Wednesday, April 27th, 2011
Mitchell only had school Monday and Tuesday of this week because parent-teacher conferences were scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. I took Wednesday off to go to the parent-teacher conference in the morning. His teacher is very nice and told us how sweet and helpful Mitchell is in the classroom. He is also goofy, stubborn and disruptive when he wants to be! She was very positive and said he's doing very good catching up to the other students and learning the ropes.
At one point during the meeting she made reference to his report card. I asked "When will they be sent home?" Her reply was that they had been sent home a couple weeks prior!! OOPS! Talk about feeling like an idiot! I tried to cover my tracks telling her I rarely look in Mitchell's backpack because that's HIS responsibility...making sure he has what he needs for school. Not sure if she bought it but we signed the report card over the weekend and sent it back to school on Sunday!
After our conference, we headed straight to Wild Wadi, another one of the many local water parks. We met up with 4 other families so it was me, Chad, Mitchell, 4 other women and their multitude of kids!! Chad said he felt like a wealthy Arab man hanging out with all his wives and children! He's just SOOO funny!
The water park overlooks the Burj al Arab and while we were there we saw two helicopters land and take off on the helipad attached to the hotel. Very cool!
There were some amazing rides at the park. On one we went down in a 4-person tube and we felt like we were being flushed down a toilet! There was another we went on with either single or double tubes and there were high power water pumps that pushed you uphill and spun you around...CRAZY!
They also had a water tank with the "fish pedicures" where you sit on the side of the tank with your feet and calves in the water and the fish basically eat away the dead skin on your feet and legs. (Nice to visualize.) Mitchell wanted to do it so we paid for it thinking it would be funny. The fee covered twenty minutes of sitting with your feet in the tank. He NEVER sits still for that long so that should have been a warning to us! He sat down and put his feet in the water, the fish rushed to his legs and feet and he immediately pulled his feet out of the water. He stuck them in again for another second and was DONE! Luckily they let me take his spot so I sat down and gave it a go! At first it tickled like CRAZY then I kind of got used to it. After the 19 minutes and 30 seconds, my turn was up. I didn't really notice any difference in my feet. Probably wouldn't waste money on THAT again but at least I can say I've tried it!
During the day we went to a park restaurant to order lunch. Mitchell and I decided to share a hamburger. Well, I guess due to the pork ban, hamburgers in these parts are called "Beef Burgers" instead of hamburgers...which really makes sense when you think about it! After Mitchell heard me order the "Beef Burger" he started arguing with me that he wanted a HAMburger and not a BEEFburger! I explained that they were the same thing....unfortunately when we got the beefburger, it didn't taste like ham or beef! Not sure what it was but we ate it and were thankful that the fries were good!
At about 6:00 PM we were thoroughly EXHAUSTED and finally headed home!
Thursday, April 28th, 2011
Today was a whirlwind!!! I was working, Mitchell was off school and Chad had work to do too. Chad, Mitchell & I met our friends Bobbie & Kent and two of their kids for lunch at Festival City Mall. After lunch, I headed back to work, Chad headed home to work and Mitchell headed off with our friends to the pool at Wafi Hotel - pilots and their families have access to use the pools and gym facilities at some of the local hotels...SWEET! I picked Mitchell up from their house after work, headed straight home, picked up Chad and we went to Mitchell's school for a Boy Scout fun night. They had a bunch of games set up for them to play (flag football, baseball, ping pong, swimming, basketball and hockey). We were there from about 6:15 until almost 9PM. After THAT, we went to our friends Judy and Jim's house for an after-party party! We were there until about MIDNIGHT!! UGGH! And the weekend hadn't even started yet!!!
Friday, April 29th, 2011
Another whirlwind of a day. Church at 9am then I headed to LuLu's to pick up a few things for Mitchell's birthday party and headed BACK to church because Chad was leading a small group leader's meeting after 2nd service. The meeting started around 1PM and luckily included lunch! I helped babysit a sweet little 9 month old girl named Jemimah (nicknamed MiMi). Mitchell helped me entertain her, when he wasn't watching Phineas & Ferb on the IPad. Close to the end of the meeting I realized MiMi was wet and I promptly gave her back to her mother! Later Mitchell told me that the baby was cute but "She smelled funny!" Must have been the wet diaper!
We didn't get home from church until after 3PM. We rushed around our house like crazy trying to make it "boy proof" in preparation for Mitchell's birthday party the next day!
That evening, we met our pastor and his wife at Uno's Pizzeria at the Dubai Mall for dinner...yep, the same Uno's we have in the US but no pork sausage on the pizza...really!?!?!? What's the point of pizza without pork products?!?!? We didn't get home until after 9PM. WHEW!
Saturday, April 30th, 2011
Mitchell kept calling today his "30th Birthday" because his REAL birthday was April 7th but his party was on the 30th!
We pushed all of our furniture to the perimeter of our living room/dining room combo and set up 3 "Battle Stations" (basically ~ 16" in diameter clear plastic bowls with flat bottoms) for the Beyblade Tournament! (In case you have NO CLUE what a Beyblade is...it's a glorified metal and plastic TOP! Yes, tops are still a hit with kids...you just need to jazz them up a bit. You stick the tops into launchers to make them spin really fast. Two kids launch their Beyblades into the stadium at once and the last top spinnig is the winner!) Chad worked up a Tournament Bracket system on a large piece of poster board. We were ready for the festivities to begin!
The party started at 11:00AM and most of the kids were surprisingly prompt. We had supplies to let them assemble a new Beyblade for them to keep when they got there and then they just played around. We finally started the "Tournament" around 11:30. We were expecting each match (best 3 of 5) to take at least 10 minutes and they were done in a FLASH!!!! Yikes! So, after the first round, we let them "practice" for about 10 minutes before we started the Semi-Finals! Again, the semi's were over very quickly. We ended up with three boys in the final round which worked out really well because we had Gold, Silver and Bronze metals as the "prize" (along with bragging rights, of course!) After the winners were decided, we made a big production of presenting the metals and let the 1st place winner stand on a stool in the middle with the 2nd and 3rd place winners on either side for pictures with them wearing their metals and holding up their Beyblades. They LOVED it! Mitchell ended up the champion which was good and bad.
The noon pizza delivery finally arrived around 12:20PM (I was VERY disappointed, but not in ANY way surprised...even after calling to confirm!) All the boys sat on the floor and ate pizza and drank juice boxes and/or water. Shortly after that, we lit the candles and were going to sing "Happy Birthday." The funniest thing was when we were getting ready to sing. The cake with all the lit candles was on the table with all the boys surrounding it, we said "OK, one, two, three" to have everyone start singing. Well, one boy thought the countdown was for blowing out the candles and he blew them ALL OUT!! We were cracking up! It just so happened to be my friend Judy's son and she was mortified! We re-lit the candles sang "Happy Birthday" and then Mitchell blew out the candles. THEN, the kids who had been in Dubai for a while sang Mitchell "Happy Birthday" in Arabic! Very cool!
Finally, it was about 15 minutes before the party was scheduled to end; we had Mitchell open all his presents. He was sitting in Chad's big leather chair and, again, all the other boys were crowded around. Mitchell had just enough time to open all the presents before parents started calling from our circle drive for their kids. PERFECT!!!
By about 1:30PM that afternoon (30 minutes after the party was over) we had everything cleaned up and you would never have guessed that 11 boys and 5 adults had a party there! YES!!! Time to relax!!! That afternoon we just hung out and watched a movie Mitchell got from one of his friends as a birthday present.
It was a great 30th Birthday!
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