Melts my heart

Ballet has started for another year. Piper has moved up to the 4 year old class and also a different venue, one closer to our new home. But as always she took the changes in her stride, she left class with a big grin and declared she wanted to go to ballet every day!

Moving house and a sand storm

We moved house over the weekend, although we had removalists pack and relocate our furniture and goods it was still exhausting work.

The weather over the past week has been hot, hot, hot.... there is still no sign of winters arrival at all and this combined with a bored 4 year old, 7 and a 1/2 month pregnant me and stairs almost killed us.

But as you can see below, two kids quickly settled into their new surroundings. Who would of thought having grass would make us all so happy. Looking at our yard you would hardly believe we are now living out in the desert (my water bill will certainly reflect it next month though)

We are almost settled in and fully unpacked, with the exception of a nasty sand storm yesterday afternoon everything has gone well. I will write a blog post soon about our new community with some more pics of our new home.

Helping Dad build Ikea furniture



The sand storm hit from nowhere as Naz and I were driving home yesterday, thankfully Piper was at home with our nanny who had the good sense to get everybody indoors quickly.



Interesting drive home - this is just near the entrance to our community

This morning as we drove to school and work Piper commented 'did they just put the trees back up?',  we laughed before looking out the window and realising that in fact all 3 trees that had been blown over the previous afternoon were now standing back upright. I don't even know whether to laugh or cry at this stupidity, but given sand storms are predicted for the next two afternoons I will be staying well away from the roads and trees!
There are just some things that the words 'only in Dubai' describe all too perfectly.

Milestones

This week the new school year started and three months of summer holidays came to an end. It's funny how we have become acustomed to being on the British/American curriculum time table of September through to June.

Piper is attending 4 year old pre school, although school here has an option to start at the age of 4 we made a very conscious decision to let her be a kid for as long as possible, and so another pre school year it is.

I also reached the 30 week milestone this week! We had an obstetrician appointment earlier in the week and all is going perfectly.  We spent this past weekend car seating shopping and baby preparing, suddenly aware of how little time we have left, especially when we have to fit in a house move and another trip back to Australia shortly for Naz.

We move house in a couple of days and will be without internet access for for a bit but I will pop in next week with some pics of our new home hopefully.

To all our Aussie friends and family - happy election weekend!! We went to the Australian Consulate and voted this morning, sadly no sausage sizzle awaited us.


First day of school for 2013-2014 school year




30 Weeks



Europe Road Trip - Part 3

My last post was written shortly after Naz and Piper departed for a month in Australia leaving me sad and lonely on the other side of the world. Since then a lot has happened.

48 hours after they departed and completely, coincidentally, I was required to head to Melbourne to work for 3 weeks, you can only imagine how much I needed to stop and consider that request. Given I was originally supposed to be working in Washington for August a change to Melbourne and a chance to catch-up with family and friends was a very welcome change.

So with travel and work commitment I have not blogged in over 4 weeks and here we are now in September.
We are all together back in Dubai but as usual life is never boring. We move house this coming weekend, the new school year started today and I have hit the 30 week mark (all healthy but feeling very pregnant now).

I have posted up some final pics below from our European holiday (which seems so long ago). I will be back later this week with some Piper school pics and a baby update x

One of our favourite discoveries - Lake Achansee, Austria. We cycled 20km around the lake this day (this pregnant mumma needed a rest day the next day).

Piper decided on this holiday clothing was optional.... no matter where we were! This was our lunch stop on our bike ride.

Cycling - Lake Achansee, Austria

Lunch in the most beautiful city ever - Salzburg, Austria

Posing in the square at Mozart's museum - Salzburg, Austria

Streets of Salzburg

Walchansee, Switzerland - stunning rural town

Walchansee, Switzerland

Zurich Switzerland - beautiful but wowsers, most expensive city I have visited!

Triberg Falls, Black Forest - Germany - this hike tested my preggy belly!

Munich

Munich, Hofbrauhaus Beer Garden - sausages and pretzels for lunch of course!

Europe Road Trip - Part 2

We made it home to Dubai safe and sound on Friday and our holiday now feels like a long time ago. 

Especially as I am here in Dubai and yesterday Naz and Piper flew to Australia for the next month.

It was the hardest goodbye ever, well for me anyway, Piper couldn't wait to get on the plane and get to Nanny's house, wear gumboots, see rain, play with her cousins and enjoy being totally spoilt for the next month.

A selfish part of me wanted to stop her leaving but it doesn't make sense for her to be here right now. She still has a month left of school holidays, Ramadan doesn't finish for another 10 days and it is far too hot to go outside in the daytime at all.

Enough of my feeling sorry for myself on my lonesome here, I have finally edited some more photo's from our holiday and some of my favourites from the German Alps region around Fussen are below.

Town of Fussen at the foot of the Alps

Medieval lunch in Fussen - love those paper bibs

View out the window from the cable car we took to the top of the mountains.... sensational view but I could barely breathe the entire trip up and down!

Looking down from the cable car on the toboggan run down the mountain....... this was one ride I wasn't skipping. I promised Naz I would behave and go down the hill slowly but my childhood Magic Mountain  memories kicked in and I flew down that thing! Don't stress grandparents - bub is just fine :)

Breakfast on top of the mountains

The top of the Alps was full of crazy people like this preparing to jump off and fly.....

Preparing to jump

Running to launch

Up up and away! We had to tear Naz away, he would of stayed watching all day if  we let him. I have a bad feeling that one day we will be watching him jump from mountains!!

Europe Road Trip - Part 1

Our European adventure is almost over but I will break up our pics over a couple of posts.

We are currently in Munich after finishing up our mobile home cruising and camping. Over the last couple of weeks we have travelled across Germany, explored the Alps via Austria, Lichtenstein and Switzerland, accidentally visited France and Luxembourg and found our way back to Germany.

Lastly but most importantly our little Piper turned 4 while we were on the road! 

One our favourite towns discovered in our first week - Landberg am Lech

Birthday Girl - never needs an excuse to wear tulle!  

An accidental visit to Legoland - not part of our plans but we couldn't resist stopping when we came across it. We expected to lose an hour or two...... not 6!

This is one of the tamer rides, we discovered later in the day Piper has a love of roller coasters and speed! Unfortunately these signs below prevented me from taking part in case I harm my legless, armless lego baby!

Birthday cake road trip style!

Outside our motor home ready to hit the road on Birthday day!

O'Brien's are doing Europe

So much for staying on top of the blog, it is only now we are finally on our summer holiday I have the time to update it.

We are currently in Germany and have spent the last 3 days exploring Berlin, and judging by my sore butt cheeks and tired feet there is not a lot of Berlin we left unexplored.

Today we took a 5 hour cross country train to Dusseldorf and tomorrow our next adventure begins when we pick-up our motorhome and head off south for the Alps.

The beautiful summer weather here of 25 - 28 degrees has been a welcome relief from the horrid Dubai heat and with Ramadan due to start any day in the UAE we are happy to be out of the country.

Everyone is happy and healthy, including bub in the belly (although I probably need to scale back on the cycling distances going forward).

Some of our pics from Berlin are below.



Berlin Wall



Berlin Wall at Topography of Terror site



Berlin Wall



Brandenburg Gates.... and random bear



Cheers - we survived the 2:30am flight from hell and our first day in Berlin!



Berlin also gave us our first ever grazed knee with 'real' blood, it was very dramatic!



Naz was more than happy to discover beer at the zoo



Berlin Zoo.... this goat head butted Piper in the stomach about 10 seconds after this shot!



Picnic lunch and a break from the bikes. Cycling was the best way to explore Berlin.



Pumping water - possibly Piper's favourite thing about Berlin after the zoo!

In case you missed it..... THIS HAPPENED!

YES, Bubba number 2 is due in early November!!! We are all very excited, nervous but excited. It is going to be a very different story this time around.

Bub will be born here in the UAE, we have made a family decision to stay here until at least October 2014.

We are now 17 weeks pregnant and boy am I glad to get to this point. I could not be having a more different pregnancy to my dream one with Piper.
Up until the last two weeks ago I have been experiencing 24 hour a day morning sickness and cannot even describe how bad it was. I was so lucky the first time around and this really took me by surprise.
I may have scarred Piper for life, I caught her this weekend playing Mum with her dolls and making horrid sick noises and running to the toilet..... oops!!
I have also had strange cravings which included eating Japanese for lunch and dinner every day straight for over a week, it was the only thing I could keep down. Miso soup was my best friend for awhile there.

Naz departed for a month of work back in Australia in early May and he returns home tonight! I think I might be more excited than Piper. But I have to admit I am rather impressed I survived this month and one earlier in the pregnancy, solo parenting and working full-time whilst basically attached to the toilet.

However Naz hasn't exactly been having a holiday back in Melbourne. As well as working his full-time job at the fire brigade, he has also been working hard on our new business venture, but I will save that story for another blog post.

I know I annoy the Mum's with my inconsistent blogging (most likely the only readers of our blog, well at least the only ones that tell me off anyway) but with Naz back in just 3 hours I will have more time to update.

Thank you for all your well wishes and over the phone and Skype support the last few months, even though most of you are far away you have still made this a really exciting time and helped me through some tough days x