I Couldn't Have Said it Better Myself

So, I know I said in my very first post that I prefer to post pictures and tell no stories, but the other day an incident occurred that changed my view...for now, at least.

The scene: Your average, every-day gas station in Cairo. I pull in and roll down the window, waiting for the attendant to inform me with some surprise that my gas cap is missing. He did, and I informed him that it had been stolen, as I always do. I was waiting for the surprised response that I speak Arabic, when something absolutely hilarious happened.

The smiley attendant began conversing in broken but rapid-fire English. It was no surprise to me that an English-speaking Egyptian would want to show off his linguistic prowess, but this guy really set a new standard.

The Prelude: He began by asking where I was from, and then moved on to how much he loved Americans, and followed up with some other stuff I don't recall because all I can remember was what he said when he looked in and saw Sara in the passenger seat.

The Show: In a heavy accent, but with a great deal of fluency, the smiley attendant submitted the following for my information:

SA: "Zis your seester?"

Me (in Arabic): "She's is my wife."

SA (with great enthusiasm): "Ohhhhh,"

SA (speaking of Sara): "Meester...I tell you...your wife...you are...beau-ti-ful!"

SA (now in Shakespearean monologue mode and half looking at me, half looking at Sara): "Your hair...is...soft! And your...eyes is...very nice! And your face...is...fan-tas-tic!"

SA (now wiping the mirror): "You will have a...good life because...you have zis...woman."

Me (in Arabic): "You are very generous. Thank you."

SA (still amazed at his own ability to get that out): "Yes, yes."

The Aftermath: So for the past two days, Sara has been "Fantastic Face" and I can't say for sure when something else will push that name out of the spotlight.

I am continually entertained with foreign English, written and spoken, but this one tops everything else in Egypt.


See? Soft, very nice, and fantastic!

Hey Lydia, I might be wrong

but I think he likes it.

His first sighting of the greatest shirt his eyes have e'er beheld:

Here he's saying, "Awe-thum!"

And here he's saying, "It's my betht buddy Why-den TWEEN!"

Thank you, Lydia! We miss you, but we're sure glad you're using your newly stateside-acquired buying power for good. Thanks also for the treats and bags; you have no idea how happy I am :)

P.S. to everyone else: Sam is just a little fond of Lightening McQueen. He calls any and all red thing "Lightening McQueen" (cars are especially appreciated, but shirts, signs, and apples will do as well). He even calls our silver Dodge Durango "Lightening McQueen." I guess because it's our car that makes it awesome, and if it's an awesome car that makes it Lightening. Our good friends the Penrods just moved back to the U.S., and today we got a little care package from Lydia. Now we just need to hope that the shirt survives the rest of our time in Egypt, seeing as how it's entirely possible he will insist on wearing it every. single. day.

One day a year...

...Emma doesn't anticipate her birthday. May 7th-May 5th is spent anxiously waiting for it, but May 6th, well, that's golden.

I realized a few years ago that of all birthdays that you celebrate with your child, the one on which you actually gave birth is the easiest. What I mean by that is: throwing birthday parties is not my favorite. It doesn't help that 4 of the 5 kids have birthdays in April, May, June, and July. By the time Kevan's birthday rolls around in August I am burned out. I usually just say, "Oh...yeah...how about you go buy yourself a CD and say it's from me?"

So about the time I had this epiphany, I decided that we were going to move the kids to every-other-year birthday parties. The neglected, birthday-party-less child still gets all the same hoopla (treats for their school class, choose the dinner menu, cake of choice, presents and carrying on, etc.), just no party with friends.

This year Emma took chocolate chip cookies and juice boxes in to school, had Daddy-made Norwegian pancakes for dinner, and helped me decorate her chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (and sprinkles).

Behold, the suffering child:
Emma announced several times that she was going to open her presents "like Daddy does." Meaning, rip off all the paper without looking, and only once every shred of wrapping is discarded, look at the present. The only problem with this style of unwrapping is that I have to work harder at making sure the other children don't yell out what the present is before the recipient sees it. So fun!

That's a new Polly Pocket set. She was pretty excited to get it. Of course, our sweet exuberant Emma has that expression on her face about 43% of the day.
This is a scrapbook from Grandma and Grandpa Lewis. My abilities to keep scrapbooks updated is worse than my blogging consistency, so hopefully Emma will have a little more luck with it!
Jake is taking two art classes (yeah, private schools are pretty rad), and he gave Emma this really cool clay box he made and painted:
Megan ran to her room, saying she had a present for Emma, too, and came out with one of her prized possessions. It's a ceramic head of Nefertiti that Meg bought and painted during Egyptian culture week at school. She just loves it. We just loves that she calls it "Neferteeny." But because she loves her big sister so much, she gave it her for her birthday.
This is Emma talking on Skype to Grandma and Grandpa Lewis. I'm wondering how on earth she got so grown-up looking.
She requested cupcakes instead of a cake, and fortunately nine of them fit just perfectly on the plate. You may notice that the one in the middle has significantly more frosting than the others. That's because it was the last one I frosted, and I still had a lot of frosting left in the bag, so I just kept piping more and more on. As soon as Emma realized what I was doing (she was on sprinkles duty), she said, "That one's MINE!" And then when I still wasn't stopping with the frosting she said, "Are you doing that because you know I like frosting?" and I answered, "No, I'm doing it because I know you like A LOT!" (There's a classic family story of the time Kevan's dad asked 2-year old Emma how much she wanted of something he was dishing up, and she said, "TOO MUCH!")
Following the theme of having a lot, Emma attempted (and mostly succeeded! we were most impressed with her skills) to blow out each candle individually. I think she figured that would get her 9 wishes instead of a measly 1. Here she is partway done:
Very pleased with herself:
We sure love our girl A LOT!

Hi. We're not dead.

Contrary to what you might think, we're still here. But we haven't actually been here here very much lately, so blogging's been a little difficult to keep up with. Also, I'm lazy.

So here's what's up with us: since the last time I posted, we went to Turkey for Spring Break, Kevan's parents came to visit and we took them to Upper Egypt and Jordan, Kevan and I went to Syria for a week, Megan lost two teeth, Jacob turned 12 (don't tell me about that though; I'm in denial), and Sam said, "No, not!" a lot. And coming up we have a weekend trip to Alexandria in the works, my baby sister and her husband are coming to see us, two sets of movers, one last trip for Kevan without us, the end of the school year, a family trip to Israel, and then heading back to America.

My goal is to give at least the highlights of all of this before, say, Sam starts high school (and maybe, if you're really lucky, I might even finish telling you about the Tunisia trip!). Please don't hold me to that though. Jess is starting high school in September (also something you might not want to mention to me, as I will likely pretend I can't hear you), and I still haven't made her baby book. Miracles happen though, and I'm going to give it the ol' college try, whatever the freak that means.

And that picture up there at the top? That's for anyone who wants to live vicariously through me. I took that in a mosque in Jordan while Sam was throwing a full-on tantrum so that I could document, as I told Kevan, just how glamorous my life really is :)

The rest of the party

To round out our day of birthday-that-had-never-occurred-to-us celebration/day off from school (potayto, potahto), Monday evening we went with the Penrods again to have a bonfire in the desert. There's a park/recreational area of sorts just outside of our neighborhood called Wadi Degla. We've been hiking there before (again, another great opportunity to link you to a witty post full of beautiful pictures...that I never wrote), but this was our first time both getting pretty deep into the area and eating s'mores there. That's the only reason I believe fire should exist--so that s'mores can be created. Kevan doesn't agree with me on that, but he's wrong.

Driving into the park:
One of the many neat rock formations:
A self-and-Jess-portrait:
The area where we built the s'mores-cooking contraption:
What did I tell you? Jessie's kind of a big deal. Here she is with Eliza:
And Mairyn (who, for the record, tried to stick her hip out, but couldn't do it and keep her balance):
All of the mountain goats, er, children started climbing up the hill:
But only the oldest four made it all the way up (I promise you they're up there; look closely):
A close(r) up:
More climbing, different area:
Wanna take a guess on what's in Sam's hand here?
Or what just left his hand here?
At one point we noticed that Megan and Mairyn had gone off mountain-goating on their own and had almost made it to the top:
So Jess and Jake were dispatched to help them get back down (wasn't it helpful of them to wear bright colors?):
Jake had a lot of fun with the kites:
I'm not sure what Emma and Eliza had the most fun doing: climbing, flying kites, or giggling. I'm going to guess it was a toss-up.
Sam had a lot of fun watching the fire.
The last of the daylight over our s'mores-site:
And from where Kevan, Spencer, and some of the children were flying kites:
And then we saw the thisclose-to-full moon rise.

Kevan's view:
And mine:

Saqqara

On Monday, the kids had the day off of school for the Prophet Mohammed's birthday. This is not a holiday I ever thought would be relevant to my life, but there you have it. We had planned to go camping during the weekend, but a lovely case of the stomach flu that hit the whole family ruled that out (sorry, Heisses)(also, you're welcome), but we were feeling well enough by Monday to follow through with our plans to go see the Step Pyramid at Saqqara with the Penrods. Feel free to consult that handy link I provided for you, as I am too lazy to recount the history and significance of said pyramid (or the Penrods, for that matter). Or, better yet, my friend's son can do a report on it and get back to you! (No need to thank me, Julie; I'm here to help!) (For all but the two of you who know what I'm talking about, she is saintly and homeschools her 8th grader, and sometimes she has him do research on things we post about. I can't decide if that makes me want to post more, or just post pictures and leave all the information for him to provide :)

Anyway. I am for Egyptian holidays--traffic there was great! On the way we saw a glimpse of the Giza pyramids:
And this awesome lady:
And this awesomer sign:
This was our first glimpse of the pyramid:
Once you get onto the complex, you walk through a corridor of columns, and the kids all had a great time pretending to be statues. I promise we didn't coordinate the matching shirts that both Megan and Mairyn and Emma and Eliza were wearing. I also promise we didn't coordinate their similar names.

The pink-shirted, M-named 6-year olds:
The white-shirted, E-named, 9- (and almost 9-) year olds (and Grant):
Did you know that Rodin stole The Thinker from ancient Egypt? I didn't. But then, I also get told a lot that Sara is an Egyptian name. Apparently everything originated in Egypt.
Jessica tried to be a statue, too, but, well, all the kiddies love them the Jessie. Once she was down at their height, they mauled her.
Along with the statue-ing, there was also much leaping. Eliza's got her some mad hops, yo.
In the courtyard of the pyramid:
The pink girlies:
Something that I love about Mairyn is that if she is aware of the camera, the girl just does not take an un-posed picture--and the pose usually involves jutting her hip out in some way. Clearly this has rubbed off on Meg. Cracks me up.

The pink posers:
Cute friends:
I think the posing must be genetic. From both families.
See?
This posing, however, was forced. Basically, I told her she could stand there nicely and smile, or I could sneak an, er, unflattering picture and post that. Parenting through threats and coercion! I should write a book! And people say teenagers are difficult. Actually, I think I just lucked out with this one. And she's cute, too.
Sam, doing what Sam does everywhere we go--throwing rocks (you can see it up on the second-from-the-top tier of the pyramid).
More use of force to get a good picture of a child (notice that with Sam it requires full-body control):
All of us:
Getting my artsy on:
On the way out of the courtyard, there was more leaping:
This was Sam's version of it. He would sit on the edge of one of the walls, scoot himself off, and then walk to the side, plop down on the ground, and say, "I did it!" Daredevil.
At this point in the post it would be really cool if I were to link you to a post about the visit we made to the pyramids at the Dashur complex in October, but since I never actually wrote that post, you'll have to use your imaginations (and Wikipedia). This shot is from another section of the Saqqara complex, looking south. On the right is the Step Pyramid, and straight ahead in the distance is the Red Pyramid and to the left of that is the Bent Pyramid.
Zoomed in as far as my camera would go:
When I get around to writing about our visit in October (hey! I believe in the power of positive thinking!), I'll show you the corresponding pictures I took of Saqqara from that perspective. I'm sure you can't wait! (Clearly, I can.)

The rest of these pictures are more shots from the road as we were driving home.
Lydia taking a picture of me taking a picture of her. And Spencer? He's just smiling. Smiling's his favorite.