Our Kitchen

Here's our kitchen. If you look in the upper right hand corner of the picture you will notice a bunch of switches. It took us forever to figure out which switches go to which things. The plugs here are different and Justin had to buy some transformers and some adapters. The other thing about the switches is that if you want to turn something on you push down.

One thing I really like about the kitchen is the amount of counter space. Even with all of the stuff on it there is still room to prepare food.

Lots and Lots of Room

These are the closets. They go almost to the ceiling. I would say they are about 8 feet high and are the length of the whole room. Lots of space plus lots of fun for playing hide and seek. If you look at the other picture of them, you can tell that some of the doors have space to hid in where the clothes hang and others have shelves.

This is Danny's room and his bathroom.

Danny being goofy.

This is Justin's closets. When I took these we weren't yet quite unpacked yet.

This is our room. We have a big long dresser and behind the door to the right is the laundry room and to the left is the bathroom.

We have a baday

We've got a Baday! I have no idea how to use it but we have one. Also, there is a hose in between the 2 toliets and a drain in the floor. I don't know for sure what they are for but I think that they are for either washing your feet before prayers in the Muslim faith or for a cleansing process after you use the toliet. There is no storage in the bathroom but there is a ledge wedge at the back of the shower. Another problem is that the toliet paper is on differnt sides of the toliet depending on which bathroom you are in.

The laundry room is right off the bedroom next to our huge bathroom. They are all huge. There are 4 bathrooms and 3 bedrooms including the bath in the maid's room. Even in a small wash, the washing machine takes longer to run than the dryer. Clothes dry here really quickly because of the heat. It used to be that I needed to leave a shirt overnight on a rack to dry but here it is dry in a few hours.

The house came fully furnished. I guess the furniture is all new. The table is huge. It fits 8 comfortably and has another leaf we keep in the laundry room. Danny likes playing on the couches, pulling all of the cushions off. What you can't see is on the right, across from the couch is a big window which shows our back yard and the ocean.

The window in the middle is the back yard.

Holy Air Conditioner Bat Man!

I cannot convey to you how BIG this AC unit is. I couldn't adequately get all of it in my picture. You probably cannot tell but it is bigger than a VW bus. It is Huge and it runs pretty often. The first day we moved here Justin woke up and it had frozen up, probably because the house had been vacant for a while, and maintenance caome and fixed it. At night when I'm in the spare bedroom I keep a blanket on me. It it set for 68-70, I can't tell exactly. The vents are in the bedrooms and in the hallway. There isn't one in the kitchen or family room but the place keeps really cool. The best part about the air is THAT WE DON'T HAVE TO PAY FOR IT!!!!!


This is a shot of the back of our house.

This is the car port where Justin will park the car when he gets one. Yesterday he finished all of the paperwork and drivers ed class and he is just waiting for some papers to be signed. The drivers are crazy here. On average, every 19 hours there is a fatal car accident. There are only2 million people in the whole country so that is around 45,000+ accidents a year.

This is part of the front of the house. It is a one story house but it is really big. If you walk in this door you walk into the kitchen. A little bit to the left of the picture in the corner is a little room with a bathroom in it. I am thinking it could be a maids room but it is so small I don't know if a bed could fit into it. We didn't even notice it the first day because it is behind a door and it was shut.

Crabs

This is what the hole looks like up close.

I am hoping you can see the crabs. If not, click on the picture and blow it up. They are really ugly! They don't look anything like Sebastian in The Little Mermaid.

They burrow underground and there are little mounds by each hole. That is where they live. It made it pretty easy to find them.

So apparently crabs live in the sand and burrow into the ground. They are very sensitive to motion and when we got a little bit close they scattered. They are fast too. I took some of these with my zoom lense.

We are Finally Here!!!

Wow what a trip! We flew out of D.C. a little bit over a week ago to Kuwait. Justin is working for Chevron in their HR department. We are in a 6-month rotational program. Justin's first 2
6-month assignments were in San Ramon, California. We loved it there. The weather was probably perfect. Most of the year it seemed like it was in the mid 60's- upper 70's. Man I miss that weather. It is hot here, very, very hot but it is a dry heat. Last week it was 125 for a day and has cooled off to 110 the last few days. It seems to cool off to the 90's in the evening. Danny and I started to go swimming in the ocean after dinner. We love collecting shells. We have quite a collection already. We swim in the shallow end, only chest high on me because I am not a strong swimmer. Danny loves floating in the water and finding rocks to toss in the water to make a big splash. Our backyard backs up to the ocean (see below) and the temperature is nice and warm, kinda like a warm bath. The water is very peaceful but there are some tiny waves in the evenings with the tide.

This photo was taken from our backyard. The pier to walk down to the ocean is 2 houses away. It is really nice to have that close of an access to the water.

The water is right below the sand dune, about 30 feet down. The sand in the shallow part of the ocean is gritty but a little bit out is is very soft. The way I woud describe it is like hairy legs that haven't been shaved in a long time. I know that is not a great description but it is accurate. I can't think of a better explanaiton.

This is a picture of Danny the first day we were here in the morning on our walk together.

Happy Easter

Well... I finally got a photo up. It has been almost 4 months and so much has happened but I wanted to take a moment to put this up. I took this (no foilling) this weekend at the Golden Gate Bridge. Russ and Carrie came for a visit to celebrate their one year anniversary. We had a wonderful time. I want to get caught up and put on tons of photos but I have another paper due in my class and it looks like I won't have any spare time until May. I love you guys so much and wish I had more time. I still haven't gotten Danny's birthday photos up. "It's on the list!" Anyway, Happy Easter!