Holidays at Last!

Sanity is about to descend upon our house, the holidays are here! Two weeks of bliss.
I have had such a lot happening and it's been hard to find the time for updating you all so this will be a big post. The last 3 weeks have just flown by! Its been great fun, lots of good stuff.
Firstly - four announcements

: Happy Birthday Aunty Fluff.......80 yrs is a great milestone, and you really know how to celebrate in style! We are a lucky family to have such a zany, stylish and inspiring aunt and great aunt.
: Congrats on the launching of Dorene's new yacht, the family will be enjoying many fantastic adventures upon this luxurious floating beauty.
: Goodbye to our lovely friends, Rory and family, we will miss you all, Dubai is losing some great down to earth "normal" people.
: Lastly, tomorrow Scott is buying a new ( slightly used) kart. More details to follow later in the post.

OK, so now I will back-track 3 weeks

Jake's best friend from school is leaving Dubai with his family. We have all been friends for seven years, a long time is such a transitory place as Dubai. I spent all of my spare time last week putting together an album of Rory's school days, his class mates added their own thoughts and pictures and it was presented to him yesterday (his last day).
To mark his leaving Rory had a desert bash, sand boarding, camel riding and dune bashing. It was great fun, all the kids went on the bus into the desert (4WD for the last bit). Rory's mum and I followed along, much more peaceful that way. That poor bus driver must have been wearing earplugs! how he manage to keep smiling I don't know!

Anyway, it was a great morning. I took a ton of photos for them and everyone ended up having lunch at pizza hut. The sand boarding was excellent, dune bashing a great hit but the boys recommend never, ever take a long camel ride!!!!

Scott has now completed a week of work experience. It was really difficult getting it all sorted out. At the last minute his place was confirmed at the Dubai Autodrome. Then the boss there went overseas and the organising teacher at the college left to deliver her baby. It looked like Scott was going to end up spending the week with the mechanics fixing the hire karts (not what he wanted at all).
After a few words from Grant it all worked out just fine and Scott had a fantastic week at the Autodrome. The staff there realised that they were supposed to give Scott a proper week of purposeful experience. Scott also had to be flexible with his hours but luckily for us we live nice and handy. So Scott ended up getting a great introduction to the many areas of a large race complex.
He spent two days at the kart track. First he had a day on the computers, doing race control and timing for the arrive and drive karts. The next day he was on reception taking bookings etc for the karts.
Then he spent two days learning all about the race school over at the big track. He learnt about the financial side of things there.
His last day was great fun, he was posted at race management, and learnt all about running a big race event. He was impressed by the safety, CCTV monitoring and the general hierarchy (who controls what). Later in the evening he was out on the track as a marshall for some bike racing. It was a very busy week for us all, a lot of driving and juggling times but it worked out very well for Scott.

Scott had another race meeting last weekend. He is very pleased that he made the change into seniors. The racing is much more competitive! It was a great meeting and Scott ended up with a third place. This is just great for him, it was well earned. He spun in the first heat and was well back, then had two second places and was in second for almost all of the final but lost that with two laps to go. Still, the two guys of front are both pretty good and Scott was delighted to be on the podium for his third senior meeting.
An offer has come his way for a really nice kart, the owner is moving away from Dubai. It seems like a very good deal and so Grant has been to visit the bank (Again!!!). It's a Tony Kart so Scott will be moving away from the Arrows. Scott has not actually driven a Tony so it's a bit of a leap but they have done a lot of research and feel pretty comfortable with it all.

Here is a photo of Jake in the morning before heading off to National Day at school. The children spend the day learning about the local culture, sampling local food and they get the chance to do camel riding (no chance of that for Jake!!). As you can probably tell he was not feeling very comfortable and really didn't want his photo taken.

We have been full on with all the boys activities, some things will end now that it's the end of the term. New things will start up of course. Jake had enrolled in the Warhammer Club at school. Jake has just discovered this stuff and has started a collection by purchasing a second hand collection from an older boy who is moving on to other things. Warhammer reminds me of the more traditional mini model sets of armies and battles (like Waterloo). There are models to be painted, scenery to be made and it all gets set up like a battle. The difference is that the characters are fantasy or space alien type creatures. The models are quite expensive so I was pleased when he wanted to use all his pocket money and get some second hand stuff.

Scott was all set up to do his physical challenge part of the Duke of Edinborough Award two weeks ago. The students were doing a desert camp but it was cancelled because we had a rather severe sand storm, it would have been unpleasant and dangerous! Unfortunately for some reason the whole thing has been left very late in the year and now the temperatures have started to shoot up. It looks like the trip may get postponed till much later in the year now when the weather cools down. It is a shame because he was all prepared. We are getting into the low to mid 30's so summer is on it's way!

As I said at the beginning of this post we are so pleased to have a break in the busy schedule. Grant has three weeks off, we would like to go away for a short break but have to save our $$$ for our NZ holiday. Early starts, busy weeks and full weekends are wearing us all out. We are planning a few days of quiet but also have a couple of fun things lined up. I'm taking Jake to the theatre, we are going to see the "Flying Superkids" not sure what its about but it involves an international group of gymnastic acrobatic kids and Jake was soooo keen to go. Then next week we are going the Abu Dhabi to see the Red Bull air racing event. Grant is going to take the boys to Wild Wadi, the water park, I will pass on that one! The boys have exams next term and their teachers have them both loaded up with homework as well! Tonight we plan to head into the desert for a sunset BBQ dinner with some friends. It has been planned for the last two days but we have had another sand storm and then yesterday we has rain storms. Today it's nice, sunny and not too hot.

OK I had better go and get myself organised for tonight, it's been a while since we have done this sort of thing. I will be trying very very hard to stop by with updates more often, I can see that things will be settling down a bit now, despite being so busy I actually feel reasonably well organised (did I just say that - watch things turn to custard now!!!!)