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