Our First Eid

We had a wonderful and restful Eid holiday.  The entire country is off during this celebration.  In case you are wondering, Eid ul-Adha (auf deutsch Das Opferfest) is an important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God, before God intervened to provide him with a ram to sacrifice instead.  It is a joyful time and many people give to charity, give gifts, feast and so on.  This is the first time since Casey has been working that we felt he was truly "off."  Everything is closed in SA.  People are truly on holiday.  Here in KAUST many people used the ten days for travel.  Others were making their pilgrimmage called "Hajj" to Mecca.  This pilgrimmage is an obligation that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by every Muslim who is physically able and can afford to do so. 

We did not do any travel other than two trips to Jeddah.  I went with Kelly for one of the trips to mainly get story time supplies and a few craft and toys for our own kids.  Casey took the two older girls later in the week.  When Kelly and I went we hired a driver.  Casey took the bus with the girls.  The bus leaves KAUST at 4:00 and returns at midnight.  We had no idea how this would work for the girls since they never stay up this late but they had a blast and stayed up no problem.  Of course they fell asleep on the way home but this was expected.

The bus took them to the Mall of Arabia:

After doing some quick shopping where Theresa chose a Fulla doll (SA Barbie) and Marcella chose rollerskates, they visited the carnival.  The carnival is a permanent fixture in the mall.

Below is this climbing thing that the girls went in.  It is like a glorified fast food playscape.

Naturally we did a lot of crafting over the break.  The neatest thing the girls made were their stick horses.  They spent an entire afternoon making the horses and stalls in their room.  This was inspired by a book we have been reading called "Summer Pony" by Jean Slaughter Doty.  The girls absolutely love this story and we have started its sequal, "Winter Pony."  Up till now they have really shown no interest in horses which has been a dissappoinnment for me since I was a huge horse lover as a girl.

They love running races with the horses.

We also spent the break visiting new parks or areas of interest here.  

Here is Theresa, Spider Girl.  She probably climbed this web twenty times.

And here are some hands we have always seen while swimming and wondered about. 

These last few pictures are maninly of the twins.  They still love their rabbit and mouse from Tante Oma La-La and here they are giving them a bath:

Theses next few pictures are just for fun. 

Eleanor has started to make line ups of everything.  She gets real upset when Ebby messes them up.  He prefers to be the destructor but occasionally enjoys making a tower or two.

Eleanor loves to sit and read various magazines and instruction manuals to things like games.  She is so cute.  She will take the piece and do this little get comfy sit and say "I'm reading it."

She also loves to carry ALL her animals and dollies and then some with her after her nap.

Well, that's about all for now.  Here is Marcella, sending out love from KAUST (look carefully and you will see a heart she drew with a piece of wood through it for the arrow):