Kai recently got a set of Superman pajamas and, of course, doesn’t want to take them off.Â
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s…
Bird Watching
Manifa in the Rain
I continue to play around with the blog format and I’m having lots of fun and learning a lot as well. ((Like how to include footnotes in my posts. I also hope that the bugs are worked out of the subscribe option for new posts–I don’t think a notice when out last time. If you’ve subscribed already, thanks! If not, you can use the link at the top of the page if you want to get on the list.)) Right now I still use my old web design program to manage files and create the layout for these posts; however, that is probabably mostly out of habit. I can get done all of the things I need to get done through the web interface so it won’t be long before I retire Dreamweaver at least for this site.
In other news we’ve been getting a little more rain lately. Mostly overcast but with a few light showers on and off which is nice (especially when it has
n’t been as cold)–however, it looks like this is going to end soon and things will clear up.  I don’t have any new pictures of the rain but I did take this panorama shot a couple of weeks ago when the kids were playing outside with thier umbrellas. On the left side is the edge of our garage and on the right is the edge of our house on the other side so this is pretty much the full view of the front yard of Manifa 650. If you look on the left side you can see two Kai’s and one and half Nora’s. I built the panorama by stiching together multiple images that I took from the same spot. While I stayed still the kids did not so they show up multiple times.
January 21, 2008
Every night after we go for a walk (now that it is a little warmer) I get out my cold pack and lay down on the living room floor to ice my back.  Last night Nora climbed up on my chest, gave me a great big hug, and let out a big sigh. It was very touching for a father. Crystal managed to catch it with the camera the second time she did it.
After I got up to put the ice pack back in the freezer Kai and Nora both laid down where I had been and Kai announced “Look Dad, we are icing our back also.”
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Still Cold
It is still cold but it looks like there is a little bit of a warm up in the forecast. They were predicting lows of 29F for Riyadh and down as low as 34F here in the Eastern Province (though the lowest I saw was 36F). Jeddah is supposed to set a record low of 50F (gasp).
Last night we went out to dinner at the Alquists (their daughter Ann was visiting) and had a great time. Jaffar looked after the kids but when we got home they had both been throwing up. Kai did it only once and seemed fine afterward but Nora has been sick through the night and doesn’t even keep down water for long. Crystal and I have taken turns being thrown up on and are running out of towels. Since Kai got over it so quickly we’re thinking that maybe it was some bad milk and Nora maybe just had a little more or has a more sensitive tummy. We’ll see how things are when she wakes up.
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A Cold Snap
Singing in the Rain
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The last couple of days we’ve had a few rain showers which is always a real treat here. There is something about rain in the desert that makes it a lot more fun. Maybe it is that it so rare that it can be enjoyed and it is gone before it gets bothersome. At any rate, Kai had been itching to get outside with his umbrella and we let Nora try hers as well. Kai had great fun running around the yard again and again (in his pajamas of course) but Nora didn’t really get it. She just dragged the umbrella behind her and was impervious to coaching on proper use. She was very impressed with the rain falling from the spout on the roof though; that was a big hit. |
A new format for the website!
I’ve decided to switch the interface for our family website to a blog format powered by WordPress. I’m doing this for a couple of reasons, one of which is that it is much easier to manage and update. This new format is web-based and so I can work on updates from most any computer and I won’t have to come up with new procedures and software every time Microsoft upgrades their operating system and my current software won’t work. The second reason is that I think that there is a lot of potential to this kind of website management in education and I’m eager to play around and explore the possibilities. I hope you like the new format and I will continue to link in material and content from the old website(s) so that material won’t just go away.
By the way, the theme for this site was developed by Viktor Persson and was modified with permission. I changed a couple of colors and added the sand dune background. Also, the palm tree silhouette in the banner is from a palm tree caught at sunset not far from our old house in Udhailiyah. Crystal thinks that is it a bit scraggly looking and suggested I might look for a more idealized palm tree outline. On the other hand, sometimes life is scraggly and doesn’t approach the ideal so I think I’m keeping the current palm tree just for the metaphor (and because I’m stubborn).