News from the Jacobs family in Saudi Arabia
In typical holiday fashion we did both gingerbread houses and cookie decorating.
The Eid Holidays are our major chance for travel during the school year and because they align with the Hijra lunar calendar they move up about 11 days each year. This year the break fell at the end of October which made the time right for a tropical island trip to Koh Samui, Thailand. We stayed at Rocky’s Boutique Resort which was just perfect – small and private with a great staff and a wonderful beach. For the most part we simply alternated between beach, pool, massage and food in various combinations each day. One interesting side trip was dinner at the Tree Tops restaurant – only 7 tables and nestled in the branches of a huge tree and overlooking Chaewing Bay. Amazing dining experience complete with a “salt guru” who visited our table to recommend the correct type of salt to use with the various dishes. The other highlight was hiring a boat for the day to take us out for some “snorgling” as Nora calls it, fishing and some time on a tiny island that was all beach.
Enjoy the pictures ((Some of these pictures were also posted on facebook during the trip itself but I’m didn’t take the time to weed out duplicates))! Note that I’m still fiddling around with the new gallery format on the site since I upgraded – hopefully everything is working. Drop me a line if things don’t seem to work or you have a suggestion for improvement. I’m keeping my web photos on Flickr now and just linking a gallery onto the blog. You can use the “view in Flickr” link to just to my photostream and view even more images.
It doesn’t usually take an entire month to work through the last of the vacation photos but this time it did. I’m blaming the network. At any rate, the last images of a fantastic summer vacation are posted on the bencrystal.net website. Enjoy!
A few random summer images…
I recently spent a week in San Diego for a conference and was able to have an excellent meal with Jim and Monica. Later Jim took me on a tour of his ship, the USS Thatch. What a treat–Jim is an excellent tour guide. I also learned that aluminum can achieve a self-sustaining burn and the tradition of the chiefs’ coin.
Back to clearing out the camera. The Pinewood Derby was a couple of weeks ago but here are some pictures of the building (or at least painting) of the cars.
This last weekend we took a trip over to the Gulf Hotel in Bahrain. They have a nice kid’s pool there were we take Kai and Nora for a teppanyaki dinner at the Japanese restaurant now and again as a special treat. They are both convinced that it is the fanciest restaurant on the entire planet. Nora doesn’t need an excuse to get dressed up but Kai is a different story. Teppanyaki is the only thing I know of that he will willingly put on a collared shirt for.
In the week leading up to the trip Nora started referring to the hotel as the Golf Course Hotel. She probably heard “Gulf” hotel and thought “Golf Course”. Anyway, the name has now stuck.
This past 3-day weekend we decided it was high-time we took the kids out for a movie so it was over the causeway on Friday morning to Bahrain to see the Lorax at the City Center Mall. We attended a few more errands such as stocking up on Dachshund Chow at Pet Arabia and trolling the aisles at Jawad where Nora found dinosaur oatmeal she’s been craving for a year now. The highlight though was the Lorax. A great movie that we all really enjoyed.
The kids are getting big! Not too long ago the family portrait we had done at the end of last year came through. Each year a professional photographer comes through to take school photos for the students and he does family photos after hours and on weeks for those interested.
While on vacation Kai came across a “Science of Slime” kit and decided to get it with his allowance. Messy fun ensued.
