Rainbow Street

Sunday morning Paul and I had to make a quick trip to our language school to have our final evaluation for the semester. We returned home around 11:30am and everyone in the house was sleeping! I think they all were still getting over jet lag :) Once they all got up, we decided to go out in town and enjoy the pretty afternoon. We took them to Rainbow Street which is a popular eating area and is also a rather artsy street. It is usually a pretty busy street-especially during the warmer months. We ate at a place called Books @ Cafe, which is basically a bookstore that has a small restaurant on the top floor with a nice view of the city. After we ate, we walked around Rainbow Street, shopped, and admired the artwork. Paul, Tannis, and Micah eventually got tired of shopping, so they went into a smaller bookstore that has a play area and had a pillow fight with Micah while we continued to look around for awhile.

Christmas Cheer

After we went to my doctor's appointment, we took my family to one of the malls here to eat and do a little shopping. It was nice to see some Christmas decorations as it is hard to find many decorations or Christmas music playing in this area of the world since it is not celebrated. It definitely brought me a little Christmas cheer.

When we came home Micah wanted to "play" the Wii, so my sister and I battled a game of Winter Olympics while Micah pretended to play :) My Dad's job was to keep Micah hydrated as playing Wii is a very tiring game. Haha.

Twirls and Pearls

We were so blessed to have my Dad, Mom, and little sister, Tannis, here for a weeks visit. It of course went by wayyy too fast. A week is never long enough when you live overseas. Our week was packed full of touring around Jordan and just hanging out together. One of the first items on our agenda was to go to my doctor's appointment to check on baby Akin. I was 17 weeks at the time, so they got to be there when we found out the sex, which was so fun. A few weeks ago, we had a 4D ultrasound and the doctor told us he was 90% sure it was another boy. We weren't surprised as that is what we both thought we were having the whole time. We already had a name picked out and Micah was even calling the baby that name. Well, at this particular appointment the doctor told us it was a little GIRL. We were completely shocked to say the least, but really happy too. This would explain why when I was looking at the baby on the ultrasound I couldn't tell it was a boy...normally, it is quite obvious. Our doctor wanted to make sure that is was a girl for sure, so she sent us to another ultrasound room and had another doctor take a peak, and she enough it was. :) Now we are back to the drawing board on names-we have a much more difficult time deciding on girls names for some reason. Lately I've noticed that my eyes go directly to the adorable baby dresses, tights, bows, shoes, etc in stores. I'm really excited to have a precious little girl to spoil and love on completely differently than I can do with Micah-I'm thinking there will be much twirls and pearls in our future!!

Here are some pictures from the doctor's office.

Not the clearest picture, but here is the little girl...

ERNIE

Well, we had a rough few days in our house this past week. Something dramatic happened-at least in our little ones eyes! We officially lost Micah's best friend, Ernie the elephant. For those of you with children, you know how important that ONE item is that your child adores and pretty much has by his/her side ALL day long and just can't live without! Well, that's Ernie for Micah.

On Tuesday we decided to go to the mall for a little bit to eat lunch and do some shopping. It was a great day...until the dramatic event happened.

We ended our trip by heading into a huge store called Carrefour (it is like a Super Walmart). Micah was overly tired by now, so I pulled Ernie out to comfort him. Micah sat in the cart for most of the time, but then wanted to get out and walk. At this point, I attempted to take Ernie away from him as he ran around, but he insisted on holding him. We headed from one side of the store to the other, and that was the last time we remember seeing Ernie. Once we got to the other side of the store, we began looking at toys, and Ernie was forgotten about. We must have looked at toys for 20 minutes or so, and then were ready to checkout. That was when I noticed that Ernie wasn't in Micah's diaper bag, hands, or our cart. I asked Micah where Ernie was (like he really had a clue), but thankfully he was too enthralled by the millions of toys around him to care at that point.

We knew this could be bad, so Paul and I began to frantically look around the store, retrace our steps a hundred times, ask customer service, and even had security ask around on their walkie-talkies. I tried explaining (in Arabic) to the customer service lady that my little boy had lost HIS favorite blue elephant in their store somewhere, but I must not have said everything correctly, as she just told me to go look in their toy section. She was extremely RUDE and acted like she didn't care that my precious boy had lost his FAVORITE toy in the whole world. She really made me mad, was no help at all, and kept rolling her eyes at me like I was annoying her. Ugh! I really had to control my tongue at this point :)

Ernie was not to be found, so eventually we gave up. I think I was more upset than Micah at this point about losing the Ernster, but it didn't take long for him to notice. Whenever he is tired, he ALWAYS asks for Ernie in the taxi. He asked at least twice, but I did some major distracting on the way home. He did fine without Ernie...until bedtime, and then he completely lost it for 2 hours. It was a rough evening for ALL of us, and it broke my heart every time I heard him cry out for "Ernie".

Here are a few older pictures of Micah with the original Ernie...

Thankfully, my parents and little sister arrived here on Friday. They did some major looking in the States before they arrived and brought Micah a new Ernie. Although it is a little different from his old friend, he doesn't seem to care at all. All that mattered to him was that it played music and had a silky tag on the side to play with. He was so excited with the replacement and immediately called it "Ernie". A big thank you to my sister-in-law, Anna, and sister, Blair, for searching for another Ernie too!! I believe we might have a few more Ernie's on the way! I'm learning you never can have too many back ups :)

Here he is showing off his new best friend.

No More Class

Thursday was officially our last day of Arabic class. Paul will continue on in the spring with a tutor a few days a week, but I believe I am finished :) Over the past month I have really enjoyed class a lot more as we have been drawing and telling our stories now. I feel like my Arabic has improved greatly, although I am still a novice, no doubt. I was encouraged this past week when I ran into an Arab friend whom I hadn't seen in a month, and she told me that my Arabic had improved a lot. That was good for me to hear, because there are days that I wonder :) I have to remind myself that we have only been in Jordan for 4 months-so I cannot expect myself to be a pro (although I wish I was fluent!). I will really miss daily seeing the teachers and friends in our school, but am excited for our next stage here in the city.

Celebrating that class is finished (Saed loves doing this!).

On a sadder note, we all will really miss seeing Josephine everyday. She has been a wonderful blessing to our family (especially Micah). We have loved hearing Micah speak the little Arabic that she has taught him (she speaks hardly any English). Although she won't be with us daily anymore, we are planning on using her to babysit next year so that Paul and I can go on some dates :)

Neighborhood Friends

Here are just a few pictures of some of our neighbors playing in our front yard (or concrete, ha). Micah loves trying to play with the bigger kids and enjoys all the attention that he gets.

Eid al-Adha

Today is the last day of one of the Muslim's big holidays, Eid al-Adha. Everything in the city shuts down, so we enjoyed a few days off of language school. This holiday is a four day celebration, where they sacrifice a sheep on the first day in order to gain favor from Allah. They base this off the story of God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son. As Christians, we believe this son to be Isaac, but the Muslim's believe that it was Ishmael whom God told Abraham to sacrifice. This is a major difference between the two religions. This past week Paul and I were walking around a neighborhood and saw some children playing with some sheep that were about to be slaughtered, so I had to get a few quick pictures. Thankfully, we never saw any blood in the streets, as is common during this holiday in certain areas of this city.