Mother's Day

Today was Mother's Day here. I got these lovely flowers and a shirt.
Sarah wrote about her daughter's recent black eye so I thought I'd share a pic of Reza's shiner. This is a picture take a few hours after it happened. So far in my parenting life I've only been truly concerned when something has happened to one of the kids a handful of times and this ranks right up there at the top. Reza tripped on the edge of the carpet and hit his eye on the edge of our marble window sill. In less than 30 seconds the area around his left eyebrow swelled to the size of a walnut! Amazingly, he only cried for a couple of minutes. We got stuck in traffic trying to take him to a doctor, gave up when we couldn't find the office and instead took him to an eye hospital close to our house. We were in traffic for an hour when we could have been to the hospital in just about 10 min! DH had suggested the hospital first but it was his sister who insisted we take him to the opthamalogist instead. Fortunately, the doc at the hospital said it really wasn't that serious despite how it looked. It swelled almost shut during the night but was almost completely back to normal by the evening, except of course for the lovely colors. The really bizarre part of it all is that this was the third kid to get a black eye in less than a month! (None of our kids have ever had a black eye before.) Zahra was first; she fell on the stairs when she was goofing around because she was excited about going out to ride bikes. Less than a week later, Mustafa and Zahra were bugging each other in the backseat while waiting for DH to come back from the bakery and Mustafa pushed Zahra just hard enough that she hit Safiya in the face with her head. Fortunately, neither one of them was seriously hurt, just a little bit more colorful for a few days. :)

Note: I've been trying to post this for almost a week but blogger wasn't behaving. Reza is now back to normal. 

Flying Fish

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Mustafa wanted to make fish to decorate the house. Well, Safiya got into the act as well and here is the result of their collaboration.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but Bloggers not playing nice. 

Changes

Well, it seems there's never a dull moment around here.

It looks like we will be heading back to the states in the next 2-3 months. It's funny how life keeps you guessing. I figured we would be here for a good bit longer. The court hearing for the apartment resulted in another court date in a couple of weeks which will probably lead to another court date, so that's unresolved. My fil is not doing well mentally, and is now experiencing more frequent bouts of confusion. Despite various efforts, I never did get any more students. (I've actually lost one. Not a great loss since mom never managed to pick her up on time so I was often stuck "babysitting" for 30 min. or more.)

Despite all of this, I felt pretty sure that this was where we were supposed to be, at least for the sake of the kids. DH has actually been the one going back and forth about whether or not to stay. His indecision caused me to question my feelings as well. We decided that since we couldn't come to any conclusions on our own, it was time to ask what God's will for us is and that lead us to the decision to return. I'm a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of moving and starting over again. We'll be heading back to northern VA where we were before and where are friends are but we're still on the fence about buying v. renting and where exactly. I suppose the housing market will decide that for us.

Wish us luck!

The picture has nothing o do with the post. It's the view of the rooftops across the street from our hotel room in Dubai.