In the Time of Jet Lag

4am: Instead of studying my 'Come Follow Me' I spent 2 hrs wiping glass from pieces of dried sourdough starter. 

6am: First piece of decor up.

10am: Zoom church followed by Zoom Primary.

7pm: Goodnight Muscat from my bedroom window. Goodnight ocean. 

6am: Been snuggling this one since 3am, I've been awake since 1am. She had an allergic reaction to something the night before.

A trip to the remote Little Snake Canyon Wadi. It was the craziest trip. I'll preface it by giving a little weather history. I mentioned that Muscat gets only 4"of rain a year. The rainy season is in January here and it's only rained 1x in 2021. We drove off the paved road and onto the gravelly path and it began to rain. It rained for the next 30-40 minutes and actually rained hard at times.  We were a bit shocked and a little confused about whether or not we should continue on into a wadi. There was thunder but surely it wouldn't last?!?! As you can see from the pictures, it didn't last forever. It was fun to see the joy that it brought the locals.  We didn't see a soul in the Wadi, but there were a few vehicles that drove by and they were open windowed, open sunroof, enjoying the rain. After we left, there were families picnicing, walking down the paths, roads and highways. Only the goats seemed to dislike the rain. They clung to the rocks and any overhang they could find.

Frogs LOVED it.

Elise is a "just add boulders" kind of girl. She comes alive and won't stop or take help. Poor Matt had to take a moment (or about 15 minutes rather) after following her around, trying to protect her for a bit. He was terrified for her. It is hard to watch her. While I completely empathize, I hate to stifle her passion or project my fears onto her too. I'm glad I talked him out of buckling her into the car and driving straight back home like he wanted to. She really thrived that day.

Sam was also thriving in the world of undiscovered beetles. He checked pools and mud and flotsam. He found them on floating trash and swam with them in his hand. He even packed a jar with plant material and brought home some particularly fun diving beetles to try and keep as pets. 

Eli's a little hard to spot but there was some pretty amazing climbing. Matt kept telling him not to climb because he didn't want Elise doing more than she already wanted to haha.

 

So this was Brigham's end goal, cliff jumping.  Matt had taken the boys here before so he couldn't wait to get back. I wasn't so sure about swimming through all this to get here, but I always try to be a brave example for my girls. I don't want to send the message that only boys do daring things.  My biggest regret is that we didn't take a waterproof camera and because Matt and I wanted to have hands free to help the girls if they needed us, we stashed our phones. Matt swam his phone in last time and took these pictures. Just imagine little Elise jumping off that boulder into the water. She was so brave. I told her at first that she couldn't do it and she was hysterical. Matt relented and took her up but neither of us expected her to just walk to the edge and jump like she did. Sennia took about 45 minutes and only after I went up and did it, showing her that terrified people also make themselves do hard things because I was terrified, and also Elise going again. She did finally jump and did a great job. It was a good excursion. We all slept a little better that night.