Update to the Trip to Holland.

Remember we went to Holland and saw the beautiful Kuykenhoff Bulb Gardens? Here is a photo of the Giant Amaryllis I brought home!

Some Things Get Lost in Translation!

I hope you get a chuckle out of this one! We live in a multi-cultural city, where lots of things get translated from arabic to English. Sometimes this makes our lives easier...and sometimes it just makes us wonder....

Sam and I ordered dinner in from one of our favorite sandwich places. We ordered a turkey with cucumber and tomato sandwich...this is what we got!

Summer in Cairo

Summertime in Cairo is not-so-bad! I thought summer in Cairo would be like the segment in Lawrence of Arabia where the heat waves danced off the sand and the army of men were imagining beaches and beautiful water....I think Tulsa in the dog days of summer, with her humidity and heat is far worse than the hottest day we have had here. There is  a little bit of humidity but also, usually a breeze to turn that sweat into a cooling machine. Staying on the shady side of the street as I am walking helps too.  (We did have a week of really  hot --115  days-those were more like a hair dryer set on high when the breeze blew.) All that to say, I have found the weather to be really nice. It cools off in the evening and is pretty pleasant to be outside.

I am ashamed to say that I completely forgot to get out our camera on the 4th of July! We had a great party here at our home, out in our tiled "garden".  I still have the decorations up so you can maybe imagine how pretty it looked with tables and chairs and beautiful (truly beautiful) flower arrangements in red, white, and blue. (It could have been a wedding we were hosting, the flowers were so gorgeous! For those of you who are flower lovers, the arrangements held red and white roses, blue hydrangeas, red cockscomb, white lilies, blue peruvian lillies and statis, white spider mums and regular mums-- gorgeous tropical leaves from giant oak-leaf philodendron, banana leaves, and some shrubby fillers.)

We roasted a beautiful pork roast-a gift from Sam's rotator-friend, Todd--on the Holland Grill. It is a wonderful little grill! We also grilled burgers and dogs on the built-in grill with charcoal. We found briquettes here, but Sam was really excited to find the 'real' charcoal like they used when he was a kid in Peru and Colombia. He did  a great job with the meats--almost as good as David's got there in Wagoner!

Our co-hostesses were Bud and Avis Lewis . Avis made sides and dessert and did the drinks. Another new friend, Mary, called me the morning of the 4th and asked if there was anything I had left to do so she picked up some odds and ends, made brownies and ordered AND delivered the flowers to our house for me!

We had a good turn-out with about 20 or so people. Three were little kids so that was lots of fun-to hear their sweet voices and watch them interacting with people. Some of the men were here without wives who are summering back home with the kiddies doing summer ball, swimming in lakes, camps, etc.  There is really not a lot to do here with kids in the summer. Most all of the ex-pat kids are away. That makes it hard for those who have arrived too late in the year to have accumulated a home leave yet.

Apple Pie and ice cream (not home-made), brownies and Cherry Dump Cake...yum...can we get more American than that!?  Bud brought his iPod station so we had a great, no fantastic collection of good music with some newly down-loaded patriotic tunes thrown in for the occasion.  It was a lot of fun...we hope to do it again next year!  I must say, I was a teensy bit homesick for fireworks. Last year we went to Matt and Crystal Lahmeyers --Lynn and Kelsies too---home for the fourth and I got some great photos then. I looked at them on a loop while I was making food preparations for our celebration!  Thanks guys for great memories a year later!!!