Living in Saskatchewan!!

Yep, we're here, we're alive and well and settling in just fine :0) Today is the first day of snow here, as you can see, we quickly ran out after breakfast to build our first snow man in case it all melted but it has kept snowing all day and now its about a foot or so deep! Needless to say, I decided to stay home today and see if I couldn't get the garage arranged to fit 3 vehicles...we'll see if they fit when everyone gets home. I figured I should also try and get something up on the blog.

The kids were a little cold by the time we were done, i guess that's why the snow man is the only one with a real smile.

What we've been up to since we arrived

Here's a few shots of the kids, they completely love it here :0)

On the new Quad, the first night Jarv brought it home we all went for a ride and Adair fell asleep.



"I love Grandma's house"

Daudi fishing in Grandma's pond

Daudi's new favorite, great Grandma Zena, who is very accomodating to him. She plays with him and looks at all his creations, this is a tower they built together. Fun to live close to her too!

And the little princess learning to go down THESE stairs! She can go up pretty good and is slowly getting a handle on going down. So far only one tumble down them and no serious injuries, its best if we don't look.

The first weekend we were home, one day after my Grandma's wedding, was the annual 'old time threshing' at Freddy Becker's. We missed it by a few days when we were home last fall, so it was fun to get in on it this year.



Adair and Haze sitting in a stook

Jarv and Ash re-living their childhood :0)

Helping sweep the leaves off Grandma's deck

Grandma and Frank's wedding

October 8th, 2010....two days after we arrived home! It was a great way to begin life in Sask. a beautiful day :0) The wedding was in Frank's yard under a little arbour and then Elaine and Lana Weibe planned a dinner back here at the Olsen farm afterwards.

Grandma asked me to stand for her and Roy (Jarvis' dad) stood for Frank.

Some rowdy cousins, glad to be together!

Adair, the self-proclaimed photographer

Last day in Doha

Should I say Good Bye, Farewell, Maà Salaama...what now? I have decided I don't really like to say good bye, unless its on the phone. This morning Daudi woke up and said very cheerily 'hello mommy, here I am, do you want to give me some breakfast?' I thought, instead of Goodbye, I need to say Thank you.

Thank you to all the friends we`ve made in the last 6 years because we`ve lived in Doha. Friends we`ve made here in Qatar, in Dubai, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Pakistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Italy. And friends we`ve made, from India, Philipenes, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Israel, Jordan, Greece, Finland, New Zealand, Australia, Korea, Burma, South Africa, Cuba, USA. Thank you to some for fellowship, some for friendship, some for both, and just even for cultural differences that have shown us there are new and different ways of doing things. Thank you for giving us a brighter picture of humanity in general :0)

Thank you for all the different languages that have touched our ears and have shown us how easy it is to misunderstand someone and how frustrating it is to only know one.

Thank you to our neighbours, 2 doors down, who have been the best we`ve ever had. Who have lent us everything and anything, and Leslie, who was my hospital buddy when the kids were born.

Thank you to those who were here, and who came to see us, to support and love us when we lost our first baby and helped us continue a life here afterwards.

Thank you Doha, for the craziness that defines this city, the crazy drivers, the traffic jams and the `inshallah` factor (which basically means `maybe`, directly translated as `God willing`) that has taught us patience is something we could use a whole lot more of!

Thanks to some lucky stars that I made it through 6 years of accident-free driving in this country! Jarvis wasn`t quite so lucky, with one to marr his perfect record :0)

Thank you SO MUCH for all those who have been guests in our home over the past 6 years. It has been entirely our privilege. We hope you will come and visit us again in Rocanville.

Thank you for the tolerant people who love children in this fair land. Who always compliment me on my darling children, even when they are being anything but darling! I`m thinking the average person might not be so accomodating in good old Canada :0) (This week has been quite an embarassing eye opener for me to realize our children are not really restaurant trained in volume or messiness!)

Carmen asked me yesterday, `what does it feel like to know you are leaving and probably will never come back here again` And at the time, all I could think was that it hardly feels like that, its not sinking in that we are really leaving for good. Now that I`ve had a little more time to think about it, I realize that I feel thankfulness. Not just thankful to be going home, I feel that too, but mostly I feel thankful for the experience we`ve had to live here, in a country so totally different from our own, and not without its annoyances, but yet comfortable and peaceful. Yes, Qatar has been very very good to us and for us.

All packed up

A few shots from this past week... Our stuff is all packed up and in a container at the port somewhere since Monday. The packers were speed demons, they started at 9AM Sunday morning and were done by 3PM, with an hour lunch break! The next day they came and loaded it all into the container, we had a 20 footer and it was only about 2/3 full. I guess I could have done A LOT MORE shopping! So, it doesn't feel like home here anymore, tonight is our last sleep in an empty house, tomorrow we go to the Ramada until Tues. when we fly out! The last few days have been clean-up, today our appliances will go, so just have the fridge left to clean and the food cupboards. Will go to Qtel this afternoon and shut off the phone/internet. Can hardly beleive we're almost there, I hope once we get into our own house in Rocanville, we never move again.


Our friend Hilda, fromBurma. I gave her my sewing machine, so this is the lesson that followed :0) She's never used one before.

The beginning of the packing, they sure do a nice job.

Another helper

The kid zone after awhile, once their room was all boxed up we just put them in there with some stories and a few toys and snacks and they were good.

Playing in their closet

The garage, I had a few doubts about this ever being empty, but you should see it now, NOTHING in there! Notice how the packing guy is blurry, speedy!

Out the door it all goes.

The truck with the container on it couldn't back into our compound as the gate is a little narrow, so the movers had to load everything in this little truck and take it out to the road, then load it into the container from there.

And here it all is, not even clost to full!

Goodbye #4 Bilal Gardens.

Look out Grandma, here we come!

This post is mostly a warning, for Grandma and Grandpa Olsen, we've kind of left it until the last minute so it too late to change their minds about us coming to live with them :0) You will be thrilled when our own house is ready to move into!

We have come to the conclusion that Adair was actually born a 'farm girl' even though she doesn't know what one is. She is happiest when she's getting as dirty as possible and chewing on grass...or other plant life.

See what I mean, in this picture she's making sure that every inch of her arm is covered with wet sand.

Oh yea, and Daudi has taught her the finer points of sword fighting. They love to play Cpt. Hook and Peter Pan.

And this last one, is just a small fraction of the messes that they can make together. Do you still want to get to know these grandkids better, Grandma O.? We will try to make it as enjoyable as possible :0)