Home for the Holidays

We have quite a backlog of memorable moments.

Here we are at the start of the trip, in a pose we stayed with pretty consistently while in the States:

This was at the lovely Houston family holiday party in New York City.  I think pretty much the entire readership of this blog was at the event anyway, but we sure had a nice time.

While we were away, Dave lost the gerbils.  But its ok, because a new stray cat had kittens in the yard.

Goings on

Here is Emmett with his swim "coach" Khalil at Maadi House.  Emmett can swim underwater now! Without armbands!

Santa came to Maadi on a camel, and the boys were pretty ho hum about it.   Here Thomas is asking him for a flamethrower for christmas.  I'm not kidding.  Santa said no.   

But the main event, bigger than christmas in our family, was Thomas' 7th birthday!!!  Unlike the last two years, when he wanted gifts but no children at his party, this year he wanted to invite twenty children!  I was so happy about that, I just went for it.  Dave says it wasn't a party, it was an extravaganza.

 We kicked things off with a birthday sleepover with Max and Alex.  We watched a movie and ate cupcakes.  Here the boys are building a baroque Ottoman castle for our two new dwarf hamsters.  Their names are Fireball and Lightning Bolt.

Then, a party.  We had a bouncy castle, clowns, a magician, and a treasure hunt.  

Cool guys . . .

Thomas loved it.  If you enlarge that photo and look  carefully you can see his little grinning mouth-

Whoever is responsible for this picture should never be allowed near a camera again.

Emmett had a great time too, and is now planning his 4th birthday party in March.

We leave for the States in 9 days!  Also, there has been some news here in Egypt.  You may have read something about it.  sp;

A poem by Thomas

The assignment was to write a poem about fireworks. They provided a list of helping words like "sparkle" and "whoosh" but Thomas refused to use any of them. (The first words of the first three lines were given . . . Fireworks . . . rocket . . . Bangers)

Fireworks are like the sun on gunpowder.
Rockets exploding in the night sky.
Bangers snapping like bombs.
Fireballs krashing
Curtains of fire smashing into 10000
Bells of explosion ringing.


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The Dark Cave of Despair

Update: sorry, didn't mean to alarm anyone. The dark cave was a blanket fort Thomas and Emmett built in their room. The inspiration was the "Halloween" Party at MBIS on Nov. 6th. Specifically a very slightly haunted corridor. Also, scooby doo which they watch every day in return for thomas writing two sentences of plot summary in the middle and end. Here's Emmett at the party dressed as batman.




Thomas was a ghost. But Thomas went with a friend and by the time I saw him he was wearing his sheet as a kind of skirt tied around his waist.

Also in the dress-up category, these are from a birthday party last weekend. Generally Egyptians, and many expats, are pretty rigid about gender expectations here. For example, at the toy stores the girls section is almost entirely dolls, toy vacuum cleaners and ovens. Anyway, at the party, Emmett wanted to wear the fairy wings provided for the girls.




So I let him. One of the birthday girls saw it and started to cry. Emmett then urged his friend Johan, who is half-egyptian, also to try the wings and the fairy wand. Johan's dad kept pretending not to hear Johan asking for help opening the sparkly package.  So I stepped in and helped. They had a great time.








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Location:Thomas and Emmett's room