Dibb's Down Under: Sept/Oct Recap

Oh, just playing catching up...like I normally do!

Swim season started up again. The girls are less than thrilled. They are both really great swimmers and keep showing improvement...but they hate practices. With such limited choices on sports/activities, we keep them on swim team. Here they are at the first meet of the season- not excited at all to have their photo taken:

Mei started kindergarten. She's struggled the most out of my kids with this new school year. New school, full days, new teacher, new routines, etc. She's always been my one child that takes the longest to adjust/transition. Luckily, after about a month of tears and worry, we've seen a lot of improvement. She loves school and enjoys all of her new activities. Despite not wanting to play soccer (this pic was taken after crying...b/c she didn't want to go to soccer), she's been a trooper. And for the last 3-4 weeks I haven't had to stand next to her on the field. She does the entire practice on her own and has fun!

The first few weeks of school, Mei hated PE. She said it was scary and she would cry and not participate. She would get anxious on the days she had PE. But after she learned how fun PE can be...she loves it. Her PE teacher sent us this photo of her and expressed how proud he was that Mei's changed so much and is doing great in PE. She now gets so excited for PE day.

And see, here's proof that she does have fun at soccer!

At the Dammam fruit/veg market looking for pumpkins. They import the nice orange pumpkins from the states but you pay a ton of money for it! I bought a couple of Saudi pumpkins, which kind of look like really ugly watermelons. In fact when Emi got home from school she asked "why do the watermelons look so weird?"

My sassy girl turned 9. Last year she was my child that struggled a bit to settle in to a new school and make friends. I was a little worried that she might have a rocky start this year...but her teacher raved about her at parent-teacher conference. Mina was also brave and ran for student council. She won and is just finishing up her term (each class rep serves for one trimester to give more kids an opportunity). So basically, she's pretty much rocking 3rd grade. I love her to pieces.

Chico's for b-day celebration...b/c who doesn't enjoy a 5 min long birthday serenade?!

I was recently called to be the YW Pres in our fellowship group. It keeps me really busy. A few weeks ago Brian and I drove a group of youth to Bahrain for a stake youth activity where they got to hang out and play games. I'm really looking forward to getting to know the youth better- I know Kaiya's friends...but there's about 30 girls in YW!