Christmas Day - 25 December, 2009

It was very exciting to wake up Christmas morning to see that Santa had found us in Abu Dhabi. The night before we had to leave glittery reindeer food on the roof and the glitter on the number 14 button in the elevator and all down the hall to our door. This way all our bases were covered that Santa would find us. Find below the wonderful gifts that Santa left us. Mine is the picture on the left and the kids follow!! :)





Christmas afternoon we had to test out the bikes in the park. Samantha did very well the first time without training wheels. Now she is zooming. We are working on using brakes and not getting too far ahead of Mom - but she starts by herself and is having fewer and fewer spills. Patrick picked it up right away. He was a bit nervous I think because it was bigger than his old one - but doing well and he is now full of confidence.


Below is a picture of Nana and Grandad taking it easy in the park while the kids have a break on the playground. After a while we headed back to the apartment and then went for a swim.




I have another picture to add but will have to wait till Wayne can help because it is on his phone. We went shopping for Christmas dinner fixings, and came across a turkey. We thought that would be nice - a little touch of home- until Wayne noticed the price. For almost $100 Canadian we all decided that the turkey could stay on the shelf and we went looking for a pot roast instead. :)

Geocaching - 21-24 December, 2009

We did seven geocaches on our trip to Oman. The pictures below are of the first one we did, which also happened to be Nana and Grandad's first one. We had a lot of fun finding it. The coordinates were off and as it turns out Nana had pegged where it was as we passed it. Oh well, we had fun exploring, and climbing the rocks looking for it. :)

There was a small one (film canister) for one of them which was neat because it was far into the rock wall and Patrick pulled it out with the attached wire (below). I also got to find one because the final part of the climb was tricky. Patrick was disappointed because he couldn't do it. It was on a small ledge and tucked into one of the holes behind a goat's skull. I wasn't too keen on touching the skull but hey I did it for the kids. :)

We also found our first nano-cache (below). That was a hard find, it took a while to find it. The find went to Wayne that time. Now we know what a nano looks like which made it a lot easier for Samantha to find the last one of the trip.

Our plans are to keep on finding them. There are lots here in the UAE and Oman as well as bunch in Dubai - maybe we will make a day of just geocaching in the New Year.

Tour of Oman II - 21-24 December, 2009

The next morning after our Oman tour, we headed to Al Ain- YES once again we piled into the truck for MORE driving! :) We saw the country side - sand and more sand. There was a geocache stop at Fossil Rock. Then we made it to Al Ain, for another windy drive up the mountain side. We stayed at our favourite hotel on Jebel Hafeet.

Once checked in, we had a little lunch and got our bathing suits on. The kids wanted to take Nana and Grandad down the waterslides. I caught them on video! :) So I have one picture for you of Nana, Grandad and Wayne chill-laxing at the swim up bar. Then there is one video of the waterslides. ENJOY!

Tour of Oman - December 21-24,2009

We decided to go for a little tour of the Northern Emiraites. So we headed off on the morning of the 21st, got lost in Sharjah, but managed to make it to our hotel in the early afternoon without too many hic-ups. Once we dropped our stuff off, we headed out for a geocache find and an explore. We went up this wadi (dried river bed) 'til we came to the Oman border. It was really cool to see, because of the recent rains. You see these trees growing on this mound of gravel and everything around it has been washed away. The wadis were quite wide. The wild life we found were GOATS. Hundreds of them all over the place, eating whatever they can find. We found one in the garge bins, on top of vechiles, side of mountains with a very steep incline. Below are a few pictures of the first day. Once we got back to the hotel for the evening, we had a swim in the ocean, saw a crab and collected some shells.

The next morning we got ready fairly early (cause we didn't have any hot water- so showers were very quick :) ) and headed out for more exploring. We did all the boring border stuff - fairly easily and then we were in Oman. The border town was neat. There were cows and goats walking the streets holding up traffic. We thought we better be careful and not hit one of the cows or we would be in big trouble.

We stopped at an ancient fort. Unfortunately the fort was locked up. We were able to peek in a few of the barred windows. Once we checked out the fort we started looking for our geocache. While looking we found all kinds of fossils and neat layered rocks. The view from the fort was quite something. Nana and Grandad are checking it out (left picture) and then the right picture is the view.

We continued on our drive, admiring the views. It was a twisty, windy road right between the ocean and the mountains. At some points the rock looked like it was going to slip off and crash on the road. We decided to stop at a beach for a little leg stretch and some lunch. The beach was cool. It was a shell beach - not much sand but mostly crushed sea shells. It was a nice break.

After lunch we headed into the mountains, through the wadi. They were doing some major construction on the road, so maybe by next year there will be a paved road for some of it. Considering the roads were in the wadi they were really quite good. We were expecting to have to do some 4x4ing. We climbed up and up and up. In about an hour's time we went from 0 ft elevation to 2900 ft elevation. It was quite the climb, with some awesome views. At one point in our climb we came across a place where there were a few houses/shacks with some terraced land for crops and more goats.

We found some rock formations that kind of formed little shelters. I guess they are for the herders when they are rounding up the goats. We would find them through the mountains. Sometimes you really had to look for them.

The next stop was to stretch our legs and was the turning around point for us. You could tell that it was the waterfall course for when it rained (picture on the right). All the rocks were well rounded and it was a different type of bedrock. There were some kettles forming as well. You could follow the course all the way to the top. The final picture below (bottom left) is on our way down again. You can just see the little village at the base of the mountains (little white blob) and the windy road down. I think when we got the bottom Wayne got out and kissed the ground. :)

On our way back out of the wadi we took one more detour. Up the mountain and then down a bit to look at the fjord. Wow what a sight! We didn't stay long because we wanted to get out of the mountains and to drive some of the windy road before dark. So we will have to go back again for further exploring and to go higher up the mountain, and maybe even d0 some camping! :)

GOOD NIGHT!!!