Happy Halloween!

Can you believe that we have officially been here 6 months!

We are still loving it, the weather has turned nicer, I can now wear jeans and not have them stick to my thighs...oh yeah and I can now wear jeans in 30 degree (86 F) weather and not have them stick to my thighs.

So I woke up the other day and I looked outside and this is what I saw:

If you can believe it I actually said, "Hmmm looks like its gonna snow today." Then I said, "Oh yeah it doesn't snow here, because I live in Saudi Arabia!" Granted I hadn't had a cup of coffee yet, but the realization of where we lived kind of hit that day.

More humidity

Halloween

Halloween surpsingly here is very big! One night the Girl Scouts held a Halloween Hayride at the Horse Stables. Once there we were treated to fun games, a haunted house, ghoulish treats and a wonderful horse parade!

Silly Daddy

Little Pumpkin


All Jaymee's friends enjoying the horse parade. They were cheering on their friend Brenna who was in the parade, she was dressed as a beautiful fairy and had her horse all done up too, it was great!

Fairy Jaymee

Jaymee

"Punk A**" Fairy Jordyn (Don't ya love the tattoos?)

Our two fairies

Fairy Jordyn (Yes she's wearing make-up)
Both girls had wonderful Halloween parties at each of their schools.
At the Dharhran Elementary School they had a huge parade. All the kids and all the teachers dressed up, they started at the kindergarten classes and each class they passed, that class joined the parade. Once all the classes were picked up, they came outside for all the waiting parents. It was the most amazing thing I had seen, everyone was so happy and excited...and we can do that here! Have a parade...in October...with no snow!

Parade

Jaymee in the parade

Jaymee and her friend Rena

Jaymee and her buds (Jaymee, Allison and Brenna)

Jaymee, Lyla and Ryan

Jaymee and Lyla

Jordyn and her buddies (Sienna, Amara, Annable and Jordyn)

My Halloween toes
So after the parade, we headed home to our house where everyone stopped by a brought a dish to eat, so that way the kids had something decent to eat, rather than candy, thank goodness because Rob was away on a course analyzing grains of sand or something (kidding, he was on course out of camp for ten days, looking at rocks), anyways I was single momming it (with and ear infection to boot), so I had plenty of people to take the girls trick or treating while I handed out candy from our house.

Trick or treating started at 5:30pm and went until 8:00pm

Our spooky house

The Halloween Crew

(L top: Trevor holding Jaylin (nice mullet) and Jay)

(Sitting L: Kelly, Laya, Jenn, Lani, Heather and Didi)

Nice mullet Steve!

The boys

Boo!
(L: Jenn, Lani, Conrad and Didi)

So you would think that the 550 bags of chips I bought would have lasted me, but oh no those were gone in 45 mins! We were scouring the cupboards in hopes of finding something I could put in the kids bags. Thank goodness the kids came home and mommy "recycled" some candy! It was insane, there is nothing like the look on a kids face when you hand them ONE Werthor's original!

Another Day at the Beach!

Day at the beach

William trying to scuba dive

Jaymee and William

Don - they were scuba diving out at Half Moon Bay because they are all heading to the Maldives over November Eid...so jealous!

Jay - find some pearls!

Gabe going to snorkle - he was determined to find a fish! Never did...poor guy! But I bet you se lots in the Maldives!

William trying on his flippers

Jaymee

I'm hearing the Baywatch tune!

Don and all his gear - Don is a dive Master

The beach

Jordyn

The kids

Washing all the sand off

I mean this is the life!

I love this picture

(L: Don, Tanya, Heather and Jay)

Goofy Guys!

So off to Jaymee's school we go. I am proud to say that Jaymee has written her first book! So in honor of that, Mrs. Allen (Jaymee's teacher) held a Toast party to launch their first books. So I made 20 pieces of toast with cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top. All the kids read their books (even Jaymee...I was so proud! She has really come out of her shy shell here!), after they were done Mrs. Allen made a toast and they all dug in! It was great! They are no longer writers but authors!

Jaymee's 1st Grade class

The toast

Jaymee eating her toast

Jaymee's class room

Back at home Miss Jordyn has built a Lego tower!

Jordyn's lego tower

Jordyn helping decorate

Some more cakes I made:

Jaylin's butterfly cake

Winnie the pooh cake

Okay I'm warning you on the next photo, it may offensive to some viewers so please scroll down at your own risk!

T-shirt party cake - we were invited to a raunchy t-shirt party that was hosted by folks from Saskatchewan or Sas-scratch-your-a**!

Okay enough of that back to some more family appropriate pictures! Oh wait these are pictures from Octoberfest...no I did NOT show my bottom, but we had a lot of fun...duh.

So we all decided to go up one night before the actual Octoberfest celebration and this is what happend...
We first started out innocently enough at the pool.....

Heather and Kelly

I told the guys to picture Heidi Klum was taking the picture! See the alcohol was setting in!

So we decided to go for dinner...where? Where else....SUSHI baby

Sushi!

Trevor and Rob love their sushi

Me and Kelly

Kelly and Trevor

Kelly and James (They just moved here from none other...Calgary!)

Wait this isn't my husband!

Wait that isn't your wife! Wanna swap?

So with dinner done, we decided we needed to head out for some more beverages at the bar in the hotel.....Hmmm there are some people regretting that decision huh Kelly???? (Ah which Kelly am I talking about, could it have been both?)

Now that is a great looking bunch of ladies

Here we are again!

The clan!

(L top: Trevor, Kelly, Heather, me)

(L bottom: Kelly, James, Jay and Rob)

Jay - I gave him his wife back! Hee hee!

Yay we rock!

(L Kelly, ?, ? Kelly, Heather and me)
So with that night under our belts, we needed to recoupe and fast for non other than OCTOBERFEST! Whoop, whoop!

Octoberfest beer

Ray and Joelle

The crew

(L: Tanya, Trevor, James, Don and Fiona)

Rob and me

Crazy guys

(L: Jay, Ray and Rob)

Myself and Kelly

Ray...missing beer?

James...mmmm beer!

Trevor and Kelly

Yay Beer! (Jay)

Jager miester!

So the rest of the pictures are going to remain on my computer, but trust me we had a great time! The food was amazing and all I have to say is thank goodness for the big pretzels, that is what saved me the next morning because the pretzels soaked up most of the alcohol so I had minimal room spinning when I went to bed that night!

Miscellaneous Pics:

Jaymee diving

Daddy and Jaymee (with a little Gabe on the side)

Jordyn diving

This is a palace...yes actually someone lives here

The backside of the palace

What a rough life!

Jordyn starts afternoon pre-school!

Jordyn's first day

On our way to our first day of school

Jordyn walking to school

Jordyn's school

Jordyn at Odette's pre-school

More Misc pictures:

Fighter jet these fly over our house all day...all day! They are NOT quiet!

Jaymee ready for picture day

Jaymee's lunch
Jaymee had a couple of her friends over for lunch and Jordyn had her buddy Sienna come too

L:Allison, Brenna, Jaymee, Jordyn, Lyla and Sienna
So what is new with the Richards Family? I started working at Jordyn's pre-school in the mornings (Ms. Jeannette's) I am absolutely loving it! What a great bunch of people I work with, we always have plenty of laughs!

I started this NaNoWri with a few other writers on camp. Bascially I will attemp to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November! When I'm done, I'll get bragging rights that I was able to write a 1st draft in 30 days and a cool certificate. It's exciting!

Other than that there is not much more to report on our end, aside from the fact that we are loving our life here, we are so fortunate to meet some many new people and build new long lasting relationships with them! We miss you all back home too!

Love THE RICHARDS

XOXOXOXOXO

PS.

Kirsty, Jason, Kim and Lisa have a blast at Oprah on November 10! I will be watching for you guys!