Fall Activities

Our second fall season in Saudi Arabia...oh how I do wish they believed in pumpkin patches! It sounds so silly, but it's those little things that suddenly become so important when you are over here. I want nothing more than to go buy a few pumpkins for the kids and carve them. So far..we are still waiting for the grocery stores to get them in...and Halloween is on Saturday! Last year they had them for a very pretty penny, so we aren't giving up hope!!

Josh knows I love seeing these pictures! He always sends them to me when we have packages!

Claire and Savannah having morning tea with some scarecrows!

I hate to bombard you all with these pictures of Claire sleeping...but we took away the paci this week. I repeat...my baby has no paci AND no crib. Anyone who knows Claire, knows her affection for her pacifier and giraffe. It was something that had to be done and we bribed her with being able to sleep in a "big girl" bed. She did great and it was only hard the first few days.

There was an international food festival at one of the compounds by us. They had food samples from all over the world! The food was great!

They also had a baby camel that Elise and Claire were not too fond of!

Elise is loving piano lessons with Ms. Heather! She has already learned a lot and has requested a piano.........

Going to the pool!!

 The highlight of our weekend was getting to go to the American Consulate's Fall Festival. It was so cool to be able to go on their site. They only allowed 200 people and it was first come, first serve via the internet just a few weeks ago. We were thrilled that we got in! Not many people get to set foot inside the real "little America" in Saudi. 

We were not allowed to take cameras, cell phones, pretty much anything inside! Luckily, some of the consulate workers took pictures for us and emailed them out!

The girls and I took a break from Saudi and went to Bahrain to do some Halloween shopping!

Rome

We were so lucky to be able to travel to Rome, Italy last week. We went with some friends of ours from the compound. The girls loved all the Italian food and so did Josh and I! 

One of our first days we rented a car and  headed out to Pompeii for the day. It was so interesting to see this old town that was destroyed so long ago. It wasn't the best place for strollers/toddlers, but was a definite must see!

The next day since we kept the rental car, we headed out to Tivoli. It is a quaint little town about an hour outside of Rome. They had really cute shops and a great playground for the kids.

Our day at the Colosseum is one of Josh's favorite days. I'm really glad we got a tour guide to explain a lot of what we were looking at. It was massive!

Our guide had coloring books for the kids.

We had a relaxing day just hanging out at the local garden/park area. The guys biked us around and we enjoyed that!

My highlight of the trip was going to The Vatican. It was breathtaking! We weren't allowed to take a lot of pictures or any with flash. No pictures were allowed in The Sistine Chapel, but it was pretty amazing. So glad we were able to see it.

You can drink water out of all the fountains in Rome. 

We had gelato every single day...no joke!

We are going on a detox after all the pasta and wine from the last week! But...when in Rome...