Shame, it's just a baby...

Hello again...

On the 22/01/2008 I had the unfortunate luck of bumping my baby toe on the right foot against Chavez's bed. So what you might be asking...we have all bumped our baby toe at some point in our lives...well, I guess I bumped it a little harder than normal...see picture below...

Once the pain and numerous choice swear words had stopped, my first priority was to take pictures for this site, then we went to the hospital to see if it was broken or just dislocated.
After a very long wait to see the doctor, he finally sent me for X-rays...

As you can see by the above x-rays, I broke my baby toe rather badly. I was then infored that the treatment was very simple. Straighten the toe and bandage up for a few days...sounds simple enough. Modern medicine needs some serious assessment when the treatment is more painful than the injury itself. They gave me two injections into the base of the baby toe. WOW. Never again. Next time I think I will just let the toe heel in that position and I will look for shoes to fit.
And for all the pain and suffering, I got 3 days sick leave...3 days...bear in mind that I work 1 24 hour shift in 3 days...hardly worth the effort.

Cheers

New Year's Resolution...

The New Year's Resolution...

And so with the new year, comes the new year's resolution. Ours was to try get outdoors a little more often and to experience more of what the UAE has to offer us.

With that in mind, we went camping in the mountains of Oman, just behind where we live. More of a trial run than an actual camping trip, we noticed that we were a little short of the space that we would have liked to have. Two days later I had a roof-rack fitted to my vehicle to give us the extra space that we needed. And, in true UAE style the installation left a lot to be desired. The attached the roof-rack to the existing runner things on the roof with 4 screw-able pipe clamps...can you imagine? Anyway, they seem to be holding for now.
Camping trip No.2 was a little more adventurous than the first. At the tip of the Arabian Peninsula is an area that fulls under the jurisdiction of the Sultanate of Oman, and not the UAE. This was our destination. With my broken GPS in the shop for repairs, and only my vast knowledge of the UAE landscape to navigate with, we set of on Friday morning into the wide blue yonder...and ended up about 200km away from where I thought I was...lost and alone.
After eventually winding our way through the back mountains of the UAE, we finally made it to Dibba on the East Coast of the UAE, through the border post in Dibba and into the mountains of Oman on the Peninsula tip. By now however it was dark and we had no idea where we were. We decided to stop and camp at our first opportunity and continue through on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning was rather pleasant, seeing the landscape that was dark the night before. We began the drive through the mountains, heading for the border post on the other side that would take us back into the UAE in Ras Al Khaimah in the North of the country.


As you know, not all stories can have a happy ending, and upon reaching the border post at Ras Al Khaimah, we found out that it had been closed due to high rainfall in the UAE. The only thing left to do was drive back from where we had just come. It was beautiful scenery, even if it was a 2 hour drive back. At the end of the trip our poor car had really looked after us well, and earned its place in the family.

Stay tuned for scenes from our next episode...

Christmas Dinner 2007

On the 26th December 2007, the UAE Wallis house was transformed into what would resemble any Christmas spent at the Grandparents House in South Africa. The one difference is that here in the UAE, nobody has family to spend Christmas with, so friends will have to do. Another difference is that in South Africa it is the husband (Grandpa) doing all the catering, and the Wife (Granny) telling him repeatedly that he is going overboard...with us it is the other way around...every year Luiza caters enough to feed a small army, with me in the backround saying repeatedly...'You are overdoing it this year...', and this ritual happens every year, without exception. Guess I should have learnt by now. But, having said that, I must be the first to admit that every years the dinner is a huge hit and I ALWAYS end us saying a big thank you to the wife for making it happen.

On the menu this year was a variety of well prepared meats, including Roast Duck, BBQ (Braai) Turkey, Roast lamb and BBQ (Braai) Piglet, with all the salads and side dishes to go with all of them...including apple sauce and mint sauce. As usual, the job of cooking the Turkey was mine again this year as we BBQ the turkey whole on the Weber Braai. This years turkey was smaller that last year weighing in at only 6.5 kg. To BBQ a turkey that size takes about 4 to 5 hours. This year I also had a second BBQ running with what started out as a full baby pig in the BBQ but ended up in pieces as it was not cooking properly. I dont think I will be doing that again next year.

After dinner and drinks, we had Santa hand out gifts to all the children (both young and old). There were a total of 9 children and 10 adults present (pardon the pun), which included a pair of identical twins.

We spent the New Year in Dubai waiting for what was suppose to be the biggest Fireworks display in the world. After braving the chaotic traffic for about an hour, we were still stauck in traffic when the fireworks began and we missed them all...typical. It took us another 30 minutes or so just to turn the car around to begin the trip home to Al Ain, which by the way is about 1 1/2 hours drive from Dubai. We finally got into bed at about 04h00.

And so we start 2008 and we hope it brings good things to all...

Regards to all...
Mike,Luiza & the Kids

Bithday and Christmas 2007

Welcome back and Happy 2008...

Firstly, I must apologise to those of you that dont have broadband internet connections. It seems that some of my images are too big to open on a dial-up connection. I will reduce the size of the images in the future.

HAPPY 8th BIRTHDAY THORN

As you know, 22/12/2007 was Thorn's 8th birthday and as usual things went by very quickly. Things did however seem to calm down a little once all the presents had been opened.

I unfortunatley had to work on his birthday, but I did manage to get the night off which Thorn was rather happy about.

And, as usual 3 days later was

Christmas...2007

And once again, the sound of tearing paper and happy children was heard for miles...

In my next posting, I will include pictures of the christmas dinner...

Regards to all

Mike, Luiza & the Kids