Dads

Holiday celebrations are always a little different living overseas. Expats from different countries look forward to slightly different traditions on a slightly different time table. Because we are on a Friday/Saturday weekend, we will honor our daddies for Father's Day tomorrow. Our Abu Dhabi Ward primary has been practicing for weeks a nice medley of songs, which will be sung by a skeleton crew, since we are in Dubai, and many of the other families have already left for summer vacations. Nonetheless, I am sure they will sound like angels. Jon will be in attendance and will have to tell us all about it. After church meetings my dad is going to drive to Abu Dhabi to retrieve my man.

After a week of cleaning our flat, Jon is plumb tired out. This afternoon he helped move all our furniture to it's new home. It's a pretty simple process. There are several parking lots in the city where guys (usually Pakistanis) hang out with colorful trucks, waiting for a customer to come by and hire them for an hour or two. You can get a mobile phone number ahead of time, but it's not usually necessary. Our friends who bought our earthly goods took care of that and came with a truck, and two workers. Those saints of moving muscles - the Elders Quorum - also arrived right on time to help carry everything out of our flat, into the elevator, down 12 flights (thank goodness the couch just barely fits - that's a lot of stairs), to the the truck waiting outside. They broke up into two teams since they had to make two trips, getting it all done very efficiently. Tonight Jon will sleep in a completely empty apartment. Just a fold out mattress and a couple carry-ons.

We are excited to be reunited again tomorrow. Especially happy to have him back with us on our (early) Father's Day. There was a flurry of coloring page downloads, printing, cutting and folding this afternoon as the girls prepared for the big day; to honor both dad and grandpa. Lots of cute stuff was made, but I'm especially fond of this little origami Hawaiian shirt. You can write a note on the back. Once you get familiar with the folds, I think you can easily make one from dollar bills - to amuse your children when bored or annoy your waitress when tipping. We found the instructions for the shirt here, along with many other very fun and simple origami projects. Madelyn is in origami heaven.

I am so blessed to have wonderful and amazing men in my life - Happy Father's Day. Thank you for the love and support and the love and the love.