Family Photos

It was super tough to decide which family photos to order.
After looking, reviewing, asking opinions etc. I decided on my favorite 20.

I had the disc of my final picks sent to Grandmas so they wouldn't have to wait.
My friend Kamee, the photographer, sent me some selected prints so I could get them up ASAP. She wanted me to post the pictures displayed in our home so she could see the results.

See the smile above....that is how I feel every time I walk down the hall and see this photo.
Finally we have a family picture that includes Graham......and I love it!

These pictures are appropriately placed as my 3 monkeys are usually climbing the walls anyway.

Chris and I haven't had photos of us together displayed since our wedding photos (which were minimal). It's fun to have some of just us.

I'm eager to get my fingers on those additional pictures. When I'm home over the summer it will be priority #1 to get those printed off.

Jedi Down

Ethan was protecting Princess Lea. He had shown me several versions of this scene before I decided to film .........

......of course as soon I turn on the video he gets hurt with a self inflicted lightsaber wound.

100 Days

The Kindergartners celebrated their 100th day of school by....
.....bringing 100 of something (Zach chose hugs and kisses and wrote out 100 x's and o's)
....writing his numbers from 1-100 (seen below)
....receiving a 100 piece treat bag (I would have prefered him to receive a 100 calorie snack pack)
.....parading around the school and yelling as loudly as they wanted "Hip Hip Horray it's our one hundredth day!)

His favorite part, of course, was getting to parade and yell through out all the classes in school. Other students were allowed to join the procession if they so desired.

Just So You Know

After a year and a half it's still going strong....

......but now he's added a very small beard too right in his dimple.

Pucker Up

A true artist will go to great lengths to make sure his work is completely accurate and to scale.

That is why Zach decided to color his lips blue and kiss the paper so that the mouth portion of his mask......

.....would be exactly the same size as his face. I guess he wasn't as detail oriented on the rest of the proportion. That may have ended up with a blue face print instead of just the lips.

He loves his art classes at school and can hardly wait to come home and continue the artistic process. This month they are making masks. I thought the one he made at home was a little bizarre until he showed up with this "skeleton" mask as he called it. I guess this is normal 6 y/o boy stuff.

Shark Park

Last year a museum film, in Al Hasa, explained to us how the eastern portion of Saudi Arabia was once under the ocean. Seeing it now makes that difficult to imagine. Then we heard of a place near Khurais, 3 hours inland from the ocean, where you can find fossilized sea life and sharks teeth.

Our caravan of families and friends, in 4 wheel drive vehicles, set out and met up with this camel caravan along the way.

These limestone outcropping are not super visible from the road but after 1.5 hrs of driving our GPS coordinates said we were there. We put all our cars in four wheel drive and set off in the sand. I have to admit I was a bit worried about getting stuck but their was only one time we went a bit squirmy in the sand.

Our caravan drove right down into these bowls to begin our search.

I don't know the geological history of this area. But I'm supposing that when the waters receded these outcropping trapped a lot of sea life and as it died the wind shifted sand around preserving the remains.

As the winds continue to shift sand it reveals these treasures from the past. Anything black was once ocean life. There were pockets where these fossils were everywhere.
In other spots you had to sift a little to find something interesting.
What we really wanted were shark teeth. Which proved to be much more difficult to find. Generally they were not black and varied from tiny to quite large.....however finding large ones was rare. It wasn't until one of our friends really helped me understand what I was looking for that I found success. This was well after the boys were ready to go and the sun was heating things up. Once I caught on I couldn't stop Chris had to literally pull me away. I could have remained all day playing in the sand.
With Graham walking this adventure went really well. We brought him some sand shovels and buckets and he would just follow me or Chris around digging and sorting. He also began to clue in on the black things vs. other object and put only blacks in my bucket.....so helpful. Zach and Ethan just filled their buckets with things they found interesting. They were pretty over it by the time we left which was a good because I really didn't want to bring home this 5 gallon bucket full of just plain old rocks.
These were some of the treasures I found.
I don't know why I enjoyed digging in the dusty sand so much but it did reminded me that I had seriously considered geology and marine biology as majors at one point.
Last but not least.....SHARK TEETH.....some fossilized and others that looked as if they had just washed up on the shore.

FHE Overhaul

As a teacher in Italy we tried to come up with the most "effective" ways of teaching. However, sometimes our approaches ended up "less effective" despite our best efforts, or what we thought were our best efforts.

Over the last few months our FHEs have gone done hill....way down hill and become less effective. Chris & I decided we needed an FHE overhaul.

We had a cute FHE chart my friend designed a few years back giving everyone a job. However, I found that the boys just liked to rearrange it instead of following it. Then when it didn't survive the move we just didn't use one. In Enrichment we made some simple lessons totally appropriate for my kids ages but despite our best efforts the only burning we felt were our own tempers rising or putting out fires between children.

With our last move I decided to go digital so I didn't bring many crafting supplies. So with the few odds and ends I did have I came up with this new chart. The letters have magnets on the back so we can just rotate each week. Family scriptures is a "?" because it one, leaves space for a future Jenkins and two, it is a part we all do together anyway.

We decided the older two can come up with their own lessons and Graham can just pick a previously prepared one. I initiated the new family program with a preparedness lesson. We talked about fire safety, escape plans, and practiced our family response to camp emergencies.

Finally after months and months it went well. Everyone was excited to have a job and looked forward to their turn.

I hardly had to remind Zach that he was due for his lesson. I asked if there was anything he needed my help for in preparation but he seemed to have everything under control. He just needed me to call the bowling alley and make sure it wasn't club night.

His amazing lesson was about when Lehi's family departed into the wilderness. Here he was demonstrating what would happen to them if they didn't listen to the Lord.

After the wonderful story/demo he invited us all to go bowling because.......
bowling balls are heavy and Lehi's family had to carry a lot of heavy things on their journey.

We were really proud of him and are excited to see what he plans in the future.

Since we started the revamped program we have had fewer distractions since everyone knows ahead of time who gets to do what. Plus, they know they will each have a turn to decide what we do.
I think the boys are just the right age to do this because they do have opinions and we are working on taking turns and they still enjoy doing things together as a family.

Tour of Qatar

Last weekend Chris and some buddies ventured to watch the Tour of Qatar. It is one of many training rides for the Tour de France.

A close up of the fort that was a backdrop during race prep.

One of the coolest parts was being so close to the riders and their gear. They actually walked among them as they prepared to ride which you can't do at other rides.

As mechanics or riders discard parts or water bottles etc. they are free for the taking. The group came back with tons of souvenirs.

Qatar is a very small country and is pretty much flat as flat can be.

Between the 5 events, time trials and 123km- 147km races, the riders pretty much covered the entire country.

With very few spectators the gang was up close and personal.

There was some crazy stunt work on display. We will not be showing this picture to E.

One of the finish lines with sensors.

A little night life.

On the way to a fab Indian Restaurant the following was seen.
This is not a picture of a women but a watch out for men in "thobes" crossing.

Readymades? I guess pre-manufactured goods. Hey look their CHEEP too.

The last race ended along the Doha Corniche. Again most of the spectators were westerners.

The legend of cycling Eddy Merckx (lt.). Chris is not a star struck person. When I asked if he spoke with anyone famous he said he didn't really have anything to say to them. He just enjoys the sport itself.

There was one portion of the ride that the Qatar Riding group got to ride on next year the Udhailiyah Cycling Group are going to see if they can join up too.

Chris said he was amazed at the vortex of air that came after all these riders. It was just sucking everything in behind them including garbage.

Sorry for the second hand info....Chris won't blog.

Desert Roses

These beautiful Sand Roses are not made of sand;
they are in fact normally a combination of Gypsum 65%m quartz 10%, and the remainder being salt and dolomite.

They form when sea water is slowly drawn inland through the porous sand, all the time the concentration of salt and calcium sulfate is increasing as the water gradually evaporates until it reaches a salinity level of more than three times the normal sea water.

If conditions are ideal and the water table is about one meter below the floor of a 'sandy Sabkha', there will be further gradual evaporation of moisture and sand roses will start to develop.

No one is certain how long it takes sand roses to form and rise to the desert surface, but it is believed to be a matter of several decades which is faster than the blink of an eye by Geological timescales. (Easter Province Today 2008, pages. 202-203)

They look very fragile but in fact are hard as stone. They will break if dropped but you don't have to baby them too much.

Some friends recently went on a Sand Rose digging trip and brought these back. You do have to dig quite deep to find these. If you are lucky you might find a hole already started and instead of digging deeper you dig out. We have seen some that are clusters several feet long. Although that would be a tremendous find I do like these small individual ones too.

I don't think we'll have enough cool weekends left to go out and find some of these on our own but next year we will plan on it.