Goodness me, I can’t believe it’s been almost 2 months since I had a minute to add to this blog. Since our furniture arrived, we have been busy unpacking, making insurance claims and re-arranging. It does’t sound like much but it is. Consider this - Rex is out the door at 6.20am, and home around 4.30pm. It is dark at 5pm. Jay is in school or 2 x 3hr morning / afternoon. Sounds like a lot of time, but really it isn’t. I still have to cook and clean and run the house in-between unpacking. Anyway, with out too much ado it has now been completed. We are now fine tuning and doing the fun stuff, like putting rugs on the floor and hanging the last of the pictures and putting in lamps and lights which will be run off timers so that when we travel there will be lights on.

Early in November we enjoyed a most wonderful 6 night holiday in Paris France, where we visited with Harriet and George Sellnau. I will write about that in a separate blog with pictures later.

We have also spent 3 nights in Bahrain, because Rex is on a Moderator for a conference in Bahrain next May. Which means Jay and Mummy get to tag along. In November, the meeting coincided with a Chaine dinner so we had three nights away and the dinner was wonderful. i have scanned the menu and will attempt to add it in later. I’m still learning how to work this application.

It rained last week and I mean about 2 inches or more, just poured and was really cold about 50F. As luck would have it, the guy who washes the car, snapped the windscreen wiper blade off and on Saturday morning when it was foggy and pouring cats and dogs, I had to drive Rex to a driving education class at 7.15am and bring Jay home for breakfast and then drive him to school at 8am, after which i headed straight to the AAA to have it glued back into place. 3 days later, driving a friend, again in cold pouring day, the wretched thing splinted off and I had to drive back to get it in, yes pouring rain. It was re-glued later in the day. We are now sourcing a part from BMW before the next deluge. I can’t just drive to the BMW dealership and pick one up - it doesn’t work that way. Which is another reason it’s taken so long to unpack. I can’t run to the hardware store and get picture hooks or anything, I really can’t go anywhere without planning like a military mission and I only have 2 hours in the morning to achieve anything because it takes 15-20 mins to drive anywhere, shops open between 9.30am and 10.00am and I have to be back on camp by 10.45am at the latest in order to collect Jay from school. In the afternoons I have 3 hours up my sleeve, but again, military precision, because of the prayer schedule and some of the shops close for the afternoons and don’t re-open until 4.00pm - 5.00pm and then shut around 10pm - midnight.

Speaking of military operations, I need to sign off and run to the Commissary and start some cooking before the boys wake up. Dinner party on Sunday night for 3 colleagues of Rex’s I need to start cooking now. I also have 6 friends coming over for coffee at 8.20am on Monday, ( your Wednesday - I still find this Thurs/Fri weekend deal hard to adjust to!). Yes the morning after the dinner party and the day our street will be dug up for resealing over the next 2 weeks - wonderful!

Eek, Rex called this morning, furniture will be delivered next Monday October 17th, at 8.30am. Can’t believe it’s happening, guess we really are living here.

Small one, woke up in the middle of the night with a fever and was ill on Thursday night. Like most children he bounced back on Friday. However, come Saturday, of course the beginning of the week, he was right back where he started. Fever at 5am and miserable. By 9am it was evident that all was not well. 10am we were at the “hospital” in our pajamas languishing. Fortunately one of the nurses tracked us down quickly and Jay as soon being looked over. An hour later we were home back in bed with antibiotics and a diagnosis of tonsillitis. The next few days will be home bound resting and hopefully, on the mend.

Hair - we all have it, we all want someone else’s and when our own looks “sad” we feel glum.

My first go around with the Hairdresser in Bahrain, was a international communication disaster. Orangey brown roots with blonde tips looks frightful at best! Language was an issue and combined with hairdresser running late by 30 mins and my need to be out the door to get to the airport to catch a flight to Doha, didn’t help. It was all very exotic in a women only hairdressing salon with men styling and cutting and so. A sea of Abaya’s and headscarves being removed so that hair could actually be attended to. It would be easy for me to fall into the trap of - oh I wear a headscarf, does it matter what my hair looks like?

This morning we had 150% improvement. Hairdresser came to the house. Hair was colored and trimmed in just under 2 hours. Back to blonde! Yeah! Even he was shocked by the head of hair he had to work on and promised me that it would look better next time. All I can say is that “Blonde Bunni is Back”. Hurrah as Jay would say.

Speaking of whom, he came home last night with a yellow paper crown on his head announcing that he was “King of the World” and ran around with a couple of cardboard tubes playing “King”.

Well, here we are looking down the barrel of three months here. Unbelievable if you ask me. I don’t know how Rex and Jay feel about it all. I still don’t believe that we live here. The week started this morning with a bang. The garden men are busy rebuilding their efforts from last week, a minor adjustment and better to have it done now than to look at the lawn and wish that they’d done it right in the first place. Still hot as blazes here and frankly I just can’t imagine these balmy 70F - 80F days that people wax and wane over. Either they have heat stroke or they are remembering their holidays overseas in Anarticia!