Our Christmas in Dubai

It was a very different Christmas this year and sadly it was all over far too quickly as the UAE is a muslim country we had to take annual leave for Christmas Day and Boxing day and now I am back at work.
But we made the most of our time and enjoyed good food, great company and lots of drinks... oops I mean laughs! Here are a few snaps of our Christmas fun!

Decorating our Christmas cookies and preparing for our Christmas Eve Party!

All partied out!

Christmas Morning....

Morning cricket match with friends to get the day underway, followed by lunch in the Burj Khalifa!

When in Rome.... I mean why not play cricket in a park at the foot of the world's tallest building!

Piper and Laura preparing to field



Playing with her new scooter from Santa

We finished our Christmas day off with a trip to the beach and some aggressive beach soccer



Hope you all had a fabulous Christmas with lots of laughs and fun like ours xo

Race is on!

A couple of weeks ago we went out to Motorcity, a suburb on the outskirts of Dubai built around several race tracks and one of the best go kart tracks I have come across.
We went with a couple of work colleagues and other friends we have met. We are a diverse bunch but have a great time despite the language difficulties. Off the top of my head we have aussies, a kiwi, several columbians, italians and others from Palestine to Venezuala!
It was a great afternoon and I am happy to say my male colleagues were left out of pocket when they decided to place lunch bets on the race results.... I won!! A rematch will be organised for the not too distant future I am sure but until then the current race results will remain posted on our office wall!





 Piper and her new best friend Deleni - Piper is teaching her english apparently!



Piper Ballerina

Yesterday was Piper's end of term ballet concert for the Mum's and Dad's. Although Piper started mid-term and only has a few classes under her belt she was very excited about her first 'concert'.
We were awestruck at how much she had learnt in a short space of time, she really loves her ballet and it was beautiful to watch her having so much fun (there may have been a tear shed by some proud parents).

Our family is complete!

Look who arrived this week!! Piper was so excited about Lily arriving that she woke at 2:15am on the morning we had to go to the airport and did not go back to sleep.... as you can see it was all worth it.

Happy snaps

Below are a few of our recent family happy snaps!

Happy National Day UAE

The UAE celebrated National Day on the 2nd December and this year was an extra special event as the UAE turned 40 years old. The weekend celebrations also coincided with the Islamic New Year and last week the government kindly announced Thursday was a public holiday so we have just finished a lovely 3 day long weekend.
The Emirati's are an extremely patriotic and proud culture and it was an exciting weekend to be here and join in.
We live in new Dubai, although our area is called Old Town? that is Dubai for you and I am not going to even go there. Anyhow, this meant that a lot of celebrations were centred around our home area so we didn't have to go far to join in the festivities. Over the weekend we have had a classic car show along our Boulevard and the start and finish line for the Dubai Rally was also here. The highlight was this afternoon's National Day parade through the boulevard. Piper loved the parade and it actually exceeded our expectations.
Naz also joined in the festive weekend and headed to the Dubai Rugby 7s tournament with a few others.... not sure he saw much rugby but I do know he had one massive headache this morning!

In typical Dubai fashion there were no signs and very little communication warning traffic about the parade. These cars pictured are part of 4 lanes of traffic that was stopped dead in their tracks for the next hour with nothing they could do about it. It provided great side entertainment watching the frustration during the parade!

A favourite National Day activity is decorating your car. It has been interesting spotting these cars on the roads over the last couple of weeks. A lot of money is spent, I read an article last week about an Emirati woman who had spent over $250,000 dhs (approx $50,000 AUD) on her car decorations. I managed to get this snap below of a decorated Range Rover passing the Parade. The second photo is of of a car completely covered in real dirham coins. Yes that is a real moving car with somebody inside driving it..... UAE tinting rules is a whole new blog for another day!