Bahrain Fort

We visited another fort this week.  This is the Bahrain Fort, Built in stages through several centuries.  First built in the 15th century and then built and rebuilt several times through the 17th century. This is a major picture dump, and I may not caption them all. The kids had the camera for the day, so there is a good mix of pictures.

The entrance to the Fort

 We could not figure out how these little cubbies might be used.

 Cool series of arched doorways.

 Munchkin took lots of pictures of the signs, these are the first and only interpretive signs seen at a historic location.

 This is the interior of the 17th century portion of the fort with reproduced grass huts in the rear.

 The Grass Huts

 Love the city skyline beyond the old fort.

 This is Bahrain, Random bags of trash on the site. Munchkin

 Well that was part of an Art exhibit. Lots of mirrors.

 Arched ceiling above the well.

 The view towards the water.

 The cool shadow of the 5 of us.  I just thought it was cool.

 As we were leaving, we saw these cool houses that were painted with lots of bright colors and designes.

Scout Turns 4

Scout was able to celebrate his 4th birthday in Bahrain.  Thankfully some of his presents from the Grandparents arrived on his actual Birthday. I don't have any pictures of the presents from us.

Dodgeball

We signed Buddy up for Dodgeball, they actually have a practice 2x a week and then a game once a week.  No score is kept and the teams change.  It is a lot of fun, and Buddy loves it. However, he moves so fast, it is really hard to get a good picture of him.

Random Cool stuff about Bahrain

There are lots of Random cool stuff about Bahrain, I will share some of them.

The eggs I bought are stamped with the day picked and the day they expire.  They are sold in packages of all different sizes, from 3 eggs to 50.  I have yet to see a dozen.

 The apartment didn't come with a spatula, I succeeded in flipping these with a slotted spoon.

 My package of 15 eggs.

Robinson Crusoe with Missoula Children's Theatre

Princess had a great opportunity to be a part of a show here with the traveling portion of the Missoula Childrens Theatre.  She had a great week auditioning for and then rehearsing daily with the group.  Auditions were on Sunday and the show was Friday night.  For completing it in one week, they did a great job.

She was part of the Frowny Face Tribe. She is on the far right in this picture.

 I think this is my favorite picture of her.  She had so much fun.

Arad Fort and cool kids

Military kids are the best kids around.  They know what it is like to be the new kid and are the most welcoming and friendly kids I have ever met.  My kids will start a new school next week and each of them has already met at least one kid in their classroom.  I have met the room mom for my son's class, and one of the teachers for the other 5th grade class.  It is spring break, not everyone is here, but I have met lots of people and my kids are loving it.  

Princess Auditioned for a play, and has a part, she has rehearsals every day this week.  Buddy is hoping to start dodge-ball next week.  (I guess it is competitive here)  They competed in a 2-mile fun run and Easter Egg hunt on Saturday.  

Daddy went to work this today, so we had a fun day exploring.  I took the kids to a 15th century Portuguese Fort today.  This is the Arad Fort, right next to the huge modern Seef Mall.  It was cool, but aside from paying BD 1 to get in, there wasn't any signs or people to tell you what you were seeing.  It was cool anyway. 

This is my new favorite picture of my kids.

This is the inside, a lot of ruins, with no one else around.

 This is the view from the top looking in.  the thing in the middle has water in it, so it may have been some kind of well, but again, there were no signs, so I don't know.

 There were also no railings on the very steep stairs and you could walk along the ledge between the 2 stairs in the following picture, no railing.  But oh so cool.

The walls look like stone, but then you go into a slightly covered room and really look at them. The walls are full of fossils and shells.  This was built about 500 years ago. There isn't history like this very many places.  

 This is inside a room, under the stairs, taken by Scout.

This picture is for Grandma J, the kids saw this and said, that she collects shells like this in Florida, it was part of the walls.

We also saw a show on base from Bikes over Bagdad.  It was a touring BMX group, and really cool. the kids loved it, but the pictures are on Princess's camera, I will have to get some later.

Peace Camels

In Norfolk there were Mermaids, In Bahrain there are the Peace Camels.

So far we have seen a bunch, but only managed to take pictures of these 2 today.  We finally have a rental car, and after all the walking we have done in the past few days, I am very grateful.  Plus, carrying home groceries and bottles of water from the store is tough.    We took a ride to check out a few neighborhoods, and found a park with camels and a playground.

 Scout was a little bit cranky after being woken from his nap in the car.  He did not want to be near the camels.

 A motorcycle ride makes it all better though.

Settling in

So we are starting to adjust to the jet lag, Well, we have started, but the kids were awake at 3:30 this morning.  It will take a little longer. We are going to try and not take naps today, but we don't know how that will work.

There is an Easter Egg hunt today, so we will go to that today and then venture out to try and get a rental car so we can explore a little farther than the distance an almost 4-year old can walk.  We took a taxi home from dinner last night and there is an extra charge for 6 people, so it was a very expensive taxi ride.  We will be nice not to do that anymore.

This coming week, we will start looking at houses, and start cooking dinner in our temporary apartment, eating out is not always fun, The kids are picky and don't like the bread we bought, it wasn't soft American Bread.  They are really confused with all the different things at the grocery store,

I am not taking very many pictures yet, and trying to upload them from the ipad doesn't seem to work very well based on my last post.  I did add the sandy window pictures though.

The kids love watching Cricket and are tying to figure out the rules.  There are some neighborhood kids that play in the empty lot across the street from the hotel, and they are fun to watch.

New Adventures of life

So, I have been begged by my family to start using the blog again.  Basically because as of today we

have moved to Bahrain.  Well, we are in a hotel and we will be for a few weeks until we find a place to live and our furniture and household goods arrive.  It will be our next adventure.

It was a very long flight with lots of stops and lots of waiting.  But we made it, all very tired, but we made it.   the kids are all still sleeping and I tried to wake them up, only they fell right back asleep after I went to wake up the next kid.  I think they are happy to be sleeping in a bed and not on a plane.

There was a sandstorm here last night, so there is sand everywhere, and I am told this is more than the usual.  The pools are closed due to the amount of sand in them.

This is the view from the hotel window, that is all the sand from the sandstorm.  One is dirtier than the other, I think because it faces a different side of the building.  It will take a few weeks to clean up.  I can't tell very well if these are formatted to fit the screen correctly, but you get the idea.

i will post more after we are a little more settled.   Oh yeah, here is our hotel room.  It is a 3 bedroom apartment, and the kids think the bidet is weird.  It has a combined washer/dryer in the kitchen.

Life

Life has been busy lately and the blog has suffered.  I downloaded the camera today and realized That I haven't even done that in the last 5 months.  But I finally did that.

I am excited to return to spring weather.  And hopefully an end to the winter colds and minor illnesses that seems to have taken over lately.  

We have been enjoying spring. Going hiking, letting the kids get involved in sports. It is fun to watch them learn something new and love it.  

For now a bunch of random pictures.

I had a training conference in DC for 2 days.  Of course I got to wander around the city and explore.  I haven't done that without kids since I was pregnant with Princess.  It was actually a lot of fun. This is taken at the top of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. 

 The first of our many snowstorms this winter.  I stopped taking pictures after the 1st storm.  There were too many snowstorms this year.

 Munchkin joined her sister in Girl Scouts this year and is loving Brownies.

 Grandma and Grandpa came for a visit.  Naptimes are good at all ages.

 We spent Christmas Eve in DC watching my awesome niece perform in "The Nutcracker on Ice" Then everyone went skating afterwards.

 What happens when the kids spill a full bowl of popcorn on the floor.  A Picnic.

 The hard push-ups.

 Reading time

 Scout is learning how to pedal his big bike.  Not quite 3 yrs old and can pedal on flat ground.

 You never get too old to play with water in the sink.  This entertained 4 kids for about 2 hours.

 Then the return to spring and The first Lacrosse game of the season.  Game ended in a tie 1-1.

 He worked hard, and played well.