Our time in the States

I have gotten to the point where I don't know what to call our time in the USA. It's not home assignment (at least, not yet), and I wouldn't necessarily call it "vacation" either -- there are too many speaking engagements and meetings to be considered that. So, I have to settle on the neutral "trip." Pretty boring, right? Well, I'll say this though -- out time in the States was anything but boring.

The only reason we traveled to the US this year was to attend my brother's wedding. And it was beautiful. I'm so glad we got to spend time with him and his bride, Emily, during our extended stay. And, you know, being in CO and getting a break from the sweltering heat here in the Middle East is always a bonus!
Amelia hanging out with her abuelo

Wedding reception; the kids were really enjoying the music! I sometimes wish I could dance with that kind of joy, without embarrassment.

A little joint birthday party for the kids at one of Denver's many parks.

Amelia digging into the cake. Yum!

Tough little man trying to take on his big uncle Brad.

About a week after the wedding, hubby and I traveled to San Diego to participate in a conference. We had so much fun, and I'll post some pics of us tomorrow.

Advocating Early Marriage in Western society

Read an interesting article from Christianity Today about this topic. Here's a little teaser:

After years of studying the sexual behavior and family decision-making of young Americans, I've come to the conclusion that Christians have made much ado about sex but are becoming slow and lax about marriage—that more significant, enduring witness to Christ's sacrificial love for his bride. Americans are taking flight from marriage. We are marrying later, if at all, and having fewer children.

If you haven't read this article before, I suggest you check it out on their website.

My opinion? Well, as someone who has been living in the Middle East for a few years, I have seen this happen pretty frequently, so the idea of getting married early is not as strange or uncomfortable as it probably would be to most Westerners. In the cases I've seen, usually the woman is ten, even twenty years younger than the man she is marrying. I had a neighbor upstairs in my apartment building in Jordan that had married her husband at the age of fourteen. One of my good friends down the road was married and had a newborn before her twentieth birthday. This is... well, I was going to say normal, but that's not quite right. Maybe "not unusual" would be a better way to put it. And this is how it's been done traditionally for millennia. Most Christian scholars would agree that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was probably in her teens, and Joseph was significantly older. Why? Because older men have had a chance to work hard, accumulate wealth, and build a home to show that they can provide for their families. Biologically, it makes sense. However, in a culture such as ours, we have completely discarded the idea of early marriage to dissuade sexual activity outside the bonds of marriage. Why? Well, the biggest argument I've heard is that young people (men in particular) are not "ready" to tie the knot, or that so-and-so "just hasn't found the right 'one' yet." How is that counter-culture? Aren't we supposed to live in the world, but not be of it? Because, to me, that sounds like the same thing that the rest of the Western world is spewing, and I, for one, and not buying it. I'm not saying we ALL need to get married early, but the church needs to drastically change the way it regards marriage if it wants to commit to staying biblical in this arena.

I've probably opened up a HUGE can of worms here, but what are your thoughts on early marriage? Just to give y'all a heads up, I was married at 22 and had my first child at 23, which DEFINITELY falls below national averages. Did you, or someone you knew, get married pretty early?

Summer books

Everyone should have at least one fun, silly book to read over the summer. Now, for those of you who don't know, I am an AUSTEN fan. Yes, I am involved at Pemberley and have read each of Ms. Austen's book at least twice. Except for P&P -- I've read it so many times I've lost count.

I also think zombie movies are hilarious. Actually, I'm a fan of any literature that has to do with the undead -- zombies, ghosts, mummies, vampires (even if it's really badly written) -- but zombies hold a special place in my heart. So imagine my surprise/horror/delight when my sister got me this:


Hehe, bring on the zombie mayhem!

Theme this week: Volcanoes

Dawn over at The Mom Crowd had a great article about doing stuff with your kids over the summer. One of her first tips was to plan activities each week, usually around a particular theme. Well, now that summer vacation has started for us, we have been doing this for the past two weeks. Our first week was Animals from Africa. We watched some online videos, read about elephants, cheetahs, and various other wildlife, and played pretend adventures (my son is really into role-playing games right now, so that was perfect for us). This week, we studied VOLCANOES. We saw lots of pictures from Hawaii (where I used to live), learned the Arabic word for volcano (burkaan), and today is the grand finale: creating an erupting volcano in our kitchen! Kudos to Kaboose for all their craft suggestions -- it's been a lifesaver!

Pouring the baking soda and water; adding a few drops of dish soap will make your volcano more bubbly.

Here comes the vinegar (with a bit of food coloring)!


All in all, the activity only took about five minutes to prep and go. My son thought it was great and wanted to do it AGAIN! We had to skip on that, though, because I was out of baking soda.

Our Trip to Crete, PART THREE: Car+kids+vacation=FREEDOM

Since hubby had the foresight to rent us a car, we spent some time driving around the island. I'm sorry to say that we didn't go EVERYWHERE, but we did enjoy our drive to Agios Nikolaus, Knossos (where the labyrinth and minotaur were, according to Greek mythology), Thrapsano (which has some beautiful pottery), and, of course, the local waterpark. We had a blast!
View from Agios Nikolaus

Having fun at the beach! Culacha was determined to help our neighbors build their moat.

Ruins of King Minos's palace, Knossos

Throne room -- all of it is the ORIGINAL artwork and paint. Pretty impressive!


Fun at the water park. Our son, little extrovert that he is, made a little girlfriend from Poland.

Our family after a day at the water park

That night, we were able to get a babysitter and have a date night! The kids were so exhausted that they were completely out by 7:30. Charlotte, the sitter that the resort provided for us, had an easy night hanging out in our room while we went to the Greek Night dinner/show.
The two of us, just before dinner.
The dancers coming out to perform

Me, trying my hand (feet?) at Greek dancing. So much fun!

All in all, it was a great vacation. Hope we make it back to Crete sometime in the future. There were several wineries that we missed out on...

Our trip to Crete, Part Two: The Road to Recovery

The next day was spent taking it easy. We were pretty tired after the fiasco the day before, so we stayed at the pool most of the day. There was a "kids club" with activities for the children, as well as a little playground where the kids could play and mom and dad could sit and watch. Overall, the resort was very kid-friendly and I was pleased that my hubby picked such a good place to bring the family!
Playground where the kids hung out every day. Look over here, kids!

The next day we headed down to Hersonissos, the little town by the sea about 5 km from our resort. It was pretty much a giant tourist zone, with souvenir shops littering the boardwalk, along with cafes serving copious amounts of alcohol (or ice cream for the kiddos). We originally startd off looking for a stroller for Culacha, since we hadn't brought one. That, however, turned out to be much more difficult than we anticipated. Everyone we talked to said there were no places to buy strollers in Hersonissos; if we wanted to buy one, we had to go to the capital, Heraklion. Well, we were planning to rent a car for a few days anyway, so we trekked over to the nearest car rental place. Our hotel offers car rentals through Hertz, but the prices seemed really high, and sure enough, we were able to get a rental car for three days, complete with car seat and booster seat (and insurance), for the same price that Hertz was offering for TWO days (w/o car seats). I'm glad we went that route.
Taking time out to watch the boats
Boardwalk of Hersonissos
Having drinks at a street cafe. Culacha was worn out!

Our drive to Heraklion was uneventful, but finding a place to purchase a stroller turned out to be a pain! Apparently, all the shops close on Saturday (or only open for half a day), so by the time we arrived at 2 pm, almost everything was closed! One lady suggested that we try Jambo, a sort of hybrid of Babies R Us and Walmart. This place was HUGE. Fortunately, they were also open, so we managed to get a cheapy umbrella stroller to make our trip easier. After all that driving around, and since everything was pretty much closed for the rest of the weekend, we headed back to our hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon by the pool.

Our Trip to Crete, PART ONE: Airport? More like Hellport

I thought it would be a good idea to post a sort of journal of our first full vacation of the four of us, sans grandparents. I'm not including our trip to Taba, Egypt in March, which was more of a necessity than an actual vacation. And, as it didn't involve any airports, it can hardly count as a real excursion. To have an adventure, you have to go through an airport. Preferably in a country that takes "security" to the level of an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Now, don't get me wrong. I know why the international airport in Israel is so difficult, and in a strange way, it actually makes me feel more secure than say, traveling through an airport in the US. Basically, I know that these guys (and girls) know what it's like to be on the constant brink of an attack, since there are so many countries on this side of the world that would be glad to take Israel down, so although I complain about the extra security that makes the TSA look like a joke, I don't mind TOO much. Fortunately, our issue (this time) was not security-related.

We actually passed through security fairly quickly (I should qualify, quickly for Israel. It still took a quite a while). Once we got to the ticket counter, however, our problems started. The agent for Olympic Airlines informed us that our daughter was not listed as a lap child, so we didn't have a ticket (and therefore, no boarding pass) for Culacha. Hubby was able to straighten things out after about 20 minutes (while I was busy chasing two young children who were in the crazy, super-sleepy phase). We eventually boarded our plane and got to Athens without any more mishaps. We checked our flight on the departure monitor to make sure all the information was still the same (it was), then proceeded to walk to our next terminal, where we could hopefully get he kiddos some food.

We found a Mickey D's that was close to the take-off strip (so the kids were able to watch the planes take off while we eat), and we ordered some food while we waited for our flight. After about an hour, we headed over to security (again) and went to our gate. The flight number was the same, the take-off time and destination were the same, but it was the wrong airline! So, we went BACK to OA's ticket counter, only to be told that our flight had been cancelled, and we were rescheduled for the next flight THREE HOURS later. No announcement over the PA, no warning when we entered the airport, nothing. I don't want to go into the boring details of waiting around in the Athens airport. Suffice to say, our children were tired, we were tired, and a lot of the other passengers were tired when we finally boarded the plane. You'd think the problems would stop there, wouldn't you?

When we boarded the airplane, several things caught our attention. First of all, the staff didn't LOOK Greek. And, they didn't speak Greek. Strange for a Greek airline, don't you think? Our son looks at the emergency instructions located in that little pocket in front of his seat, and we discover we're flying Bulgarian Air. Now, WE weren't too bothered by this; as long as the plane was flying to our intended destination, we really didn't care who was operating the flight. However, one of the other passengers felt it was HER duty to make a huge fuss about this problem, and instead of writing a letter to the airline, or, say, complaining to Olympic Air when she got to Crete, she proceeds to YELL AT THE AIRLINE STAFF FOR TWENTY MINUTES UNTIL SECURITY COMES TO ESCORT HER OFF THE PLANE. Everyone clapped as she left the airplane.

Fortunately, that was the end of our day, and everything proceeded as normal once we were up in the air. Luggage arrived in Crete, nothing missing, taxi took us to the hotel, we checked in, and plopped down on the couch after an exhausting day of travel. Stay tuned as I continue our saga over the next few days. Our vacation got better, I promise!