Mud, Fish and Camels

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Hope you felt loved today.

This holiday is double duty at my house because my husband was a Valentine's baby. He is one who doesn't like a lot of fuss. Three years ago I threw a surprise party for his 40th and I'm not sure he has recovered from the shock yet. Today I took him to lunch and recited the names of all the people he works with that I have seen in the last few days to whom I could've mentioned that his birthday was today but didn't.  He said that my restraint was the best present I could've given him. That's a good thing since Amazon has once again proved that prime doesn't apply to Turkey and the golf bag he picked out for his gift has not yet arrived.  And since the gate is still closed our romantic dinner out will be at the bowling alley. meh.

I spent most of today taking Rory to apply for his new tourist passport and then taking all the rest of the kids to apply for new residency permits which had expired when our military passports had. Its amazing how much paperwork is involved in living overseas! But as least I can check those important things off my hanging over my head to do list.

Today I wanted to post some pics of some of the crazy things they do here on base to keep us all from going well,  crazy.  I have to say that the base does a great job in providing family friendly activities.

This is the before picture.

This was the Dirty Dash. My 2nd and 3rd decided to participate and Delaney made their great T-shirts with cut out letters and a spray bottle of bleach.

The after picture!! They came in last but they finished!

The race turned out to be a bit more challenging than they realized but they both had a great time with the mud pits. They were a complete mess when they finished.

Here is a shot of some friends from our church group. The team on the left is the "Mormon Mafia" and the pretty girls in the middle are the "Dirty Dancers."

The Fall Festival was a great event as well. It included some great Turkish food, a camel ride -

or a ride on this contraption.  I almost lost my lunch just watching but Carson loved it.

Most recently, they filled the base pool with fresh water and brought in a bunch of trout. It's hard to see them in this photo but they are there, swimming in a tight circle in the deep end and mostly ignoring the corn and shrimp skewered on the hooks.

Here you can see the fish better. Brannick caught one but it flipped off the hook before he could haul it up over the side of the pool.

Delaney is the only one of my five who managed to get a fish all the way out of the pool. Here she is with her gutted and cleaned fish. She was pretty excited. Not excited enough to eat it though when we cooked it that night. She's not a fish fan.

So there you have it. Life on base can be a bit surreal - like that show with Jim Carrey where he's on a TV set and doesn't know it? Everything here is controlled and contained and very very small. Sometimes its nonsensical. Just this week they changed the speed limit from 40 kmh to 25kmh. That's a drop from 25mph to about 18. It kills me to drive that slow. And I can't really see how dropping from sloth pace to snail pace is going to save any lives. But there are a lot of good things. With people constantly leaving and arriving, the base expends great effort to create a sense of community here. As part of that community, I appreciate that.