Real City!

Last weekend we made our first trip to Dubai. Primarily we went to stock up on armoires so we can actually put our clothes away in our new house, as Dubai is the closest location with an Ikea. Another mom asked me, so did you do anything in Dubai other than shop? Well no, not really, but here's why: as far as we can tell, life on the peninsula revolves around shopping malls. Some are trendy nightspots, like the Madinat Jumeirah, with an array of restaurants. Others are family destinations, such as Dubai Mall, with its indoor aquarium and Mall of the Emirates, home of Ski Dubai. Others are practical, like the one that houses Ikea, a supermarket, an electronics store and an Ace Hardware. What more could you need?

In the tunnel at the aquarium, Dubai Mall

The indoor waterfall at Dubai Mall

Burj Dubai

Souk Madinat Jumeirah

Burj al-Arab

Morgan as Fulla (think Muslim Barbie)

suited up to ski at Ski Dubai, Mall of the Emirates

Settling in and catching up

We have fallen behind in our updates again, but it's not just due to a lack of motivation--rather, we spent the past two weekends moving.  Since the last post, we have moved out of our temporary apartment into a house.  The weekend of May 1-2 we brought a few boxes over to the new house from the temporary apartment, and we spent much of Saturday painting Morgan's room for her Harry Potter/wizarding theme.  (We also had breakfast of biscuits and gravy--minus the pork sausage, of course--with our new friends Sybil & David at Ric's Kountry Kitchen.  Yes, that's a real place in Doha!)

The container arrived on May 3, so I took the day off from work to help get a few basics situated. Ella spent most of that week unpacking, and that weekend we finally brought the last of our things over from the Somerset.  Below are a few pictures of the compound; now that we've gotten ourselves somewhat settled, we will do our best to be a little more diligent in our updates.