Oklahoma Update

Hello lovely friends and bloggers! How is everyone? I can't believe it is already Christmas Eve..... can you??? I awoke this morning to snow/sleet in Oklahoma and boy is it COLD! BRRRR..... Now it's snowing and it is coming down pretty hard. We will definitely be having a white Christmas! We are having a fantastic time here, eating loads of wonderful food, and spending time with our families and some great friends! We are so happy to be home.

I just wanted to pop in and show a few pictures of our trip thus far.

Me with my mother and great friend Lisha.

Lisha, Jon, and me.

My beautiful and goofy niece Preslie and me.

My cousins Maranda and Rachel. And my brother and me.

My brother, my dad and me. Jon and I with Brian.

I'll be back with more pictures of our Oklahoma adventure soon!!

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas Eve!

Festivites and Festivals

Well hello lovely bloggers! How was your Thanksgiving? I hope you all had a blessed holiday and it was spent filled with family and friends. Even though we are away from our families, we were so blessed this year to spend Thanksgiving with friends. It was a wonderful time!

Our cousin Matt just returned from a tour in Iraq and was able to spend all day Saturday with us, so I made a huge Thanksgiving lunch for him. We were so thankful he was able to spend the day with us and thankful that he made it back from Iraq safe and sound.

There is a huge Christmas festival going on right now in our town so of course we took Matt to see the festivities and to drink some Gluwein.

The Christmas Festival

Drinking lots of Gluwein, as you can see by my purple teeth! ;)

Pretty ornaments they had for sale.We are so glad we got to see Matt and spend some time with him!

We also had a chance to put up our Christmas decorations this weekend. We went to a tree lot, picked out a great tree and decorated it together. This is the third year in a row that we've decorated together so it has become a tradition. And every year I get to put the star on top of the tree ;)

2007, 2008, and 2009

A BIG THANKS to S&D for having us over for Thanksgiving! It was wonderful!!

I hope you all have a fantastic Monday!

Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I hope you all have a blessed holiday.

Until Monday, enjoy your weekend, enjoy your family time and enjoy LOADS of good Thanksgiving food!!

WAY WAY back Wednesday!

Well hello lovely blogging buddies! It's Wednesday today, and you know what that means, only two more days left in the week! and I couldn't be happier. This week has been a busy one and I so look forward to another weekend. This weekend is sure to be a good time, with scary movies and Halloween parties, I can't wait!

Since Halloween is just around the corner, I thought it'd only be right to show a picture of me from WAY WAY back all dressed up for Halloween. Check this:

Rockin a fairy princess costume and a PERM! Bwa hahah! Gotta love the 80's..... and having a hairstylist for a mother!

and look at my little bro... he's so cute in his little ninja turtle costume!

I hope you all have a fantastic Wednesday!

Some Random Things

1. I think my husband was a hobbit, or elf, (or whatever those things are), in a past life.

He loves tiny doors....

and tiny cars.
Silly guy ;)

2. Jon and Steph are some happy campers at the moment! We got to watch the first three episodes of season 2 True Blood. Thank you technology! (We don't get HBO in Germany.)

Can I get a HOLLER! or holla..... anyway we're super stoked for this season. The first episodes were great as usual and have left us craving for more.... darn vampire shows/books.

3. The 4th of July is this weekend. Sadly, the forecast calls for rain and thunderstorms all weekend, starting tonight! Yippie for German weather. This will be the first time in 26 years that I haven't seen or done some sort of firework display. Weird! I stupidly asked a German the other day, "Will there be fireworks anywhere for the 4th of July," and she replied.... "why?"
DUH Steph, why would Germany celebrate America's Independence?
Oh well at least we got to see a little firework show at Elton John on Tuesday night.
I guess I'll just have to rock out with my matching t-shirt and short set for the 4th of July on my own.

Yup, that's my brother and me!

4. I finally hung some of our pictures from Paris. I think they bring a nice touch of added color to our dining room.

5. I think we've finally found a buyer for our home in Norman. It's only been ONE YEAR (darn economy) since we've had it on the market. Please keep your fingers crossed for Jon and me, as it would really be a HUGE weight off our shoulders to finally sell it.

6. Jon and I are investing in some fans tonight. There are no air conditioners in homes here and to say we're VERY hot is an understatement. It is 80 degrees with 61% humidity. This morning when I woke up the humidity was 82%. Whew, are we back in Oklahoma or something? So it is definitely time to buy some fans. Our bedroom is 79 degrees right now. Needless to say we've been stripped down to our skivvies at night. Can you blame a girl?? ;)

Hope you all have a great Thursday!

Our Weekly Weekend Update

First thing... I hope everyone had a great weekend and a wonderful Mother's Day!
I was able to call my mother from Qatar to wish her a Happy Mother's day. I also called my step mom to wish her a great day and was able to talk to my dad very shortly. We called Jon's mother but weren't able to get a hold of her. With this darn time difference (8 hours) it is so hard to reach people sometimes! Jon had to work yesterday so our Mother's Day consisted of me going to the gym, having lunch with Jon and spending the rest of the day trying to figure out how to use Photoshop Elements. It's so much more complicated than I thought it would be!

Our weekend actually started on Thursday evening. In Qatar businesses work Sunday through Thursday. So Thursday night Jon arrived back at the hotel and we decided to grab dinner at the Villaggio (one of the malls in Qatar) at a restaurant called The Butcher's Block. It's a great steak place and it really hit the spot, (a.k.a., I ate the entire meal and had to unbutton my pants afterward.)

Inside the mall the ceilings are painted to look like the sky and the stores are built to look like homes in Italy. There is also a canal in the center of the mall with gondola rides! I've posted about this in one of my first posts, but it's so beautiful I thought I'd post about it again.

Friday we headed out early to try to beat the heat; right now in Qatar temps reach to 100 degrees, and the humidity is so awful. We wanted to get an early start so we wouldn't be absolutely miserable in the sun. We checked out a new development in Doha, called the Pearl. It is a man made island built off of the coast of Qatar. From the internet, I found an aerial view of what the Pearl will look like with it is finished.

Here are a couple of pictures.

Here some pictures I took when we visited Friday morning.

The Pearl is a HUGE shopping center, (I saw Versace, Jimmy Choo, all the high end brands that you can think of,) and they are buildling luxury condos, apartments, townhouses and villas just behind the shopping area, making it Riviera style living. There will be an international yachting hub and three 5 star hotels including a Four Seasons on the island. This place is going to be AMAZING! I cannot wait to visit again when the Pearl is completely finished because it is going to be incredible! I mean come on, I CANNOT afford to shop in most of the stores, but I can look, wish and dream!

After seeing the Pearl we went to the City Center Mall where we grabbed lunch and went to the movies to see Wolverine. It was an excellent movie! Jon and I both agreed that it was a buyer!
After the movie we made our way toward the hotel but stopped to check out the book store down the street. I left my Living Dead in Dallas book at home on the coffee table when I had every intention of bringing it so I could read on this trip. So I was hoping they had this book, even though Jon really thought they wouldn't. I was pleasanlty surprised, they did have it, so I snagged it! Too bad I have two of the same book now, but I had brought the rest of the Sookie Stackhouse books with me and couldn't just skip the second book and keep reading without knowing what happened in the second! Yay for the Sookie Stackhouse novels!

(SARAH.... if you're reading, you should grab the first two books from my apartment and start reading! You'll LOVE them.)

Saturday we got up early in hopes of seeing the Museum of Islamic Art. Sadly it was closed for a special showing. Bummmmmer! Oh well, maybe next time. The museum building is beautiful! Jon told me that the architect of the Louvre came out of retirement to design this building for Qatar. Here are some pics of the museum that I took the last time we were here.

Due to the fact that it was only getting hotter outside, we thought the best thing to do would be to go see another movie! So we went and saw Star Trek. I am not a Trekkie, but if it means meeting Chris Pine, a.k.a. Captain Kirk,

I will become the biggest Trekkie of them all.

Seriously this guy is adorable! He is another movie we really loved called Bottle Shock, and he is equally adorable in that movie. But really, the movie was great, even though I have never seen a single episode of Star Trek, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was cool that they had the real Spock in the movie. Go see it!!

Now I am off to the gym to get my hiney in shape!

Have a great Monday ya'll!

The Easter Bunny

Since it is almost Easter I had to share this photograph with you guys.

I have no idea how old bro and I were in this picture, but obviously we were young enough to still believe in the Easter bunny. (Although knowing he and I, we'd still take pictures with the Easter bunny at this age, just for kicks.)

My mom always had our pictures taken with the Easter bunny and Santa, but this is one that I found last year and absolutely love!

Maybe it is because of the fact that you can tell my brother is terrified of the crazy eyed bunny with very big hands, and wants nothing more than to get away or the fact that I am shyly smiling in hopes to be good for the bunny so I can get my big Easter basket full of goodies.

It's years later and we still get Easter baskets, but we did find out they were from my mother and not that big giant bunny. Thank goodness, because I'm sure if my brother awoke to find this big scary bunny in his room in the middle of the night dropping off his Easter basket, he might have a conniption!

Hope you all have a wonderful Saturday!
It's a busy one for the hubs and me. I've got some hairdos to do, then off to Ikea for some dining room chairs, and afterward grocery shopping!