Happy Valentines

For Valentines Carolyn made a couple batches of sugar cookie dough and invited us over to make cookies. Jaydon cut about 2 cookies worth before he decided that playing with Jacobs toys was much more fun then making cookies. It wasn't until we were home and I had made some frosting for the cookies that they got into it a bit more.

Both Jaydon and Tylor were sure to make sure every spec of the cookie was properly coated with frosting

...and don't forget the sprinkles too!

Mosque tour...kind of

The cultural center in Doha offers mosque tours. Now anyone who's been in a mosque knows that there's not much to see. The muslims take the opposite approach as say, the catholics do, when it come to decorating their places of worship. Last year Doha opened there own Grand Mosque which I've heard is quite impressive to see. So I've been trying to sign up for a tour of it for a awhile. I thought I had signed up for one only to get an e-mail the day before saying our tour had been moved to a different mosque. We already had the kids lined up for the afternoon so decided to do the tour anyways even if it wasn't the Grand Mosque. Well it ended up being the definition of a 'Doha' experience. We left with plenty of time to get to the meeting place where we were to take a bus to the mosque. Well that day they had speedboat races along the corniche so all the roads around where we were supposed to meet were closed. It took us almost an hour to get there - but we weren't late because everyone else was stuck in the same mess. They dressed us up in the abayas (black dress) and hijab (scarf around the head) and loaded us on the bus.

By now the traffic was 10 times as bad, we spent 30 minutes on the bus and had made it through 1 light only to have the tour director decide to give up and take us back to where we started and just do the tour in the local mosque. He did his best to make light of the whole situation. This was certainly a 'inshallah' moment. Inshallah means god willing and is an answer people will give rather then agreeing to your request. The say inshallah - so it will happen if god wants it to. Well he obviously didn't want us to see any of the pretty mosques that day.

We toured the little local mosque, saw the 2 highlights of the prayer times clock and the copies of Quran and decided we had had enough fun for one Doha afternoon.

You can be sure I wont be getting Steve to agree to another cultural experience anytime soon...

More Birthday fun

After a birthday filled weekend Jaydon also got his special day at nursery with all of his school buddies.

I baked another batch of cupcakes, actually 2 to make sure there was enough for everyone.

They had a little party for jaydon.

With singing (I love that Jaydon is singing too).

And candles.

And blowing them out of course. And surprisingly not a single cupcake made it back home again. I usually have to take all the birthday leftover to work the next day to be consumed but not this time. Guess I better remember that recipe for the future.
Maybe Tylor had something do to with it...

Jenna's Birthday

And just incase Jaydon might go into sugar withdrawals, fortunately there was another party the next day for our neighbor Jenna.



She's turning a big 2. The big highlight of her party was the piñata.



Once again Jaydon was disappointed because it was full of chocolate but Tylor loved it.



Fortunately he filled up on fruit before the piñata.



After the kids had the sugar high going the party turned into a dance party.



With all the kiddos (and a few parents) doing the gangnam style. I still catch Jaydon singing it (his version anyway) all the time. For some reason is it a very catchy tune that has a way of sticking with you.

Birthday bike in the rain

For Jaydon's big 4th birthday he got a new bike.



We spent the morning showing him how to ride and it even started to rain.



Well not rain so much as just lightly sprinkle, enough to get the cars dirty but that's about it.



He also got a set of angry bird sun glasses which Tylor just loved.



He insisted on wearing both pairs and was pretty cute doing it.