THEY GOT IN!!

Guess what???  THE GIRLS GOT INTO SCHOOL!!  YAY!!  I can't begin to describe the way it felt to get that call.  The "school thing" has been the single most stressful part about moving here, and it's finally over ... YAY!!  Today I went and bought lunch boxes and some "lunchy" foods, and tomorrow we will go shopping for their uniforms!  Sunday will be their first day of school (the work week is Sunday-Thursday here).  I'm anxious to get the first day over with ... we're all a bit nervous .. there's just so much to feel!!

So we will begin school while still in temp housing.  "Move in day" is still Wednesday at this point, but lack of furniture will keep us here for a bit.  I want to get everything all ready before we leave .. it'll be so much better (in my opinion) to have the essentials ready before we move in .. our temp housing is closer to the school than our home will be (by about 8 min .. ha) so it's no big deal to stay here until things are set for us. 

Today is Friday, which in the UAE means we went to church!  We went back to Redeemer this morning and guess what??  We went to dinner with the pastor and his family!  Their kids are 1, 3 and 4 1/2,  and like ours, 2 older girls and then a boy, so our kids actually had some "friends" to hang out with for a bit!  We went to Macaroni Grill -- yum!  It was SO great to hang out with a FAMILY and just talk like crazy about Dubai.  I felt like the conversation went 100 miles (err, kilometers) per hour!  I really enjoyed learning from them .. that's probably a whole different blog ..long story short .. it was a GREAT time out with friends .. we hope to spend more time with them in the future!

random thoughts:

I've been driving .. not a big fan of our GPS yet .. need to change "her" settings .. ask my sister what I named her. ha ha  I've driven to furniture stores where I've managed to buy beds for the whole family .. and that's it.  Anyways .. driving is different, crazy, people are all over the place, but it's truly fine and I feel like I'll adapt to it all just fine.  It'll be nice to get a sense of direction.

This guy was nice enough to let me snap a picture of him .. 

he, along with several others, use their carts (the thing behind him) and go around washing cars in covered parking lots.  There is an entire team of them .. nice service eh?  It'll cost ya about 20-30 dirham (which is less than ten bucks) for a sparkling car when you get done shopping.  Love it.

I'm going to end here for now .. thanks again for coming along!