Katykins in Action

The Kitty is doing well. She`s gained lots of weight and is very playful now as well as sweet. We will take her in for another vaccination at the end of the week and soon it will be time to get her "fixed". I can`t believe how much sunshine and love she has brought into our home. It`s so great. Tigerpapa is particularly smitten. which is very cute. I`m glad because now he has someone to keep him company when the kids and I go home for Christmas. :)




Tiger-auntie arrived on Tuesday for two weeks and the kids are so happy to spend time with her (as are Tigerpapa and I). The kids have a holiday from school coming up so we are planning a trip to Jordan to float in the Dead Sea. We will also spend a night in the mountains this weekend and see the famous "Cedars of Lebanon". It should be fun. Finally, we plan to go here:





It`s a vineyard and winery owned and operated by a single family. They started producing wine in 2004 or 2005 so it`s a very young estate. Anyway, the tour is very informative and they serve a lovely lunch with, you guessed it, tons of wine to taste! We have been once before and were so impressed that we chose it as the "wine destination" for Tiger-auntie.

A coffee break with Tiger-auntie:



Lastly, here is a picture of me from the 1950`s. I think I look a little bit like my mom...she had the same kind of glasses:

Tigerboy

Here he is with his new haircut:

I wasn`t too keen about the gel part but he was so happy with it (he didn`t want to take a bath the first night because he thought it would ruin his cool hair) that I broke down and bought some. I now find myself "styling" my 5-year-old son`s hair every morning. sheesh.

Here is the first picture he drew at his new kindergarten (he is KG2!):

Seems pretty normal, no?! Look closely at the upper righthand corner. Do you see it?

That is his name in Arabic. He gets a 45 minute Arabic class every day and they already started learning to write. In the picture, he traced over the teacher`s letters (symbols? characters?). Hopefully he learns quickly so he can translate for me with our concierge. I need to let the concierge know when he can come up to our apartment to hook up the cable tv. So far things aren`t being understood between us and we`ve been trying all week! Life is hard. ;)

A New Addition to the Family

Please welcome our new family member:



We were going to name her "Fleah (as in Flea ah) but thought that was a little mean because she couldn`t help it that she was infested with fleas coming from the streets of Beirut. Then, Tigerboy started calling her "Fuzzy Ball" and that went on for a few hours until we collectively decide on the name, "katy".

It was an adoption that was "meant to be". Saturday night we were at a friend`s house for a bbq and started talking about pets (they have 2 dogs). I said I would love to get a cat and Tigerpapa was all, "I don`t like cats...blah blah blah". Well, we got home around midnight and this really sweet kitty is waiting by our apartment door like she belongs to us. She was purring like crazy and sooooo friendly. Tigerpapa melted. He picked her up and brought her inside! I couldn`t believe it!

Anyhoo, we put her in the maid`s room and gave her some tuna. The next day I took her to the vet and had her checked out. She has fleas and needs her vaccinations but is healthy other than that. She will be allowed out in the rest of the apartment after her flea treatment is complete and she has another bath. We LOVE her!