Still alive and kicking

We are all still, healthy and happy... most of the time anyway.

It has been a big couple of months getting used to our new 'normal'. Naz flying backwards and forwards to work in Australia, and Piper and I establishing our new routines.

There hasn't been a lot of spare time so I apologise for all the missed Skype dates, lack of email responses and more obviously the blog updates.

I am happy to report that this time next week Piper and I will be home in Australia. Back with Naz and our friends and family for Christmas.

I am still working up until Christmas but will hopefully catch-up with everybody during the month we are home.

Below are a few snaps from around the traps lately.

Lazy afternoon at Safa Park - the weather is so lovely right now. I love Dubai winter.

Emirati woman making traditional Gaimat (doughnut like balls covered in rich date syrup)

Gaimat - I could eat far too many of these

Piper dressed in uniform  for school photo day

Nice palm right? Wrong, it is a mobile tower in disguise!

Our fluffy baby Lily is still kicking along but now much happier the weather has cooled down!

This weekend it rained properly for the first time in nearly two years. It was a spectacular stormy day with thunder lightning and plenty of flash flooding! Dubai is not built for rains and it causes quite a mess. Piper and I made the most of it in the afternoon and played in the rain and went on a puddle jumping adventure.

My two girls

I love this photo of my two girls.

I am not sure which one misses Naz more but their wait is almost over, he will be here in less than 48 hours!

This past week has been a little tougher. Piper knows Daddy is coming back soon and the anticipation is killing her. We have had epic tantrums, lots of tears and disrupted sleep. She also provided me with an insight into her teenage years when one morning I came out of the bathroom racing to get us out the door for work and pre school and found Piper in her play room with text drawings covering both her arms. Her justification "I want tattoos for school today, they will be cool". Shoot me now.

All of this combined with my attempts to juggle full-time work and solo parenting in a foreign country have definitely taken a toll, I am exhausted. But I am not complaining, for the most part it has been a crazy adventure.

Life lately in happy snaps

Things have certainly been busy around here and this blog has suffered over recent weeks but the important things is Piper hasn't.
She is happy at school, has made friends she meets with every afternoon at the playground near home and has become a pro at Skyping her Dad and cousin Stella.
If I leave my phone lying around or computer on she has worked out what the Skype symbols mean and demands to call whoever is online.

Her independent streak is continuing to grow (so is she quite frankly, we need to do some shopping). She now insists on having alone time to Skype Naz in the mornings. She sends me off for my shower and perches herself up in my bed and chats away until I start shouting we are going to be late for school!

Here are a few snaps from our Nazless days recently.

Thanks Naz for the goodbye gift - DJ Piper plays morning, noon and night!

Everybody should craft naked, right?

Choosing her first ever Barbie, a reward for a very brave week. You do not want to know how long this took and how many changes were made.... and somehow we left with a Barbie pool too

The change in weather brought about fierce morning fog and sea mist last week. This photo is from our balcony right before we got in the car to drive on a 7 lane highway with zero visibility!

This is normally our view of the community and Burj Khalifa

Rocking out on the piano with Brett during our dinner party on the weekend. We have been so lucky with friends like this to help out. Brett has also been helping with school pick-up when I have meeting clashes. Brett will go down in history as Piper's first love!

Making chocolate crackles

Piper has been learning about growing things. Meet Dennis and his first haircut! Dennis has some serious ear and nose hair issues.

The big fella has left the building

Naz has left and is now back working in Australia until the end of the month. There were lots of tears, stress and a heart broken little girl but we are slowly finding our feet and settling onto our new routines.

I guess our loss is your gain as I suspect it is only our Mum's and close friends who read this blog anyway, well at least they are the only ones who tell me off for not updating enough.

Over the past month we haved moved house, employed a full-time live in nanny, started pre-school and waved off Naz. It has been a big month.

We are now living in a fabulous part of Dubai, 'Old Town'. This is still part of the central Downtown area and in reality straight over the boulevard from our old home. But it is very different.
Old Town is built to reflect the traditional Arabic architecture and instead of high rises is made up of clusters of low rise villas and meandering lane ways, water features and lots of little childrens playgrounds and pools scattered throughout. In our community we have the choice of four swimming pool areas with another two in the community over the road which is still part of Old Town.

I will get around to taking some interior photographs but in the meantime here are a few from around our new little community.







View from our dining and living room out over the Old Town community. The towers in the background are our old home and the large building in the distance is the Burj Khalifa, world's tallest building.

View from my bedroom - I would of been mortified by this 12 months ago but now I have learnt to just roll with it and embrace Dubai and its quirks.



The trees and gardens in the lanes around Old Town deceive you of the fact you are in the middle of the desert.



One of our new pools (you can spy Piper playing on the steps)


If you see Naz about town please give him big hugs from us x





Every girl should fall asleep with her tiara on at least once

Piper's First Day of Pre School

Last Tuesday was Piper's first day of preschool. After a year with the school of Dad it was time to get back to the real world.

She was so excited on her first day and bounded off to school excited to play with friends and experience new activities, importantly the only tears were from Mum. Structured pre school runs from 8am to 1pm with extra curricular activities in the afternoon (we have Piper enrolled for full day care due to my working hours).

Her school activities include Arabic and French language classes, sport and water play.

All the current changes happening at the moment between, moving house, new nanny and Naz preparing to leave has been a little overwhelming for her and we have had a few tears this week but all will settle down soon.

Life lately in happy snaps

There is so much going at the moment it a bit hard to keep up.

The past month of house hunting has been beyond stressful and horribly time consuming. We have to move out by mid October (landlord is returning to Dubai and wants to live in this apartment). Due to Naz's departure back to Australia in two weeks we wanted to move before he left to ease my stress.
 I am happy to report that today we secured our new home and received a contract, we have been outbid on more properties than I can count. Although we have been happy in our apartment and have made full use of our amazing facilities we are very happy to be moving just over the road but to an entirely different sort of housing area. I will update more on that next week when we move.

Unfortunately we still have not employed a full-time nanny and with Naz leaving very soon it is becoming quite a problem. The trials and tribulations of the nanny hunt are enough for its own post another day.

Piper has her first day of pre school tomorrow, we packed her bag tonight and got her organised. I am going to try very hard not to cry tomorrow. She was starting the equivalent of Australian 3 year old kinder but after her interview and orientation day they are trialling her in the 4 year old class, her language skills and confidence were better matched but we will see how it goes.

Below are a few pics of life lately. I will update later this week with tales of Piper's first week of pre school.

1. Naz's birthday cake decorated by Piper with his favourite things maltesers, kit kats, jelly beans and sprinkles

2. Best coffee home delivery service in Dubai

3. A wonderful night out with 4 of my Granny's friends who were passing through Dubai

4. Swimming pool fun

5. Piper parading around in Naz's basketball shorts

6. Sushi train lunch date

7. This is what Naz gets up to while I work ;)

8. Finger painting fun - Naz looked away for 5 minutes and this is what I came home from work to find

9. Foyer of our new home - very traditional Arabic style building

Road trip - Jebel Shams, Oman

Ramadan is officially over and life is getting back to normal.

I am scared to 'type' this out loud but the weather has even felt cooler the last two days. Last night it got to a low of 34 degrees, so all fingers are crossed the heat is over and winter is on its way.

The end of Ramadan brings with it Eid celebrations and several public holiday. These holidays are not officially announced until the evening before Eid begins. UAE residents were given 2 public holidays.... sounds generous, however, all of our neighbouring countries (Saudi, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain) were given a week off so it was a little disappointing.

To make the most of a four day weekend and escape the oppressive heat we headed off on a road trip to explore the mountains of Oman in an area known as Jebel Shams.

A friend who also joined us for the road trip recommended this route and camping location, assuring us despite our hesitation that it was an easy drive and would definitely be cooler temperatures.

Well he got the cooler temperatures right. Jebel Shams camp is 2000m above sea level and the peak is 3000m. The nights were cool enough to throw on a jumper and light a camp fire.

As for the easy drive.... not so right. Firstly it was approx 7 hours each way including toilet breaks and border crossings (we had 3 adults, Piper and Lily in the car).
It was an extremely steep climb and took some time to get up the mountain itself. It had been raining and some of the 4WD driving was a little hair raising. In fact at one point on our scenic drive the next day I freaked out on a steep descent and opted to get out and walk (brought back lots of childhood memories Dad).

It was a great break and another Oman road trip is in the works for later in the year.

Our Bedouin tent - we glamped it a bit and stayed in this instead of taking our tent

Walking through a little village on the start of our hike

There were goats everywhere just waiting to be terrorised by Lily

On our hike looking back at  the cliff
wondering where the path was and how the hell we just walked around
that with a toddler and poodle!

Naz doing 'hero' poses. Don't worry Liz there was a big ledge beneath him x

Like father like daughter, my little daredevil rock climber

Snapshots of our Road Trip through France

 Still playing catch-up and now I am even more behind as we have just spent a long weekend camping in the mountains of Oman to escape the Dubai heat.

Here it is, the final leg of our Europe trip!

Our motorhome for the next 8 days, we picked up just outside Paris and headed north to the Champagne Region

Our camp set-up in Epernay

Roadside lunch stop overlooking the vines of the Champagne region, near Reims

Never too young to join in a day of champagne house tastings (just don't tell her it was only water)

Piper's set-up on the road

Another lunch stop on the road in a little village
After the Champagne Region we had planned on driving further north and into Belgium, however, the weather started to get colder the further north we went and our Dubai blood was not happy. 

So we changed planned and headed south to seek the sun and instead explored the Loire Region. We came across a stunning little village Bracieux with the best municipal camp ground we had seen. We ended up basing ourselves here for a few days and hiring bikes to explore the area. 

Cycling in Chambord

Views out cycling

One of our camping stops was conveniently located next to a chocolate factory

More cycling. Most routes we took between small villages were a combination of quiet country roads like this and bike paths

Refreshment break... my cycling was never very good after a few of these wine stops.... a rose bush may have been a victim of one of my after lunch rides. (Thanks Photographer Piper for taking this snap)

Lunch stop out cycling

Piper founds some donkeys on our ride to Cheverny

Exploring the Chateau at Cheverny

We loved the experience of travelling unplanned through France by motor home. Now that we have tried it once we are planning a big trip through Europe by motor home next year...... hint, hint.... maybe some family members or friends might want to join us?