News from the Jacobs family in Saudi Arabia
Holiday cheer is in full swing on Sharar Circle. Trees are up, treats are made and Christmas specials have been viewed. The “Holiday” playlist on the iPod runs on shuffle-repeat all day long – with almost 700 songs it takes a while to hear any repeated though I must say that tracks from The Bob Dylan Christmas album make far more appearances that may be expected by chance. Enjoy the pictures…
Last week was the grade 2 musical performance – a collection of tunes from Suessical. You can’t go wrong with a bank of 2nd graders earnestly trying their best. Too much cute.
The holiday season is in full swing here. A singing group that Crystal works with recently put on an Elizabethan evening dinner/concert. It was a festive holiday feast complete with a king, queen and royal court–a fabulous show and when Kai and Nora heard that costumes were involved they were keen to get dressed up as well. Nora’s default of dressing as a princess seemed to work well enough and for Kai it was either a Jedi Knight, an alien or a pirate. The pirate seemed most appropriate. I thought that we could get him to pass for a monk with the help of his Jedi robe but he didn’t have much interest. Monks don’t pack cold, hard steel — pirates do!
We didn’t come away with many videos of high quality but I have stitched together a few that turned out. In the first few we got caught up in their street dance parade where they circled the floats in the area in front of Cinderella’s castle and then invited all of the kids to join in and dance with the performers. Kai loved it – they dance as a warm-up in PE so he had a bunch of moves ready. The second part of the clip shows Kai teaching Nora how to swashbuckle after they picked up some gear from Pirates of the Caribbean. I love how Nora puts her hand on her hip.
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The pièce de résistance of the entire visit (for Nora anyway) was a dinner at Cinderella’s table in the big castle. Early planning on Crystal’s part (like the day reservations opened early in the year) led to a reservation. When very young I believed that the castle was a real castle through and through. Stone, staircases, secret passages and dungeons all the way through. Pirate of the Caribbean was the same way. I thought that the Spanish fort that you wind though in line went back far past what normal visitors could see. As I grew older and more cynical I believed that right behind the facade of the castle it went straight to plywood and storage space for boxes of mouse ear balloons. Turns out that there is quite a bit of “castle” in the castle. Huge fireplaces, suites of armor, stone columns and a massive dinning room with windows overlooking Fantasyland. Beyond that I’m sure its nothing but plywood though.
Nora’s had been looking forward to her dinner with a princess for a long time and been really good about it. While in Legoland in California (which also has a fantasy land of sorts) she wanted to buy a princess outfit. I told her lets wait until Disney and that (in her mind) morphed into a commitment to fully deck her our in princess gear when the time came. She was wonderful about it and extremely patient though. A few days earlier in Animal Kingdom she had to wait while Kai went on the Expedition Everest roller coaster 7 times since she didn’t meet the height requirement. No problem – she was having dinner with princess in a few days! The photo gallery below documents much of the event. Enjoy!
Here is round 2 of Disney pictures. Enjoy!
We’ve been back over a week and I’m just getting the pictures off the phones and cameras now. Here is the first batch – Enjoy!
It was another successful Halloween! Kai and Nora enjoyed their parades and parties at school and we had an excellent time handing out candy at the Collins house.
As is probably true with many young children, Nora had a string of birthday celebrations. There was the celebration on the anniversary of her birth- what Nora calls her “actually birthday” – that we did as a family–turning 5 is a big milestone after all. Then there was the round of cupcakes and singing in her preschool classroom and finally, as schedules allowed, an afternoon party on a weekend with friends. Phew. I think we’re all done now – for another year anyway. Here are a few pictures that haven’t made it on the website before…
Here are a few random pictures from the Jacobs clan from September and early October. Enjoy!
