Happy Birthday, Alia

Today is Alia's Birthday! This morning when she got up we said "Happy Birthday, Alia!". She replied with "La"...which means "no" in arabic. She then said she wanted a drink. I guess she doesn't quite know the meaning of birthday. Jill made a beautiful monkey cake (for our little monkey) and we took it to her daycare and had a small party. At the end of the video below, you'll see that Alia didn't even get to blow out her own candles...poor Alia.

Beach Babes

Here are some good looking girls I found on the beach. They were kind enough to let me take their picture.

Glassbottom boat

We took a ride on a glassbottom boat. It was fun for the girls to see all the fish and coral.

To the hotel

After four days at Basata we traveled about 70 Kilometers to a hotel in Dahab. Since we had spent the previous four days on the beach we played a lot at the pool.

Go Lydia Go

"Don't mess with us, we're wearing swimmies"

Jellyfish and Sandcastles

Every afternoon at basata the tide would bring in several jellyfish on the shore. It soon became Lydia's mission to save all Jellyfish on the sand and return them to the sea. We, thankfully realized that these jellyfish don't sting as Lydia began picking them up. She would spend an hour or two gathering all the jellyfish she could fit in her sand pail and then wade out in the sea and dump them. It really was quite a sight. The ones at the bottom of the pail probably died of suffocation or at least got a pretty good headache by smacking the water.

The two Jellyfish saviors. I wish I had a picture of the hundreds in the sand pail.

Here you see the crusaders completing their "save the jellyfish" project. btw...the hat Alia is wearing was once mine (Calvin).

Lydia became good friends with an Austrian girl that was staying in a hut close to us. Here they are building a sandcastle.

Basata means Simplicity

Our first four days of our vacation we stayed at a place called Basata. This means simplicity in Arabic and it is very simple....exactly what we needed. You stay in small one room bamboo huts right on the beach without electricity. There is one large community hut used as a kitchen and dining area. All eating is on carpets with short Arab tables. There are also two community bathrooms and showers on opposite ends of the camp. Since living in Cairo can be quite hectic, this kind of place is exactly what we needed to unwind.

At basata there are no plans....except to have fun on the beach!

The only problem at Basata were the flies...thankfully there aren't mosquitoes....but the flies got a little bothersome...It's a good thing we had a mosquito net for our new little one.

This is our little hut behind Lydia. Home sweet home for four days. Lydia loved getting up in the morning and playing in the sand.

Here are some of the other huts and mountains behind. Beautiful area!!

On the way

Ok...ok...I know many of you are thinking...."finally they gave us an update and some pictures". Well, here you go. The next few posts will be on our trip to the beach nearly four weeks ago. :( Anyway, we'll catch up now. ha ha Here are some pics of our way out there. This is the dry desert of the Sinai.....talk about wandering in the wilderness. :)

A little pit stop....Lydia loves climbing rocks.

Been a while

Hey everyone....yes I know it's been a whole month since we updated this for you. We have lots of pictures to add and I'll be adding lots real soon. We recently took a week long family vacation to the beach so....hold on and we'll keep you updated real soon. In the mean time here are some great shots of Kinzy.

A White Christmas????

Every Monday evening, Jill and I have date night. It's nice for us to get out and enjoy each other without the kids....ha ha. Well, we just got back from our time together and had a comical experience. We decided to eat out at Johny Carino's, a great Italian restaurant. While sitting enjoying each other's company and the delicious pasta, our ears were pricked by the sound of Frank Sinatra singing White Christmas. Now, while Frank Sinatra is great music to be played while eating Italian, I'm not sure that "White" and "Christmas" go together on the last day of April. What do you think?

Season of the Khamaseen

During early April to late May, Cairo's weather can be quite different from day to day. Some days may be beautiful; others.......well.....not quite so beautiful. This time is actually called "the fifty"....meaning there are fifty days when there can be very bad sand/dust/paper flying/scarf around your face storms. Last week we had a full day storm that was one of the worst Cairo had seen in many years. It was bad. It was difficult to breathe and we ended up having over an inch of dust in our house.....that we are still cleaning. The sky was orange because the sun couldn't get through. It's neat to see but I'm glad they only come once a year.