The proud Mumma post (and super grateful wife)

Our little girl has gone from a baby to a grown-up in the past week and as exciting a milestone achievement as it is I am also selfishly a little sad my little bubba is growing up so fast.
Piper is officially daytime toilet trained (night time nappy only).
While I would like to take credit for this achievement unfortunately the only thing I can take credit for is buying her first knickers! This was all due to the hard work and hours put in by her Daddy.
Last week I had management from Australia in town and a huge proposal due in to a client so on top of the long hours I had been working I also had evening work functions every night last week. During this time Naz and Piper took on the toilet training challenge with great success! Don't get me wrong there were a few accidents, embarassing and awkward moments followed by tears but they won in the end.
We went to the mall last night for a couple of quick jobs and as we were leaving to head home Piper yelled out "toilet, I need to do wee" and off we went. She was so patient and grown-up about it all I had a teary departing the toilets with my little grown-up lady.
So basically this is a blog post to say thank you to my wonderful husband and let the world know how much I truly do appreciate his support and all the work he is putting in at the moment as a stay at home Daddy over here with very little support. Thank you xo

Eid al-Adha Holiday

We have just finished enjoying a weeks break thanks to Eid al-Adha (Feast of Sacrifice) public holidays. Given we have just settled into our new home and I needed to work 2 days during the break we decided to stay and holiday in our own home and explore Dubai some more.
It seemed a lot of the festivities were happening in or around Dubai Mall and so we decided to brave the crowds and walk over for some night shopping and fun.
We were not expecting the masses that we experienced at all. We couldn't even get near the mall entrance via our normal route through Souk Al Bahar and over the bridge (normally a 10 minute walk). We ventured an extra 20 minutes around the outside until we found an entrance we could even get in.
It was a different kind of experience than what we were expecting but it was festive with a great atmosphere. Below are a few pics I took on our adventure.

First photo is people arriving at the mall.... mayhem! Second is the crowds around the aquarium inside the mall, yes inside a shopping centre. It is massive and has several sharks and a tunnel through the middle you can walk through while they swim over you. You can even pay and dive in there.

Piper enjoying the kids activities

Crowds watching the fountain show outside. Our apartment is in the building on the far right.

Tea Party with Cozy Bear

Just out of bed enjoying a tea party with her favourite bear on the balcony while Daddy swims his morning laps in the pool below! I love these mornings.

French macaroons to start the weekend

Secretly I think I buy these just for the packaging..... but they are also super yummy with an amazing choice of flavours!
We visited this gorgeous french patisserie on our way to grocery shopping this morning but unfortunately only 3 made it all the way home.

Halloween - Piper Monster

I promised myself I would never get sucked into all this halloween stuff.... then Naz called me at work on Monday afternoon to tell me Piper had been invited trick or treating in our building with her new friends.
So on my way home from work I detoured via the mall and am so glad we joined in. Piper loved it! The kids all had amazing costumes and some parents in our building organised 4 apartments for the kids to visit and collect their 'treats'. We had a few tears early on.... the skeleton boy was a little too scary for Piper.

Roadtrip to Oman

This weekend we hired a car for a road trip to Oman. 'Road trip' also being code for Visa Run. Our 30 day visitors visa's are about to expire and Naz and Piper will not receive their residency papers for another week.

The closest point of Oman is a 2 hour drive from Dubai. Rather than just drive 2 hours get our stamps and u-turn back over the border we decided to do some exploring and make an adventure out of the trip.

The UAE-Oman border is on a mountain line and is an amazing region. It was a beautiful change of landscape to the constant sand desert surrounding Dubai. We had planned on advice from friends to drive into the mountains to finds some wadi's (natural spring rock pools) for an afternoon of swimming. However as we had hired a sedan and not a 4WD we changed our minds on seeing the area and will leave that for another trip.
Instead we explored a beautiful town called Hatta and visited Hatta Fort and the Heritage Village.
The landscape and mountains were breathtaking and the locals extremely friendly. Perhaps too friendly as we naively followed a super friendly gentleman's instruction on where to go for a walk to a natural spring and gardens only to have him pop up on us and insist we go with him to his shanty for a drink of water..... very awkward moments followed once we got there as we didn't want to offend his kindness but there was no way we were going inside that building.
Below are some photograph's from our little'road trip'. We can't wait to drive the 5 hours to the capital of Oman, Muscat sometime in the next few months.

Never ending sand. We couldn't get a photo as we were driving but we saw literally 100's of camels during our drive roaming the sand dunes on the side of the road.

Ummm show your passports?

Blog Comments

Thank you to those that emailed me to let me know there was an issue and nobody was able to leave comments on our blog posts.
I think I have managed to fix this now and we look forward to your comments xo

Birthday Celebrations!

Last week I celebrated my 32nd birthday and thanks to our shipping container arriving at 8pm the night before and Naz and I not going to bed until everything was in order we got to have our first day of relaxing and fun in our new home!

Piper is terrible at secrets and had already informed me during the week that she was making me a birthday cake all by herself and she had hidden my presents under her bed. I also overheard her telling her Dad exactly what colour balloons she needed and insisting they go to Dubai Mall for party hats.
However what she did not blab about was my fabulous birthday present.... a brand new Canon SLR camera and lots of great acccessories!
So of course I snapped away all day like a mad woman but it is honestly going to take me another year to get the hang of this thing so excuse some of the photo's.
Below are my favourite snaps from my birthday.....

Walking to get a coffee from our favourite place. Burj Khalifa is in the background, Old Town island on the right and our apartments on the left.

Beautiful gluten free cupcakes which as you can see Piper iced all by herself and decorated.... apparently these few cupcakes took 3 packets of fun size smarties, you can only guess where the missing smarties went!

For dinner we went to my favourite Thai restaurant Tip Thara which I have been to on my previous Dubai work trips. It is in the 'Old Town - Palace' complex across the water from our house and is built over the water looking directly at the nightly water fountain show in front of the Burj Khalifa.
This photo is Piper being spoilt by the staff who insisted on feeding her.