmas tree (compared to the humungus one!) while you are holidaying in South Africa with Dad and Mom...lucky buggers!

So, this is what the tree looked like without the decorations (yes, that is a bird in the tree! Our new addition to our family, a parakeet, called Belladean (that story will be blogged still!)


and this is what it looks like decorated (lucky for high ceilings!)


So on this Chrismas Eve I would like to take the opportunity to wish all our family and friends the merriest Christmas and may 2009 bring you lots of happiness and may all your dreams come true....

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Miss you alll!!! XXX

Christmas card ideas!

I am back, and it only took me a week! Whew! Life is way to busy and I think for everyone, this time of year gets to be the worst ever! The silly season is upon us! So here are a few Christmas cards to get you going - merry Christmas and happy New Year to all my friends and family! Just in case I forget to tell you! (ha, ha, ha!) - you never know! So some inspiration for those card follower friends of mine - hope you manage to get your Christmas cards out in time! I cannot believe that it is 15 days to Christmas and I have not done one Christmas shop! I have made all these cards and I hope this year I get to post them!

As you can see, loved the snowman! The background was done with an embossed plate with a cuttlebug.

Until later...

Oh my word!

Has it really been that long since I last did a blog entry!! We are almost at the beginning of December and it has been over two months! So really sorry to the "followers" of my blog - I am certainly going to make a concerted effort to not leave it so long! So where do I start...!

Lots of things have happened in the last two months so I am going to put the highlights and blog them separately as the week goes by.

Firstly, I can't even remember October besides our Halloween party (that will be a whole other post!) so lets start with November! Secondly, It was Peter's birthday on 07 November - happy birthday, babes! We spent a relaxing afternoon at a place called Dubai Creek Park, the boys had lots of fun just running wild and spend most of their time at the Creek catching crabs! Bryce's ultimate goal is to catch anything that is alive! Peter does what he does best and caught a nap (he doesn't know I took this picture!).


Thirdly and lastly (for now!) one of my highligts for November was to spend a wonderful evening with our friends, Bruce and Celeste and we went to go see a live cooking show with Ainsley Harriot! It was fabulous! We arrived and were given glasses upon glasses of delicious Moet champagne with sushi type snacks. The show started with Ainsley at around 20h30 and he was hysterically funny - he is even better live than watching him on his shows "Ready, steady, cook!" - my cheeks were so sore from all the laughter!

Celeste and I managed to get our books signed my Ainsley - unfortunately, Peter had to babysit so Ainsley wrote - "thanks for looking after the sprogs (kids) - get cooking"! Here is a picture of Celeste and I with Ainsley and I have also added a video - Ainsley with Brian Turner doing a impromptu karaoke number. (That is Celeste's comments and laughter in the background!)

I had a very successful scrapbooking crop day which a friend of mine, Tracey and I which we organised this past weekend! 35 ladies all cropping and it was fantastic! Such good feeback too! Will blog about that and post some pics a bit later!

I will be blogging again shortly, I promise! For my cardmaking followers, I made a few cards and scrapbook pages too so will add those soon!

Until next time...!

An update and our move....(again!)

Can anyone explain to me where September has gone, in fact, where has this year gone!

So it has been a while since I updated you with the going ons in Dubai so here we go...get a cup of tea/coffee this could be long update!

We sadly left all our family and friends in Cape Town after a lovely, long holiday (well, for the boys and I anyway!) and arrived back in Dubai on 28 August at 05h45, a tired husband and two boys in tow and not the best of flights but that is another story to be told! We headed off home to wait for the movers who arrived at 09h00 to move our stuff to the new villa. Luckily they did most of the packing besides the boxes I packed before I left for Cape Town! It was an extremely long day for all of us and this is how Logan and Peter coped (sleeping on the lounge floor in amongst the packers!).

We left the old villa at 15h00 and the movers left at around 18h30 and I was left to the job of unpacking boxes, etc. I would recommend this way of moving anytime. The packers packed and unpacked the heavy stuff and put it all in the relative rooms and all I really had to do was unpack our boxes and personal stuff. So the move went relatively smoothly and we are now all very happy in our new house. It didn't take me long to unpack all the boxes (the advantage of not accummulating years of stuff but it is amazing what you can accumulate in months too!). It probably took about 4 days to unpack everything but we are sorely lacking cupboard space! So we need cupboards for the boys bedrooms and new curtaining as we have 4 windows in the lounge/dining room area, compared to only 1 in old place! So here are the pics of the villa:

1st pic - Front of the villa

2nd pic - Front courtyard with swimming pool (front door)

3rd pic - Dining room/lounge area

4th pic - Logan's room

5th pic - Bryce's room

6th pic - Bathroom

7th pic - Our bedroom

8th pic - En-suite bathroom

The villa is lovely and large and very bright which I love! The boys have their own bedrooms now, which are also very big, our room is the only one with cupboards which Peter and I have to share (another advantage - can't buy more clothes because I can't fit them into the cupboard!). We have a huge kitchen (and I mean huge!), three bathrooms, a lovely garden with grass and we have just put up a portable pool for the boys in the front patio area which they are loving!

Bryce and Logan have also settled in really well at school and seem to love it, which I am very grateful for! Last week I spent time in the school library volunteering my services of covering their library books! So far I think I have covered over 250 books! I am going to help them out every now and then as they are so desparate for help! The boys are on school holidays again! They start school on Sunday because of Eid and Ramadan. Eid starts today (hip, hip hooray!) life is back to some normality! The month of September is Ramadan which has made life really interesting in Dubai. We cannot eat or drink in public at all, no smoking or chewing gum for those that do those habits and life really only begins after "iftar" when the sun goes down! The shops open late and close at around 12h00/01h00 in the morning but it really is something to get used to as you cannot even take a sip of water in public. If you do and offend someone you could be heavily fined or put in jail.

I am gearing up to teach card making classes in October. Just hope that I can get a couple of ladies interested so that I can get started and make some money but we will see how that goes! Peter's Dad and Cassandra arrive on Friday which we are all looking forward to so we will probably be doing some sightseeing with them. Friday night we are having a spit braai to celebrate the end of Ramadan (yeah! another party!) so I am looking forward to that.

I am still missing SA but seemed to be settled back in the way of Dubai life a little easier than when we first arrived. I think it is because I can drive the boys to school, the villa is a lot more spacious and my brothers are nearby. Only disadvantage is that we are almost on the flight path so we have planes flying over every couple of minutes, somtimes I am aware of it and sometimes it is that "white noise" in the background! I now say we don't need an excuse to drink anymore as there is always a boeing flying over!

What else is news - oh yes, I had my first fender bender in Dubai! I was going around a traffic circle and some dose of a cop stopped me as I was going around to let the flow of traffic come in and the guy behind me never stopped in time. Interesting experience! In Dubai you have to wait for a policeman to come so that they can give you slips so that you can get the cars fixed and no one arrived! The stupid police guy who stopped me headed off without coming to check, probably thought he would get fired, he just shrugged his shoulders when it happened! %&$@%!!!! Anyway, no damage to my car because the guy hit the bumper but his fender and bonnet was damaged! A nice guy from the UK who has only been here since April and his car was brand spanking new. My 1998 jallopy with all its scratches seemed to have survived. Although the clutch is going and because it is manual Peter decided to buy another car so we are getting a 2003 Nissan Pathfinder with a 3.5 litre engine which will probably suck the juice but being in Dubai it only takes about R 200.00 to fill the tank so I suppose we should enjoy the big 4x4 cars while it lasts!

So I think that is all the updates for now. Will add some more soon...hopefully I can be more disciplined and add updates on a weekly basis, saves you having to take the time to read such a long story but thanks for reading it anyway! Hope you didn't get too bored?!

So until next time...sooner than you think...

Well as they say...

in South Africa, "min dae" (in english "few days") or "all good things eventually come to an end"! The boys and I have had a wonderful holiday in South Africa and we have 4 sleeps to go before we head back to, probably, a very warm Dubai! Our trip to the Eastern Cape was great! We spent lots of time with Nan (my grandmother, the boys great grandmother), who turned 87! It was also nice to spend time with all my aunts, uncles, cousins and friends - miss you all already!

We took a trip down to the Transkei for a few days, unfortunately we missed having lunch with Richard Gere and Hilary Swank! They were in the area shooting a new movie called "Amelia" - I mean - how much closer can you be to celebs than a couple of kilometres! The cottage we stayed in was awesome. Situated almost on the beach with no one in sight! Great weather but unfortunately the fish were being a bit evasive! Not to mention that I was also very creative and managed to make over 35 cards! Anyone looking at renting the cottage for a couple of days let me know! My aunt and uncle are responsible for the renting of it. You cannot ask for a better holiday - all you can do is relax as shops and people are miles away! Here's some pics:

Pic 1 - Going over the pont at Kei Mouth
Pic 2 - View from the cottage
Pic 3 - The cottage
Pic 4 - What a view from the braai area!
Pic 5 - ...not forgetting the seagull named "Nelson"
Pic 6 - Me trying to fish
Pic 7 - Dad, Bryce and Logan in front of the "Jacaranda" a ship that lost its way along the coast in 1973 - not much of it left now!
Pic 8 - Bryce and Logan having fun swinging





On our return Logan unfortunately contracted what we think might have been tick bite fever! The little bugger bit him on the head and he was sick with a fever and swollen glands for a couple of days. After hectic anti-biotics he was well on the road to recovery! He was absolutely fine during the day, no headaches but come night time a fever would start...but we got through it! Amazing how resilient kids can be - can't have any playtime interrupted!

Peter arrives in Cape Town on this evening. He arrived from Dubai on Tuesday and went up to the bushveld with his brothers and friends, at least he is having some good r&r (rest and relaxation!) and we all fly back to Dubai on Wednesday, 27 August - boo hoo! On top of all that we are also going to be moving into another villa when we get back, either on the day we arrive or just after but that is another story which I will get into some other time!

So... I am off to enjoy my last few days of the cold weather and our time in Cape Town...where has August gone!