I have just spent about an hour trying to figure out how to get to the right place to add a new blog! I am so stupid...I called Kyle and asked him what to do. After he quit laughing and we hung up, I followed his directions and..... here goes one more time!

We are still getting anxious about our trip to the UAE. I am trying to be as organized as possible so we won't have a big hassle at customs! We both hate that, but since it will be closer to Christmas by that time, Bill usually causes a "stir" in the airport and one time when we were clearing customs, they just passed us on through, laughing with us saying Merry Christmas. However....this is a muslim country we'll be entering and I doubt Christmas means a whole hell of a lot to them! LOL He was thinking of wearing his Santa hat, but we're thinking about that the second time! We're afraid that he'll have enough of a problem with the diamond in his ear!! haha I have decided to send things to Sydney before we leave so that we can have the "larger" amounts of the things to use when we get there. If we just send it there, it will be there when we arrive and we can dump all those little "sample" things we'll carry on with us in case we have any delays without luggage! You know..a fresh change of underwear, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodrant, some Handi-Wipes to wipe off our faces, etc....anyone that has traveled knows to carry those precious things!! haha

We will fly from Phoenix to Minneapolis, then MN to London, England (Heathrow). We'll pick up an Etihad flight from London to Abu Dhabi. We will arrive around 8:30 p.m. If my organization goes as I have planned (but all of you know that I never have any plans that ever come together, but it's a thought), we'll only have one bag each to check through. The rest we'll carry on! I have my iPod to entertain us for the flights and I'll take my crossword puzzle book. Bill will select a book from Barnes/Noble to read while flying. Anyone have any good suggestions for him? We were talking about that and he can't decide.....

Our trip home sounds awful in that we'll be leaving The Daub at 2:35 A.M.!!! Poor Stu having to drive us to the airport at that time in the morning then having to go to work a few hours after that. Maybe we can just get a cab or something...shuttle?? I'm sure we'll not want to be leaving and, in fact, we are dreading leaving right now and we've not even arrived there yet!! haha We do get back at a decent hour though (about 5 p.m.) so that will give us some time to unpack and wind down before going to bed. We'll have that weekend off from work to get over the jet lag, so it might turn out to be OK....but jet lag is the hardest part of any trip.

We'll be in Abu Dhabi for Christmas and New Years. We are so excited to be spending our first Christmas that far away from the hustle and bustle of the "American Way." Of course, at our work, we are now heavily into the shoppers and bad attitudes of said shoppers, but it will be peaceful there and we can do our own thing and celebrate any way we want to. We might take a few Christmas decorations with us, but it might be fun to just be like the old pioneers had to do and string popcorn and cranberries (or whatever berries they have there) for the tree. Ahh...another problem...finding a Christmas tree in the muslim country! haha I mentioned to Bill that we should just start to send "branches of an artificial tree" in the mail and by the time decorating time comes, we'll have the whole tree!! He thought that was pretty insane....oh well, he's a man and putting up a tree is one of his most annoying things to do in life! All our kids can remember our "Annual Christmas Tree Fight"....those were the days. We'd go out to find that perfect tree...find a lot that seemed to have decent prices and stop to look. I can't tell you how many years I wondered about his true intelligence when he'd pick out the most crooked, ugly tree. He'd call me to look at it....well, being somewhat of a closet artist, my first look would tell it all...and he'd throw it back against the fence and say, "Well, f--- that one! YOU pick it out! Why did I come with you anyway? You never like anything I like!!" Yeah, well, Bill you are a retard when it comes to Christmas trees! Get a life, honey...you just ain't got it for trees! He used to think those mesquite trees with the nine inch thorns were "so pretty" when we lived in Texas! Except that one stick of those thorns could cause you to have to go to the doc and get a shot for the infection!!

Finally, after so many years of our "ACTFs" he finally convinced me that we should "try out" a fake tree! OK..so I went along with it. Guess he got me really drunk one night and convinced me, because he held me to my promise! Actually, I was a bit tired of cleaning up those real pine needles which, of course, turned into a full house cleaning as they seem to get in every room of your house even though it was ONLY in the livingroom! We got a fake one on sale after Christmas from Wal Hell. It came organized in this small square-ish box, but upon opening it, it burst out of its confines like one of those springs in a can surprises you used to take to parties to scare the crap out of unsuspecting folks! I knew we were doomed. The "trunk" was nothing more than a very uninteresting metal pole with holes in it. The base was cheap looking and good thing we had a tree skirt to hide it which my mom made for us years ago. Each descending branch was a different color on the end and color-coordinated to go in certain holes! Well, you know, it's just not mood-enlightening without your favorite beverage to "get into the swing of things" for the season. The next day, our tree almost looked upside down! I had pink in the blue holes, red in the green ones and the silver ones didn't even have a place on their directions! The branches were all scrunched together and even Charlie Brown's Tree looked better than this thing! I was so pissed at myself for allowing Bill to talk me into this horrible FAKE tree! No good scent, you had to adjust EVERY branch to make it look "real" and the damn thing stuck you something fierce if you touched them just right! AND...get this....it was losing its needles every time you touched it to put on the lights! If you stepped on them, they did not give in a bit like real ones do, they actually stuck into the sole of my houseslipper I was wearing! It was quite dangerous, I thought! What if a small child crawling on the floor got into these damn things? Hell, he'd look like a porcupine before he could get out from under the tree!

So, after that first fake Christmas tree, it was repacked in its box and put on the patio for storage. Just today, Bill moved it to a storage until we've rented to get some of this crap out of our small, Barbie doll apartment! I'm hoping Kyle will want to use it for his first Christmas in the Desert, but he'll probably read this and know how much I hate it and will buy himself a nice one!! You get what you pay for, so our $25 on sale tree was worth the lesson learned! And to think that that tree sold regular priced for $139 at Wal Hell...what a piece of crap! Made in China...well, you know how that goes!

As most of you know, I've never been known to be one for short stories, and I realize this is a long one - again! Well, you can always just quit reading when you get bored enough...ha I wouldn't blame you one bit!

Maybe one of these days if I keep posting, I"ll get to be as good as Sydney and Hayley! Mary-Leah, too! But I'm not the writer(s) they are, so you'll just have to bear with me when I want to rant and rave!

Bye for now and know we are working on getting this trip on schedule and having a great time in Abu Dhabi with Sydney and Stu and OUR PRECIOUS KADEN!! They have so much planned for us to do and we can't wait to go to the Grand Mosque and wear the burkas we have to wear to tour the place! We will post more later, but for sure, will let you all know about our trip which is only 22 more days!!! Yeah...!!!!!

From the warm desert to all of you out there....let the sun shine in!!! Dianne and Bill con amore