At Home

Having a new baby at home has been so much fun! Hannah has been such an easy addition- filling our home and hearts, but also allowing our "normal" routine to continue. She is a really good baby, sleeps so well, and has slotted right in. As expected, Donna has been the best big sister ever, a real mommy's little helper. She's even matured more since Hannah's been home, getting on with her own thing and sleeping through the whole night-such a good girl!!

Bath time is a very exciting time. Donna loves to wash Hannah's hair with every item of her tea set! And Hannah loves to bath-just to float in the water and kick off from the sides of the bath is probably the favourite part of her day! Unfortunately, it is followed by the worst part of her day-the time from taking her out the water to when she's all dressed is spent screaming-it's horrible, but it's over really soon! If she didn't love the actual bath so much-I probably would skip bathing altogether!

Flowers from Granma-a new "pot garden" for the balcony!

Donna loves to play with her new live-in friend! Here they're in her tent-something Donna said months ago that she wanted to do when Hannah "came out". I'm sure there will be many more fun times in there!

At the Hospital

AND THEN WE WERE FOUR...

The birth of our dear baby was a blessed one!

After what was supposed to be a routine check-up at "one day post due-date", I was admitted into hospital because the doc was not happy with Hannah's heart rate pattern on the CTG. I was not prepared to say the least(!!), and went in to give birth without my carefully packed hospital and labour bag-that has been packed since November (thanx to Cand!)! I was induced at 4pm, and by about 6pm started feeling the contractions, ever so gently! At 9pm I phoned to let Ryan know he should make his way to the hospital, as quickly but as safely as possible! Once Ryan arrived, Hannah was well on her way-born about 45 minutes later!!

I was so acutely aware of our great Lord through out the whole birth. I was awestruck and grateful for the immense pain He went through to bring me life, that the pain I was going through to bring my daughter to this life (almost!) seemed insignificant. But it was when I held Hannah for the first time that I was just overwhelmed by His amazing goodness and felt so unbelievably blessed for this undeserved, but so much appreciated gift!

Our God is so Good!!

But the blessed moments just continued! The look of shear amazement and contained excitement on Donna's face when she came to see her baby sister for the first time the next morning, was just priceless, a moment I hope I never forget! It was if she wanted to laugh, cry, run and jump for joy, just stand and stare-all at the same time. She just wanted to hold Hannah (which she says so sweetly!) and stroke her hair, kiss her forehead and of course, hold her hand. It was so sad that night when they had to go home and Donna realised we weren't going with. She cried so much-apparently it carried on for most of the way home, shame man!

But we all went home together the very next day, and that is were the blessings just continued...

Donna's first minutes with Hannah

Donna's favourite part of the zoo-her ice cream!

Al Ain Visit

The UAE has just had National Day and the second Eid a week apart, which left Ryan with lots of needed time off! We had alot of fun having him at home, and took oneday with the Mitchels to visit Al Ain. It was a great day out!

We first took a drive up Jebel Hafeet, which has been voted the "best driving road" by some (visit http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=109278 if anyone's interested-this is for you Con and Angus!), but on which I was not let loose and had to take it easy, as I had my dear husband and child in the car, and another kid in my tummy! But it was good anyway, the rock formations were fascinating, and the views brilliant!

We then took the long windy road back down to the Zoo...

The Zoo was really good, it's been years since I've been to a zoo! I was not expecting to see anything "big", so was very surprised to see lion, tiger, leopard, cheetah, gorilla, and uranatangs there, with a whole lot of other "lesser" things like giraffe, zebra, meercats, flamingos, chimps, etc, etc. Donna had such a jol, referring to the animals by their first names, ie Mr Alex, Gloria, Maddy, Melvin, King Louie, Bagheera, etc (for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, you need to watch Jungle Book and Madagascar carefully again, you'll also need to catch up on most of the Disney movies if you want a conversation with Donna to make any sense to you!)

Once again, we were amazed at our Lord's creation, from perfectly parallel rock layers, to a wide variety of stunning animals, of which we only saw a few, we were just so thankful!

Dubai Rugby 7s

We went to the Dubai Rugby Sevens, and as always , it was so much fun! Unfortunately we couldn't go on the Saturday, so we didn't see the Boks take the trophy, but we did see them annihilate the Arabian Gulf team! We also witnessed Zimbabwe score (once!) against the All Blacks, but from there it was pretty much a slaughtering for them! The other games were also exciting, as was the entertainment, cheerleaders, atmosphere and a Dancing Donna-after all that's what live rugby is all about!

Our Catamaran Trip

We finally got to go on our Catamaran trip and it was really fantastic!!!

We met at the Marina one fine Saturday morning, when the Catamaran was experiencing no technical difficulties, the weather was perfect and the New Atlantis hotel was not having their $20 000 000.00 opening, prohibiting all boats, catamarans, yachts and other floating devises from going around the Palm (these were all previous reasons for postponing the trip!), but the weather was so good, we were thankful for the delay!

We were taken out around the Palm, past the Atlantis, which was very impressive, and anchored real close to the Burj al Arab for lunch, a swim and a massage (life doesn't get more relaxing than that!!). We then took a lazy trip back-totally relaxed, amazed and thankful!

It was an afternoon that we will remember for a very long time!