TGI. . . Thursday!

We get pretty excited for the weekend by Thursday. Even a party needs to end sometimes. We just brought it home in this case. Saniya and Sophia are school friends come home to celebrate another successful week at school.

Followed by the Sabbath. We were due for a very relaxing day. On Thursday a good hunk of us got COVID shots. We found out Wednesday night that kids couldn't come to school Sunday without at least the first dose so we went in the next day during school hours and got it done. Sore arms and tiredness made us  especially happy for a day of rest. I love these pictures of the girls trying to sing with Primary. They're using hand actions to learn the words to 'Reverently, Quietly'. 

We're actually not in this picture, but we definitely participated to clean up the beach behind the Embassy early Saturday morning. We didn't wake the kids up because of COVID shot recuperation but Matt and I went and cleared out trash before church started.

Veronica and Adam Bosse had a birthday party at Trampo. Elise was invited as Veronica's friend so she and Alena stayed home from the Wadi adventure we planned and Elise was able to have a very fun day with the Bosse fam.

Wadi Arbaeen. If you could zoom in on this sign and better, you'd see the first bullet point is "Drowning Accidents are becoming popular." Not a trend you'd want to participate in. Although, there are many really terrible "popular" ideas.

A very intricate and beautiful mud home on a blade of grass that we found, maybe a small wasp who builds his home with mud?

There's a lot of "follow the cement falaj" in this hike. It's great, fast going, until you have to climb under and over palm trees and boulders and you're tall and old and the rocks feel like they might as well be 500 degrees since you've already seared your palms more than once. I can't help but feel fascinated everytime I follow a falaj. The work to build them up in the middle of nowhere to block the divergences when the water should follow a different route. People put old clothes and large stones to block the water at that point. 

The rocks and hike are nice but I admit that in the heat of the summer at least, I go for the bless of cold water to swim in. Samuel goes for the beetles and the climbing and the cooling water is just an afterthought. We had a lovely time and stopped (again) for falafel on the way back. Sadly there was traffic so we were a bit late for this wonderful Middle East/Africa North Youth and Children's fireside. The leaders did a fabulous job engaging the kids. They encouraged having the screen on and participating. I'm so thankful for the work that goes into making these successful. It was a winning weekend that went by way too fast.