Miss G recently had her first ever lemonade stand and it goes without saying that we had to use the opportunity to make our own lemonade from scratch. ☺
Author: Jen
Tackle Box Craft Kit
Miss G and I made several little portable craft kids for her friends in Kuwait, but when we got back to Canada last summer and wanted to create something similar for she and her cousin to take along on our house boating trip, we had zero luck finding carrying caddies like the ones we’d always found easily in the desert.
Home.
Well, we’re back home in Canada and after just three days, we all seem to be over our jet lag {fastest recovery ever}. I don’t know how we pulled it off, but we got incredibly lucky this time around and I’m not certainly not complaining. Next on the to do list? Hanging out in the beautiful Okanagan for the next month and a bit and enjoying all of the wonderful things we’ve missed while in the desert this past year.
Here’s a peek at today’s fun…
Watermelon Dessert Pizza
Oh my goodness… I’ve been wanting to make this for ages, but with seedless watermelon not generally available in Kuwait, I’ve had to practice using alll of my patience {until today}. Lucky for me, seedless watermelon was the first thing I saw when I walked into our local grocery store here in Germany, so obviously, this watermelon dessert pizza was meant to be! ☺
Old Town Heidelberg
Today’s plan was simply to spend the day in Heidelberg’s lovely Old Town. We strolled, we looked at statues and cuckoo clocks, we visited toy shops and bookstores, and we stocked up on delicious treats from my very favourite store in the city – Lebe Gesund {seriously lovely and they ship worldwide!} Grae also got her first ever Shopkins and Trash Packs {thanks to older Kuwait friends teaching her all about them} and though I really don’t ‘get’ them {old, boring mom alert}, she’s pleased as punch. We finished off the day with a dinner of watermelon dessert pizza, so all is good in the world. ☺
Here’s our day in photos…
Heidelberg Playground Tour
Since it’s Sunday today and most everything is closed on Sundays in Heidelberg, we decided to make today a bit of a playground tour day – a day filled with walking, exploring, playing, and visiting a few of our favourite playgrounds in the neighbourhood we stayed in during our first Christmas here.
Hello, Heidelberg!
After dropping off our bags at our lovely little flat, filling our fridge with groceries, having some lunch, and a taking a family nap, we headed out to explore our home for the next week… Heidelberg. There’s no doubt that we absolutely love it here. We were here for Christmas 2013, we came back last Christmas, and this time around we figured we’d break up our long trip home to Canada’s west coast and spend some time seeing the city in the summertime. Grae spent most of our walk pushing her face into flowers and soaking in their smell, filling her pockets with rocks and leaves, watching bees work, and collecting clover. She’s just so thrilled to be surrounded by nature. It’s going to be a good week.
Here are a few iPhone snaps from our day…
Our Last Few Weeks in Kuwait…
Whew. What a whirlwind few weeks. Busy, but so, so good. Being exam time, I tutored more than ever, plus we made time to do several special meet-ups with our closest friends, and I managed to sneak in several nights out with my girlfriends too. During the days that Miss G and I were not busy making memories with friends, we sorted, organized, and cleaned our entire apartment top to bottom. Important stuff made its way into our Canada shipment bins, some items were sold, and tons was given away. In between, we cleaned a disastrous apartment a couple of floors up, moved the majority of our furnishings up, and set everything up for a new family coming to Kuwait. We made scrapbooks for our closest friends, snuck in quick trips to some of our favourite spots around Kuwait, and were totally spoiled by our desert family. On our very last full day in the country, several of our friends met us at the Jumeirah Beach Resort for a day of sunshine and swimming. It was wonderful. Afterwards, I snuck home to tuck Miss G in bed, did a few final jobs, snuck in a shower, and wrote a CBC post before heading out the door to a friend’s place for one last night with my mama friends. We ate sushi, drank wine, gossiped, and said goodbye, and that was that. Another chapter of adventures comes to a close… Goodbye, Kuwait. We’ll miss you.
Pizza making with friends.
Ma’a Salama, Kuwait
Travel Tins {portable fun for on the go}
Miss G and I recently upcycled some old, empty hand cream tins into easily portable ‘travel tins’ and they’ve been a total hit so far {despite not having travelled anywhere just yet!} Grae loves all things mini, and I’ve always got some kind of simple portable activity tucked into my bag for play on the go, so these little activity tins have been just perfect.
Our Very Favourite Picture Books
Wow. As of today, we have 10 days left in Kuwait. The end of our time here has crept up incredibly quickly, and with our calendar as full as it currently is, I know our last days are going to fly by faster than we can possibly imagine.
LEGO Marble Maze
This is by no means a new idea, but after our scheduled morning pool party didn’t happen due to car issues, this LEGO marble maze totally cheered Miss G up! If I remember correctly, I the first LEGO marble maze I saw was by Ness of One Perfect Day, and while a maze made out of LEGO can basically be however you want it to be, her LEGO marble run post has lots of great tips and tricks.
Strawberry Banana Oat Smoothie
With just over two weeks left in the desert, we’ve been doing our very best to work with what we have in the kitchen instead of doing our usual {ridiculously expensive} weekly grocery shop. So far so good, though the shelves are definitely looking quite bare. Luckily, we always seem to have something that can be thrown into the blender to create a yummy breakfast smoothie, or in today’s case according to Miss G, a ‘milkshake’. ☺
Mermaid Play Dough Kit
Play dough kits. We can’t stop making them. Not for ourselves, and not for our friends. Tomorrow morning we’re headed to a preschool co-op play date combined with a little birthday celebration, and since the birthday girl requested a mermaid themed celebration, we thought we’d make her a mermaid play dough kit to match. ☺
Colouring Page Airplane Scavenger Hunt
It’s hard to believe, but in exactly 23 days, we’ll board a plane and begin the long journey back to Canada. This means that I really should be focused on purging and sorting our belongings, but I can’t help it – I’m having fun creating little plane packs and travel activities for Miss G and her friends instead. ☺