Dubai Marathon

Today was supposed to be Larry's big day, his first marathon. He trained so hard... but about 2 weeks ago he hurt his leg while running. Doc says that he has a stress fracture. He really wanted to run, but he can barely walk let alone run. Dani, Elle and I ran the 3K fun run as planned. Dani's friend Haya joined us as well. Below are a few pictures.

Apple Pie

Elle was watching Pushing Daisies and there is a character called the pie maker, which made her decide that we needed to make an apple pie. So we did, totally from scratch. It was fun and delicious!

Next time I need to evaluate the picture... look at that messy pile of crap that I hide behind the kitchen door. But the pie looks good too!

Skyping with Friends

This morning at 5:30 I was woken up by the phone. It was Larry calling from the states. It took me a few minutes to figure out what he was trying to say to me... he had crash my old book club pals and they wanted to Skype. I looked like hell since I just woke up, but who cares! It was SOOO AWESOME to talk to everyone. I really miss you guys!

Opening of the Burg Dubai (now the Burj Khalifa)

Tonight was the opening of the Burj Dubai. We contemplated going down to it, but there were soooo many people, no parking, etc. So we decided to watch the festivities from our roof top. The Burj Dubai is now the tallest building in the world at 828 m (2,717 ft) and 168 stories tall (actually 200 stories, but only 168 are used, the rest are for maintenance/systems). It was renamed Burj Khalifa no doubt because Abu Dhabi bailed Dubai out of debt.

The first 5 photos and the one at the top are from the Gulf News. We were too far away to get great pictures like these.

Here are my pictures.

The Burj Al Arab was displaying a picture of Sheikh Mohamad.

Some shots of our compound from the roof top.

Before the Burj was lite up... you could barely see it from our house. It was a pretty hazy night which make it harder to see.

New Year's Eve

The Burj Al Arab does a great fireworks display on New Year's Eve and since it's less than 2.5 blocks from our villa we have a great view. Our wonderful neighbors the Kempells had a party. We were all still jet lagged from our trip to Thailand so it was a Red Bull night for me to keep awake. It worked oh too well and I was hurting big time the next day.

Christine and her mother dancing.

All the big girls. Dani and Laura.

Laura, Dani adn Larry.

Getting ready.... counting down.... 3...2...1!!