It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

The girls have been loving their surprises in the mail lately!

Since Josh has been home more, we have put him to work! We got the tree and all the lights outside going.

We had Amber's Ma'asalama last week, too. She had been here for 5 years!

It rained one day so they canceled school--remember this happened last year?! So funny-but it was nice to have a day with Elise! She did virtual school. This was one of her assignments: Talk about the country you are from...notice Chuck E Cheese comes to mind when she thinks of America. =)

Elise had her winter program. She was so proud and did a great job.

We had our company Christmas party. We had fun decorating and preparing for it. 

Claire refused to turn around to be in the picture.

The company had a tent party (that's what they have here in Saudi) to celebrate the end of turnaround. Josh has been to a couple, but I told him to take pictures for me this time. As you can obviously see there are no women allowed.

Just some fun things happening in our compound:

We got a letter saying some people were using illegal devices in our compound (this is pertaining to phones that access a certain frequency). We obviously don't own them--but it was kind of scary when the next day they show up and literally drive around to each house checking.

Turnaround is over!

Well, Josh's part is anyway!! We had a lot to celebrate over Thanksgiving break because Josh's portion of turnaround is complete. Yay!! We are hoping to have him back to normal working hours! We had our first breakfast together as a family this weekend--it had been 3 months! 

Before turnaround was over, Josh had a random Tuesday off-which we took advantage of by going to Bahrain for some drinks and food!

We went to the Senor Pacos because Josh was craving some Tex-Mex. They have great lunch specials.

Ms. Heather has been working at the school and has been snapping some pictures for me of the girls!=)

We found this "Christmas" shirt at the H &M in Saudi. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense...

Sweet girls is fighting her naps lately. So, this is how she ends up by the end of the day!

We needed to activate the girls visas one Friday so I took them to see the Trolls movie. They were really excited about it, but really sad Daddy couldn't come too.

Counting sugars at Pauls while we wait for our breakfast. 

 We have to leave for Bahrain at 6 AM--so by the time we get here the stores in the mall still aren't open. They usually have a fun display in the middle--their theme right now is "around the world"- the girls had fun posing for the pictures

Oh My goodness--when we walked into Pottery Barn you would have thought we were walking into Santa's wonderland. Since the kids don't really EVER go shopping with us--this was the first time they had been in A store (besides the grocery) since August --they were quite overwhelmed!!

Claire always wants to ride this ride and every time she starts crying and we have to take her off. Every.single.time.

This is one of my favorite last stops at the mall. If you want a glass of wine at the mall, you have to go to the Westin hotel. They have these areas set up with the televisions. It's great because you can get a snack for the kids and they can watch a show while you have a glass of wine/beer before the journey back to Saudi.

Our elf has returned...

We went to Bahrain for the day for Thanksgiving. 

The girls loved all the Christmas decor at Home Center in the city center mall.

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving brunch.

We picked this brunch because they had a kids club!! The kids had a blast all playing together!!