Heissatopia

Typical Tuesday

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 20:28:35 +0000

This morning Benjamin and I hit the bay early for a swim...and found this cute little hermit crab wielding an auger for a sword:

Miriam walked the little kids to the beach to play for a bit, and then went back to the house with Benjamin to get started on their schoolwork.

We had the beach all to ourselves, and while our beach doesn't have lovely palm trees or cabanas or anything, it does have skyscrapers, so we were able to spend all of our time in the shade of the buildings.

We went home to do Even More Schoolwork and then went to the library (again). While we were waiting at the (air conditioned) bus stop, this cute little quail came be-boppin' along and was rather curious about the door.

"You can't get in here!" the kids tried to explain to the quail.

Phoebe reminded it that no animals are allowed on the bus—and birds are animals.

I used my "Seek" app to find out what bird it was and it searched and searched and searched, eventually telling me that it was a "typical quail." Evidently, when the app is fairly certain about the Genus level—which in this case is Coturnix, it will suggest that what you're seeing is a typical quail.

I can't help but say that with an eye roll: Typical quail.

This was likely a common quail, actually (which feels a little basic). Apparently it is "known for its shy nature," but this particular specimen was quite outgoing.

At the library we did story time, tried out the art majlis, and then met Daddy at work. I took Phoebe home and he took the rest of the kids to mutual and activity days. Phoebe was so excited to have some alone time with Mom.

She got to ride the escalator herself:

She got to sit on her own seat on the bus:

We had ramen for dinner (which she felt was rather fancy because we never have ramen for dinner) and then we made some peanut butter bars to be ready when everyone came home because we knew everyone had...pretty abysmal dinners. (Benjamin, Zoë, and Alex, for example, had peanut butter sandwiches and apple slices at the library). I knew they would be coming home hungry.

*****

A bit about the bus...

Phoebe rode the bus for the first time yesterday. Initially she had her own seat, but when some more passengers got on I made her give up her seat to come sit on my lap. She was still excited about the bus ride but she was pretty ticked off that I made her give up her seat...though I didn't realize this until she tore into me on the walk home.

"Why did you make me do that?" she asked.

"Do what?" I asked.

"Give up my seat!" she raged. "I was sitting perfectly great, looking out the window just fine, and then you made me give up my seat!"

I explained to her all about seating etiquette—she's not a paying traveller, so she doesn't need a seat, per se. It's respectful to her elders to use her young legs and let older people rest theirs (though sometimes people give up their metro seat for her because she's little and they don't want her to fall over). Older women, especially, need seats, but sometimes older men, too. Young men—like Benjamin—are expected to always give up their seats for women. Pregnant women are also good candidates for getting seats, with the tricky part being that you can't always tell when a woman is pregnant. As a small person, Phoebe can always climb on Mommy's lap to have a seat...but when Mommy is carrying home two bags of groceries and a backpack, Mommy gets the seat, not Phoebe. And if anyone comes in with a heavy load, too, they should be offered a seat and...

"Okay, okay. I think I get it," Phoebe grumbled. "But I'm still mad about my seat."

Valid, but...sometimes the bus is just so full that not everyone can have their own seat—some people have to stand and some children have to sit on laps. Other times (like this evening) there are plenty of seats available and she can have the first pick (very back of the bus, if you must know).

Remind me never to take her on the bus in Egypt...

Bratislava (October 10)

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 20:12:08 +0000

Uncle Patrick wanted to make sure we had an Out-of-Austria adventure while we were visiting. We tossed around the idea of going to Budapest or Znojmo but ultimately landed in Bratislava—it's close, it's inexpensive, and it's quiet (and we were all in need of a quiet day after being out late celebrating Uncle Patrick's graduation). So Bratislava it was!

We were excited to board the "sitzwagen" for our journey (always nice not to have to stand).

Zoë especially looked like she could have used a bit more of a lie-in than what she got that morning!

Bratislava marks her fifth country (US, Canada, Qatar, and Austria coming before). It marks my...twenty-third? I think. I'm not quite sure.

We walked from the train station to the bus station and caught a ride to the Eurovea Galleria, which was a pretty great mall (compared to what we'd seen of shopping centers in Vienna). Our main goal was to find the restrooms (which were beautiful) but along the way I spotted a pistachio cream croissant and...to be honest...I've been wanting another pistachio cream croissant since I had one at Patrick's house in May.

Somehow I didn't take a picture of either croissant...but believe me when I tell you that they were both beautiful...and so delicious...simply oozing with a pistachio custard of sorts...they are such a mess to eat but so, so yummy.

"You should get one!" Patrick said.

"I dunno..." I said.

"Get one," he ordered.

So I did. And it was as divine as the first one.

I was surprised when I went up to the cashier, though, and she greeted me with "Dobrý deň."

We dobrý our deňs here?! I was elated.

"Dobrý deň!" I said back.

"Hey, yeah," Patrick said. "One pistachio croissant please."

He advised me to just greet people in English so they know what to expect but, uh, my little linguist heart cannot. Slovak is a...Slavic language. Go figure. So that phrase—Dobrý deň—is similar in many Slavic languages, including Russian (which I've studied). I didn't understand much else in Slovak, but I've got "good day" down pat.

It was fascinating to me how we were barely an hour out of Vienna by train (Bratislava and Austria are approximately 50 km apart) and only just barely past the Austrian border...and the language barrier continues to hold. So interesting.

After stopping at the grocery store in the mall to pick up some treats to take home, as well as...you guessed it...some pastries for lunch...we headed through the park under the UFO observation deck.

I liked how the city turned what might have otherwise become a "seedy" area into a public good—with a skate park and an outdoor gym and so forth. I suppose the word here might be gentrification...but I don't know that this particular development has priced anyone out of town. It made the space quite welcoming.

We walked across the Danube on the Nový Most (literally translated "New Bridge"; and the very same in Russian Новый мост) to visit the Old Town.

I loved the way Hviezdoslav Square (Hviezdoslavovo námestie) is paved in geometric patterns:

We soon came upon the famous Čumil (watcher) statue, a sewer worker, popping out of the ground and smiling at whatever sight he's seeing on the streets.

There's no big story behind his existence. Rather, it was installed as a revitalization effort in post-communism Bratislava. He's just meant to make people happy. Sculptor Viktor Hulík explained: "Čumil is an absolutely anonymous figure that I invented because as a teenager I visited the promenade very often and I wanted this figure to be an expression of the well-being, smile and good mood that once reigned here."

I loved the shingle work on the old town hall:

Like many people, I'm a sucker for a good door or gate...

I was honestly surprised by how many Halloween decorations I saw since we had been talking about what countries celebrate Halloween on the train ride. The train station was rather festive and then I kept seeing cute little spooks around town...

Following rather blindly (not because I can't read a map but because Patrick basically has the city memorized and knows precisely what he's looking for), we found ourselves at The Blue Church. As luck would have it, someone was getting married—with a rather blue wedding party—so the church was open!

We went in a took a few pictures:

Typically the church is closed, so we lucked out! And they had some beautiful music playing. It was quite lovely—of course I had to snap a picture of the organ:

The history of the church is rather boring—it was a chapel for a school—but the architecture (and colour palette) is really quite unique.

Here we are making our way through the Old Town again, this time on our way to Bratislava Castle:

I quite enjoy just walking around town, personally, and doing a little bit of whatever strikes our fancy.

Reid made fun of me because when he asked what our itinerary for this trip was I said, "Oh, I dunno. We'll have to see..."

"You don't have a plan?!" (he was appalled).

"I have...a list..." I said.

"Oh, good," he said sarcastically. "You have a list... This will be a successful trip..."

But we just plan differently, that's all. I'm a bit more laissez-faire about vacations and sight-seeing while Reid likes a detailed itinerary. I'm more of a "What shall we do today?" person and less of a "This is what we're doing today." Because having an hour-by-hour itinerary stresses me out when I just want to explore.

So, yes, we went into this trip with a list of options for outings and we did a fair number of them (though it's also true we didn't get to everything on our list). And we're okay with that.

Anyway, I enjoyed just walking along the calm, quiet, clean streets of Bratislava:

They have fun doors:

And really, really quiet streets...

...And graffiti, which I find so interesting in the context of this otherwise pristine yet wizened street:

There was no trash about, no putrid smell of urine...and yet an astounding amount of graffiti.

And a feather:

Here's me and Zoë:

And here's the two of us with Uncle Patrick and his signature bag of Doritos (I don't really know that that's his signature, but he does consider himself a chip connoisseur):

A lovely door...

A lovely gate...

"Oh, but I want to walk up there!" I pined aloud, while Patrick carried on straight ahead.

"Then let's do it," Patrick said encouragingly, turning back to join me at the gate. "It's going the same way we are..."

He was planning on turning right a couple of streets up, but we took this darling alleyway and did, indeed, end up precisely where Patrick intended us to (...or thereabouts).

I loved the view from this little patio—again with the juxtaposition of bucolic vistas and graffiti (apparently my eye was also drawn towards red this particular day)...

We walked along the old city walls and then took a pedestrian bridge across the highway.

I was quite distracted by the lovely rainbow of houses lining the road, but Patrick took the time to point out our real goal (the castle) just on the other side of the houses:

(And just so you know how thoughtful my brother is, he noticed that I kept trying to get that lovely copper spire in pictures so on our way back to the bus stop he made sure to swing by the church—which, unfortunately was closed for mass...but it was a wonderful gesture nonetheless).

We stopped by a tiny little church on the hillside that was stuffed to the brim with icons and smelled so strongly of incense:

And then we walked up a hill and arrived...at the castle!

Fun fact: Slovakia apparently has the highest number of castles per capita!

Here are a few pictures from the gardens and the view from the wall:

And here we are with the castle in the background:

Here's Zoë with some more graffiti on our walk back to the bus stop:

And here's a close up of a sign that Zoë was interested in (it means NO):

And here we are sitting outside of St. Martin's Cathedral (the one with the beautiful copper spire) while Patrick texted Hadis to let her know that we were really on our way home now.

She didn't come to Bratislava with us because she wasn't feeling well. But then she decided that she was at least feeling well enough to go to the grocery store to pick up a few things (she wanted to make French toast for Zoë on Sunday morning). Unfortunately, she forgot to take her key with her so locked herself out of the house. She went to a friend's house for a while but was hoping we'd come home soon to let her get back into her own house (understandable).

So we cut our Bratislava explorations a bit early and headed back to Vienna. Here's Zoë at the bus stop:

And here she is waiting for the train:

And here she is on the train:

On the way home we stopped by Kaiser's at the mall for some kaiserschmarrn, a dessert/meal of shredded pancake often topped with applesauce (or berries or plum jam or nutella or whatever).

Patrick also ordered in some Schnitzel Fabrik, which made Zoë very happy because her greatest ambition was to eat schnitzel in Austria:

He got the "bowls," which is shredded schnitzel with fries and pickles and burger sauce and other little toppings (which Patrick and Josie and Hadis all feel is better than traditional schnitzel). It was delicious!

Stuff, stuff, and STUFF: We have it

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 18:58:50 +0000

After we finished with our schoolwork on Sunday, we headed out to the beach to enjoy the last of the afternoon sunshine:

Benjamin swam out to the buoy and then Alexander wanted to as well, so Benjamin built a sandcastle with Phoebe while I swam out to the buoy with Zoë and Alex. Getting to the buoy was pretty easy, but Alexander was getting mighty tired on the way back, so I was glad I was there beside him to give him a few extra boosts when he needed it.

We found a hermit crab lugging around an auger, which was pretty cool:

We built some sand castles...

We watched the sunset...

And then we rinsed off and went home...and rinsed off some more...and then quickly made some dinner.

When Andrew got home we had our family night lesson, which was on goals (see this post) and gratitude. After mentioning our Thankful Tree (see, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) in my talk on Friday, Alexander and Phoebe spent their post-church Quiet Time making a big ol' tree trunk for us. We turned it into a palm tree yesterday afternoon and during FHE we wrote down things we're grateful for on little dates and hung them from the tree in clumps:

We've had a lot of barely-identifiable deciduous trees in our Thanksgiving Tree repertoire (did I never get a good picture of our birch trees with thankful leaves on them?!) but this is our first palm tree!

Here's a picture from the evening stroll Miriam and I took yesterday (no dates on these palms):

We saw a gecko though!

This morning our stuff arrived!

We have been mostly without stuff since June, so it feels good to have stuff again. Our house is a lot less echoey than it used to be and we're excited to eat off of real plates again—all our glass dishes survived the move! There was one box that Andrew called the "Suspense Box" because it was in quite poor shape, with all the corners bent in. It was labeled "GLASSWARE."

We took a deep breath and opened it up and...everything inside was perfectly fine!

The kids were so excited to play with toys. We kind of gave up on school lessons and just let them loose to play with their toys like it was Christmas morning:

In the afternoon we took an Uber to campus with Daddy so that we could go to story time at the library (in this we failed because I forgot to pre-register for this session and we had a librarian who was very strict, only allowing children who had pre-registered into the room, literally sending kids away crying...it was a little nuts...and she ended up only allowing five children attend (yes, I counted)).

Story time is...hit or miss...

We sat and read a few library books before a little dejectedly making our way back to Andrew's office.

Soon we will be able to check library books out because I passed my medical exam and my police work stuff so am cleared for residency...just waiting to get the actual document...and then we can make an account at the library.

In the meantime, at least we finally have our shipment so I now have books coming out of my ears (no shelves to put them on yet, but at least there are books).

Here's a picture of a lovely little cloud formation we saw while walking between GU-Q and QNL:

We stopped to pick up some groceries on the way home and all carried home a bag (or two) on the metro (it's a good thing we have so many hands). Then we caught the bus to go home. Phoebe was especially delighted to ride the bus—she's never been in a bus before!

Both Alexander and Phoebe pushed the button for our stop.

We enjoyed our walk along the bay to our house, though were puzzled about all the France-love we were seeing. The bridge was lit up red (it's been purple the last little while), some buildings were red, white, and blue stripes, and then we made it to the Crystal Walk and it is also red, white, and blue...with the flag of France billowing on all the screens.

Evidently President Macron is swinging by for a visit the next couple of days, so Qatar is unfurling the red carpet, so to speak, and Frenchifying everything.

I think it's delightful!

Rudderly without an utter

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 18:18:34 +0000

The shower in the girls' bathroom stopped draining. I fully suspect hair in the drain, but the drain is weird so we just put in a request to the plumber, who came and fixed things up for us. After he left I thought I would just test the shower really quick to see if the drain really was draining, so I stepped inside the shower to turn it on.

You should know that each of our showers is equipped with an overhead shower and a handheld sprayer. In our bathroom the control panel looks like this:

The button on the left is for the overhead shower and the button on the right is for the handheld sprayer.

So, I step into the girls' shower—fully clothed, of course—to test the drain. I pick up the handheld sprayer, aim it at the drain and push the button that is clearly labeled "handheld sprayer" according to everything I've been conditioned to believe from the way my own shower works.

Come to find out...in the girls' shower the symbol that I know as "handheld sprayer" actually means "overhead shower."

Ask me how I know (but don't mind my soggy clothes).

The weird thing is (or at least one of the weird things is) that the girls' bathroom doesn't even have a tub in it...so why the symbol of the bathtub? I don't know. I mean, clearly it works the handheld shower...but why?

But at least the drain is draining.

(Also, the bathroom downstairs has the same control panel as the girls' bathroom and the button on the left is for the handheld shower while the tub button on the right is for the overhead shower...so there's just no winning over here.)

*****

For family night we set some goals. Finally.

The past ten months have been...the way that they were.

We found out that Andrew would be flying out to interview here at the very end of December and things have kind of been a blur since then. I am honestly not sure we ever got around to formally sitting down with the kids and setting some goals for the year. Or perhaps we did and our goals were, like, to survive.

And we did survive.

But we've been reading through Dante's Inferno and the kids have been recognizing several of the not-so-serious-but-still-grievous sins within themselves and don't want to spend eternity being chased by stinging bees or anything. So although we've discussed that we don't actually believe in the concept of hell as put forth by Dante (or really at all), it might be good to decide how to rout out some less savoury characteristics of ours and develop some endearing ones.

So we set some goals tonight and the kids seemed pretty excited about it. They liked choosing what they wanted to work on—learning all five pages of Moonlight Sonata, getting up to my alarm, finishing The Chronicles of Narnia before the New Year, not having to be told to get dressed, things of that nature—and seemed almost relieved to have established a direction for themselves.

"The past year has been unusual," I said. "We've been in survival mode and just...without an udder for far too long."

Everyone started laughing.

"What?" I asked.

"You said udder," someone gasped out.

That little slip up was milked for all it was worth. We were busy mooooving. Steers are bovine, you steer a boat, boats have rudders. Cows have udders. Got milk? Got stuff? Our stuff was on a boat...that probably had a rudder. None of us had udders.

We were going at it for a long time.

"What I meant," I said. "Was that we were without direction beyond simply making it here. So now that we are here we need to think of what kinds of things we can do that are actively good."

Because we're right in the thick of Dante's Inferno we've been discussing a lot of things through this lens, so the kids were well aware that the wishy-washy state of neither good nor evil is rather...repulsive (according to Dante)...and these people, having written nothing in their book of life are welcome neither in heaven nor in hell and are instead doomed to run eternally after a sign that tells them to run (since they could never make any decision on their own) while being stung by wasps and bees: “What you hear is the miserable state of those pathetic souls who lived their lives completely neutral: without blame, without praise."

In short, these are "people [who] never truly lived."

And we don't want that—we want to live!

So we determined we were going to take the bull by the horns...or the ship by the rudder...or was it the cow by the rudder, the boat by the udder?

Whatever the case, we were going to choose to live life rather than just...be.

The kids made some good goals and were quite excited about them.

We'll see if it helps our days have more...verve.

*****

Speaking of Dante...

We're reading a couple of versions together to piece together the tale (since none of us are competent enough in Italian to dive into the original). One of the versions we have is Dante's Inferno for Kids and it includes various pictures to colour, which has really helped keep the little people (but most especially Phoebe) occupied while we're reading.

The other day I broke out this picture:

And she squealed with 100% sincerity: "Oooooh! Is that The Gate of Hell?! I have always wanted to colour a picture of The Gate of Hell! Thank you, Mommy! Thank you! Thank you!"

What can I say except...you're welcome?

Where's it at? The beach! The beach!

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 22:52:43 +0000

There were a lot of things we wanted to do this summer that we never got around to doing because we were...otherwise engaged. That is, we were organizing all the moving parts for a seven-person international move, while also trying to get Rachel ready for a mission. It was a lot of packing, it was a lot of document-gathering, it was a lot of...stress.

We dreamed of taking off and doing something like revisiting the Outer Banks or North Topsail or driving out to a new beach for "Beach Week" somewhere...or even making a trek out to Utah or California or Canada. But, it soon became clear that wasn't going to happen. Our van had issues we didn't want to fix (since we knew we'd be leaving it behind) and we simply didn't have the time (Andrew was still teaching over the summer).

So we didn't have "Beach Week" this year (as has been our tradition), but we told the kids that it would be fine. We were moving to a peninsula in the Arabian Gulf (and/or Persian Gulf—it's as you like). There would be plenty of beach time, we reasoned.

And here we are...70 days after touching ground in Doha...living on an island...and we have finally, finally taken our kids to the beach. Or at least some of our kids—Benjamin and Miriam were at the beach in Abu Dhabi instead (and, in all fairness, the boys got to visit Azerbaijan Beach with our friends while Zoë and I were in Vienna). But anyways we made it to the beach!

It's less than a ten minute walk from our house! Here's Alexander enjoying a good float (our house is on the side of the bay with no beach, just a walkway, so we have to cross a bridge to get to the beach).

Here's a view of the bay including the bridge and (I think) me (if you look very closely).

Yes, I'm definitely out there. Andrew told me I should swim to the buoy before Benjamin got the chance to claim he was the first one to have done it. Below you can (perhaps) definitely see me right by the bouy:

Is this the beginning of a season of open swimming in our lives? Perhaps.

The water is lovely. We only have to worry about crabs, really—no sharks here! (At least, not in the residential bays and lagoons). The water in "the Gulf is 25% saltier than normal seawater" (though other sources say only 15% saltier) and getting saltier due to a number of factors (including desalination efforts for drinking water). The ocean typically is about 3.5% salinity, whereas the Gulf is around 4.0% salinity. Compared to the Dead Sea (33–34% salinity), the Gulf it's not very salty...but our eyes would tell you that it's plenty salty (and its increasing saltiness is concerning to scientists).

Anyway, the water is warm and calm and relatively shallow:

I don't know how deep it got (it did get deep enough that we couldn't touch the bottom), but the kids could swim quite a ways out before they couldn't touch anymore. And there are no waves crashing about on the shore so we didn't have to worry about rip tides snatching the kids away (per se, though there are still currents that can be(come) dangerous, I'm sure).

Even Phoebe felt comfortable enough to swim around:

After the kids had swum their little hearts out, they set to work building some sand castles on the beach.

Phoebe was so proud of this piece of coral that she found:

Although there are beaches in Doha that are open for swimming 24/7, ours is not one of them. There's no swimming here from dusk until dawn (though you may still walk on the beach after sunset), so as the sun began to sink, families started packing up to go home.

While we were rinsing off our sand toys, a man came up with a sliced watermelon and asked us if we wanted any. "Yes, shukran!" Phoebe said and took a piece. "Afwan!" the man said, then asked if Andrew or I wanted any. I took a piece. Andrew hates watermelon, so he did not.

"Perhaps," the man said, holding the watermelon out to me. "You will offer some watermelon to those women over there."

He indicated toward a group of European women nearby who were wearing bikinis. He didn't seem quite comfortable approaching them with the watermelon, but I told him that I would, and I did (they didn't want any, but a little girl with them did want a piece). Nobody else nearby seemed to want any (I offered to a few groups of people). And so it was that at sunset I became the proud owner of 1/4 of a watermelon, presliced.

Phoebe ended up happily finishing the rest of the watermelon (with a little help from Alex and Zoë).

"This is such a great beach!" Phoebe said. "There's sunshine! There's sand! There's water! There's crabs! People just walk around randomly giving you watermelon! It's great!"

Speaking of crabs (this is a blue swimming crab...it's pretty big)...

...I found a handful of augers. Zoë actually found the first one and wanted to know whether it was alive or dead. I told her it was alive. She didn't believe me, but when I had a whole handful of squirming augers in my hand, she more or less had to agree that they were alive.

The white auger on my hand is a dead (or empty) one, while the darker ones are all still alive (or full of snail, if you will).

The other more rounded snails were much quicker to move about on my hand than the augers were

...but then I found this little auger inhabited by a crab and it was really quite fast, bumbling all about on the palm of my hand.

We put them back into the water after observing them for a minute and then finished packing up to leave the beach. There is, unfortunately, no public place to wash off at the beach (or change or use the restroom). Perhaps future explorations will reveal such amenities to us. In the meantime, we walked home wet and sandy and I was trying to think about how to manage this once we got home (one downside to living at the beach, I suppose, is having sand tracked all through your house on the regular).

We had originally discussed heading directly to the office bathroom to shower off feet there but then, in a moment of sheer genius, I recalled that we have a rooftop pool!

So instead of taking the elevator to our floor we just took it straight to the roof, everyone had a little rinse-off in the bathroom shower there, and then we enjoyed a splash in the pool while we waited for dinner to arrive (Andrew suggested we just order a pizza—another moment of sheer genius...we were on a roll this evening).

We ate dinner on the roof, enjoying the view and the evening air, and then went downstairs to get ready for our phone/video call with Rachel (and for bed). Miriam and Benjamin arrived home from the airport while we were talking with Rachel, so they got to see her, too.

So now we're all under one roof again (save Rachel) and next week promises to be a bit...chiller...perhaps...though apparently our shipment has passed inspection and will really be coming so we'll have to start unpacking in earnest. But...at least no one will be flying in or out of the country!

Last note:

The title of this post is from this Sesame Street video...

And here's some evidence that birds really do live at the beach!

This picture is from our Friday evening stroll—you can see big bird prints, little bird prints, cat prints, foot prints, shoe prints...sand raking prints...

UN in Vienna! (a guest post by Zoë | October 8)

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 19:48:26 +0000

After leaving Schönnbrunn, we headed to the UN headquarters to find the anti-corruption hand sculpture that is also in Doha–the thing is, when we got there, a security guard told us that we could not go in without a guided tour, and apparently we needed government issued IDs to go on a tour. Mom had her driver’s license, but she didn’t have my passport.*

Things weren't looking great

But, after we did a little research, and went to Billa to eat, we booked a spot on a tour.

Zoë with a Kinder Surprise from Billa (having already eaten her bread)

The security lines were so long!!!

I was starting to think it wasn’t worth the security to see a hand statue that we might not even be able to see on the tour, but once we started the tour, I changed my mind.

I learned that there are 4 different UN headquarters in the world, New York being the first, and Vienna is the third.** 150 different countries work together–that is so many people! Vienna can only host up to three people from every country at a time. New York can host five! With so many different people, there are a lot of different languages, and not everybody understands English, which is what most of the conferences are in.

The UN’s main languages are English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish. There are boxes higher up in the conference rooms that the translators sit in and, well, translate. Since German is not a main language, in all of the conferences in other places, there isn’t a German translator. But when Vienna hosts, they are allowed to put a translator in one of the boxes.

A model of a dhow from Doha

There are gifts from almost everywhere in the world.

Art installations, Nobel prizes, a rock from the dark side of the moon, etc., perfectly normal things!

Art Installations

Nobel Peace Prize

A rock from the dark side of the moon

The hand statue is from Qatar, but the tour never actually got there. Mom asked the tour guide if we could go take a picture in front of it, and the tour guide said: “It’s not part of the tour technically, but if you hurry, you can.”

Mom said that it was just a bending of the rules, but really, I think it’s more like breaking the rules with permission.

The UN collaborates in space, as well, to help with cleaning up space junk. China’s Chang’E mission collected rock and soil samples from the dark side of the moon, and gave a rock to the UN in Vienna. It’s very small, but it’s still really cool.

There are a lot of jobs in the UN: medical, astronaut, etc.

Since I want to be a medical doctor someday, I’m thinking of working for the UN. It’s really quite cool. I don’t know if I’ll work in the UN in Vienna, but I just want to work for the UN in general.

* Or my drivers license, because how would she? I don’t have one.

** The second one is in Geneva, Switzerland, the fourth one is in Nairobi, Kenya.

*****

Mom's addendum: One fun fact we learned is that the building that houses the UN in Vienna is owned by the city. The UN signed a 99-year lease with the city for the "symbolic annual rental sum of one Austrian schilling (equivalent to seven euro cents)" annually. But the UN also brings many visitors to Vienna (for conferences and so forth), adding significantly to the city's tourism and hospitality markets, so having the UN be in Vienna is a good thing...even if the rent is only seven cents per year.

Mega Hymn Book (and talking in church)

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 19:23:41 +0000

Don't mind my children sprawling out all over the floor of the chapel.

In their defense, church hadn't even started yet. We had just sat through 1.5 hours of choir practice—which was largely in Tagalog today, except for the singing portions...so I suppose merely most of the instructions were given in Tagalog—and that left us with a half hour before our services started. Andrew was filling in for Miriam on the piano today (since Miriam and Benjamin are in Abu Dhabi for Youth Conference (see them with Grandpa below)):

So Andrew was practicing on the piano a bit and the kids were diving into the activities in our church bag. Phoebe drew this beautiful portrait of me (in the red dress, with pink hair, green earrings, orange eye shadow, and purple sparkles on my face) and said, "Look! I wrote your full name—Nancy!"

NSE. That's close enough.

Anyway, Phoebe picked up a Tagalog hymn book and said, "Oooh! Can we use this MEGA hymn book today?"

Mga is the plural marker in Tagalog.

And many, many sentences end with the word "po" or have "po" as the third (?) word in the sentence. This is an indicator of respect, being a contraction of "po'on," which itself was a contraction of "panginoon," meaning lord or master. It's now just a way to remain courteous in conversation.

My Tagalog is...obviously coming along...great...having grasped the concepts of mga and po...but I honestly often didn't know what was going on today. At some point the conductor (maestro, as everyone calls him) called me out specifically—"Sister Nancy!"—but my name was merely inserted in a Tagalog sandwich so I have no idea why I was being mentioned.

Well, I have an idea because afterwards someone said in English, "Yeah! There are five of you!"

So I think perhaps that he was telling the sopranos to sing out a little louder and that I (embarrassingly...because this shouldn't happen in a choir) was the lone soprano he could hear.

Anyway, Andrew and I both spoke in church today. My talk is below...

*****

Good afternoon sisters and brothers,

I suspect this describes most of us sitting in this room today, but I will begin by telling you that our family has been “prone to wander.” Not away from the Lord, per se, but simply…around. By way of illustration, we have six children, each of whom was born in a different place, and thousands of kilometers away from wherever the previous child was born. If you’re counting heads, we only have our youngest three children here today: Phoebe, who will be five next month, Alexander, who just turned nine, and Zoë who is counting down the days until she joins Young Women in January. Our teenagers, Benjamin and Miriam, are currently in Abu Dhabi at the Youth Conference, and our oldest, Rachel, is at the Missionary Training Center in Provo and will soon head to Vietnam on her mission.

No matter where I’ve been in the world, however, I’ve felt the presence of the Lord, whose arm, Isaiah tells us, “is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear” (59:1, NRSV). I think that’s true whether you’ve wandered to Doha from Dhaka, Dijon, Durham, or Düsseldorf. And I think it’s true whether you consider yourself merely peripatetic or whether, like Robert Robinson, you feel “prone to wander, prone to leave the God you love.” I think, sometimes, that I do this—wander away from God—too.

Isaiah tells us that it is our iniquities that act as barriers between us and the Lord. Not one of us who chooses a crooked path can walk in peace: “deliverance does not reach us; we wait for light, but [behold obscurity *KJV], and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope like the blind along a wall…[we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places….*KJV]. We wait for justice, but there is none; [we wait] for salvation, but it is far from us.” Dismal, isn’t it?

Fortunately, our Saviour’s love is a “deep, deep love”; Samuel Trevor Francis tells us that it is as vast and unmeasurable as the ocean. The Lord’s arm is not too short to save, no matter how far away we find ourselves, or how deep of a pit we’ve dug ourselves into. Like Paul, “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39), who acts as our “intercessor” as it says in Isaiah 59:16.

That’s a big but important word, and we use a lot of similar words to describe the role of the Saviour in God’s plan. For example, in the song ‘Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,’ Robinson says that in order “to rescue me from danger, [Christ] interposed His precious blood.” In ‘The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus’ Francis tells us to consider how Christ “watcheth o’er His loved ones, Died to call them all His own; How for them He intercedeth…” The NRSV translation tells us that Christ “was appalled that there was no one to intervene” on our behalf when we find ourselves in these gloomy, desolate places (whether they be places of our own making or simply because mortality is full of hardship). Christ came to Earth in the flesh to suffer for our sins and fulfill the demands of justice in order to mercifully bring us back to the presence of God.

Intercede. Interpose. Intervene. All these things refer to someone or something that goes between two disparate—and sometimes desperate—parties.

My children and I are reading Dante’s Divine Comedy right now (at least, a translation of the Divine Comedy), so I’ve been thinking a lot about the words inscribed on the gates of hell: “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate” or "All hope abandon ye who enter here."

We don’t believe in eternal punishment as described in Divine Comedy, so I can’t help but read this inscription as the epitome of Satan’s lies. In the October 2018 General Conference, Sister Michelle D. Craig spoke about “Divine Discontent.” She noted that “each of us…feels a gap between where and who we are, and where and who we want to become. We yearn for greater personal capacity…. These feelings are God given and…call us to a higher way.” However, she warns, we need to be careful that we learn to “[recognize] and [avoid] Satan’s counterfeit—paralyzing discouragement. This is a…space into which Satan is all too eager to [encourage us] to jump… Satan…bombards us with messages that we will never be enough: rich enough, smart enough, beautiful enough, anything enough. Our discontent can [be] divine—or destructive.” And the difference between these two states, I feel, is…hope.

The difference between the two is Christ.

I don’t know if any of you have primary children at home who are belting out “There is peace in Christ!” all day long, but I do (shout out to the primary music leader for teaching this song so well). The chorus of the song tells us that Christ “gives us hope / When hope is gone. / He gives us strength / When we can’t go on. / He gives us shelter / In the storms of life. / When there’s no peace on earth, / There is peace in Christ” whose love runs as deep as the ocean and whose arm is not too short to save.

I’m probably not the best person to answer the question I’m about to pose since in addition to being prone to wander, I am also prone to despair. I can catastrophize any scenario and often find myself nearly paralyzed with anxiety. Andrew frequently reminds me to “quit despairing!” because things are never quite as dreadful as my mind makes them out to be. But I will ask the question anyway: how do we defy the gates of hell (as described by Dante) and simply refuse to relinquish our hope, specifically our hope in Christ?

To answer this, I’ll turn to Isaiah 63:7–8, which advises us to “mention the lovingkindnesses of the Lord, and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us…according to his mercies, and according to the multitude of his lovingkindnesses. For he said, Surely they are my people…[and he [becomes our] savior in all [our] distress *NRSV].”

Remembering what the Lord has done is one way to retain hope in him. Helaman implored his sons to “remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea…when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall” (Helaman 5:12).

Remembering, remembering what the Lord has done, mentioning his lovingkindnesses, or recounting his gracious deeds (as the NRSV translation of the Bible says) can help us to retain our hope in the mediating power of Christ’s atonement. So, how do we develop a habit of mentioning the Lord’s lovingkindnesses?

In the United States, the Thanksgiving holiday occurs at the end of November and it’s rather common for people to spend the month expressing gratitude for their blessings, but in our family we start a bit earlier because I’m from Canada and Canadian Thanksgiving falls on the second Monday in October, which was just this past Monday. We traditionally put a “thankful tree” up on our wall on Canadian Thanksgiving and then spend all of October and November adding things we are thankful for to our tree.

Don’t ask to see this year’s tree because we’re running a little bit behind schedule as we’ve been settling into our new home—but we’re going to get it up and growing soon. In the past, though, there have been times when I’ve been afraid that we will run out of things to be thankful for as time wears on, but we never have—the Lord is just that good to us. Like Johnson Oatman Jr., I find myself sometimes “surprised” by “what the Lord has done” on my behalf.

But you don’t have to wait for a specific season or reason to begin mentioning the Lord’s lovingkindnesses. You can do so whenever “you are discouraged, thinking all is lost.” Now is as good a time as any—as Alma the Younger asked, “if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?” (Alma 5:25). I find that taking a moment to write down even a handful of blessings can help me to regain some of the hope I’ve lost (or abandoned), it can help break down the barriers I’ve put up that keep me from feeling God’s love, which is always, always unfailingly there, if only we remember to look for it.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

*****

And Andrew's talk is here:

As Nancy just mentioned, we moved here a couple months ago for work, and we have loved being back in the Middle East! I majored in Arabic and Middle East Studies as an undergraduate student at BYU, and after that we lived in Jordan for a summer and Egypt for two years. We had always hoped to come back to live in the region, but life got in the way—we spent the last 16 years living in Utah, North Carolina, and Georgia for graduate school and work. I’m currently a professor of international politics and policy at Georgetown University in Qatar in Education City where I teach and research statistics, human rights, and NGOs and global civil society.

Georgetown is the third university I’ve worked at, and the second openly religious institution I’ve taught at. In my first job as a professor, I worked at BYU in Utah, where I went through lots of training about the church’s vision for combining religious and secular education. We had the responsibility of merging secular topics with spiritual doctrine in all our classes, with the aim of developing students with strong testimonies and strong research skills. This was tricky! I taught classes on statistics and economics, and it’s surprisingly hard to connect things like t-tests, multiple regression, and supply and demand charts with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What I ended up doing was borrowing from Micah 6:8, where the prophet Micah tells the people of Israel what God requires of them: “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with [their] God.” My students were all interested in working for governments and NGOs and had a natural inclination toward public service, so in all my lectures and assignments, I would incorporate things about justice—teaching them to use data analysis to make the world a better place for the marginalized and to help govern with justice and equity and mercy. I think it worked, and in my perhaps-naive view, those students went on to help make the world a better and more just place.

After BYU, I taught at Georgia State University in Atlanta for several years, where there was no obligation whatsoever to mix religion in with academic content, so I mostly just taught plain old regular statistics. I still encouraged students to try to make the world a better place, but I avoided any religious reasoning for it.

I’d long known that Georgetown was a Catholic institution, founded by Jesuits, but in the chaos of moving here in the middle of a war, I actually completely forgot. During orientation in August, I was surprised that we got to meet with Georgetown’s resident priest, who spent a session outlining Georgetown’s Jesuit values and my new responsibility to structure my teaching around them. This was exciting because it had been a while since I was allowed to mix religion and academics, and here I get to do it again—not to the same degree I did at BYU, but I can bring more of my authentic self to the classroom. Even more exciting was learning that one of Georgetown’s core values is to teach “faith that does justice”—or the idea that topics in class should help build students’ sense of justice and encourage them to make the world a better place for the marginalized and forgotten. This was my approach back at BYU, and now it can continue to be my approach here.

This idea of pursuing justice is central to the book of Isaiah. We’ve spent the last month in Come, Follow Me reading it. During this past week, we’ve been reading the final chapters of the book, which I find especially moving.

Some quick historical context can show why these last few chapters are so neat. Many biblical scholars now believe that the book of Isaiah was actually written in two big chunks—the first half was written before Babylon invaded and took Israel captive, and the second half was written either just before or just after that exile was ending and Israel was allowed to return to Jerusalem. These later chapters are full of hope for a newly rebuilt Jerusalem, for a future where everyone can live in peace and in a Zion community. It’s a soaring conclusion about the final liberation and restoration of Israel.

But it’s not all just happy and triumphant. Prophets in the Old Testament had a particular social role to play. They were typically social outcasts and outsiders who were called to come to a complacent people and warn them to repent and fix society. Think of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, or Lehi at the beginning of the Book of Mormon. They’re all famous for yelling at the political and religious leaders of their times for hiding behind religious obligations and instead encouraging inequality, neglecting the poor, and failing to improve society.

Isaiah does this throughout the final chapters of the book. In Isaiah 58, he condemns the people for making a huge outward show of fasting and keeping the sabbath day holy. Isaiah was concerned that people were hiding behind the public-facing aspects of these commandments but ignoring their more fundamental covenantal obligations—making excuses like “I can’t go help other people—I’m so hungry right now because I’m soooo righteous. Just look at how righteously I’m fasting!”

Isaiah teaches that things like fasting should actually point us toward community and toward justice—that the purpose of fasting is…

…to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? (Isaiah 58:6–7)

At the end of chapter 58, Isaiah lists all the promised blessings that come from living justly: that

[our] light [will] break forth as the morning, and [our] health shall spring forth speedily: and [our] righteousness shall go before [us]; the glory of the Lord shall be [our] rearward” (v. 8), and that “if [we] draw out [our] soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall [our] light rise in obscurity, and [our] darkness be as the noonday (vv. 10–11)

These are all fantastic blessings, but they will only apply if we focus on others. We have a covenantal responsibility to do this. When we are baptized, we covenant to care for others when we promise to bear one another’s burdens. If we ignore others, all is in vain.

One of my favorite primary songs teaches this perfectly. “He Sent His Son”:

What does the Father ask of us? What do the scriptures say?
Have faith, have hope, live like his Son, help others on their way.

This is the purpose of life. Build personal faith, find comfort, become better people, and help others. We must take care of the poor, our neighbors, our families, those around us—everyone.

Helping others goes beyond helping individuals. In Isaiah 58:12, it says that those who focus on justice will be called “repairers of the breach.” Remember that Isaiah here is writing just as Israel is returning from exile, going back to their broken city of Jerusalem. The people have an obligation and responsibility to rebuild society and repair the “breach”—actual physical breaches in the walls, spiritual breaches like the destroyed temple, and social breaches addressing the social inequality, poverty, and and broken social structures that accompany the return of the Babylonian refugees and exiles.

In the scriptures, communities that lack justice because of social ills, like economic inequality, a lack of universal human rights, or general unrighteousness, are called to repent, repair society, and return to justice. Isaiah, the Book of Mormon, and the Pearl of Great Price provide us a solution for creating this kind of just society where everyone deals justly, loves their neighbor—and by extension, loves God.

The people in Isaiah’s time were called to be “repairers of the breach” and rebuild society. We have that same responsibility—we just tend to call it something different. We call it “Zion.”

The idea of Zion is a core principle of the Restoration, and it is an actual attainable community where

disciples renounce all forms of direct, structural, and cultural violence and in their stead “proclaim peace,” fostering the conditions for sustainable peace, justice, development, and human flourishing1

In 2008, when we were living in Cairo, Elder Holland came to visit our little branch there. This was a fantastic and special experience given how small the branch was. One thing he taught us there has stuck with me all these years since:

The millennium can commence in our households if we bind Satan through our righteousness. …We need to look out for each other. [This creates stability, and this branch] is the most stable institution in Cairo.

We can create little slices of Zion within our families and homes here in Doha. But Zion goes beyond just our families—by necessity, Zion includes our broader community and society. Caring about others, focusing on people on the margins of society, fixing unjust social institutions, and proclaiming peace are thus all essential parts of creating Zion. These are all part of our baptismal covenant, and they’re all ways to be modern-day “repairers of the breach”

There are many examples of things the Church and its members have done to build Zion and repair the breaches of structural social issues.

A week ago, the Church donated $3 million to the National Juneteenth Museum in Fort Worth, Texas to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States, following nearly a decade of directly working with the NAACP (the leading racial civil rights advocacy organization in the United States). In 2018 President Nelson and NAACP leaders issued a joint statement declaring that racism “goes well beyond individual feelings and attitudes, especially in the ways it has become embedded in the nation’s systems and laws” and called on
government, business, and educational leaders at every level to review processes, laws, and organizational attitudes regarding racism and root them out once and for all2
In October 2020, President Nelson grieved “that our Black brothers and sisters the world over are enduring the pains of racism and prejudice” and called on Latter-day Saints to be at the forefront of change. That same month, President Oaks declared that “Black lives matter” and that Latter-day Saints should “lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice toward any group of God’s children.”
In October 2021, Sister Sharon Eubank gave a beautiful report about all the progress that the Church’s official humanitarian organization, LDS Charities, has made in alleviating poverty around the world. In just the past couple years, LDS Charities has responded to a thousand natural disasters in more than 100 different countries, providing millions of dollars in aid. They are especially active here in the Middle East, with service couples working in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and elsewhere.
In April 2016, Elder Patrick Kearon and President Linda Burton announced a new “I Was A Stranger” initiative aimed at addressing a growing refugee crises, particularly for refugees fleeing from Syria and Iraq. Through LDS Charities, the Church has provided millions of dollars in grants, funding, and support for nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations focused on refugee rescue, rehabilitation, and resettlement. I have personally been involved with one of the organizations that received assistance from this initiative—a nonprofit based in Arizona that helps run and supply refugee camps in Greece, Jordan, Bangladesh, and elsewhere.

We too can build Zion in our own spheres of influence. As part of our baptismal covenant, we all must bear one another’s burdens and comfort those that stand in need of comfort. We must “bind up the brokenhearted, … proclaim liberty to the captives, and … [open] … the prison to them that are bound” (Isaiah 61:1).

I’ve been working on becoming more justice-oriented over the past decade, both in my own life and in what I teach and research. I’m excited to be here in Doha—in such a welcoming ward!—where I can inject these core religious principles into my work. I encourage all of us (me included) to make a more concerted effort to live up to these covenants and become repairers of the breach. Participate in your communities outside of the ward. Volunteer with or donate to a nonprofit organization, NGO, or charity. Get involved in work that can lead to changes in unjust social policies. I know that as we do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God, the world can be rebuilt and repaired and become a better, more Zion-like place.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Footnotes:

Patrick Q. Mason and J. David Pulsipher, Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’s Answer to an Age of Conflict (Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2021), 191.↩︎
W. Paul Reeve, Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood (Deseret Book, 2023), 129.↩︎

*****

Andrew was so good about trimming his talk down to fit into the time left in the meeting (there was another speaker in addition to us, so he wasn't quite sure how much space he would need to fill...ten to twenty minutes was the window for the third talk). I was very glad I didn't have to make any edits like that on the fly.

Here's a picture of Phoebe on on the walk home from church (she was quite proud of her outfit today):

And here's a sweet picture of Alexander and Zoë walking down the hall together:

He had offered to carry Zoë's scriptures in the elevator so she could race the elevator up the stairs more easily (he didn't want to take the stairs because he also had his own scriptures in his backpack). And then he just carried them all the way home for her, which was sweet.

Not today, Stan! (typo humor)

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 22:37:59 +0000

Perhaps it's just late...but I'm finishing up a draft of a talk I'm going to give in church tomorrow and I made the following typos, which I corrected, but which I also laughed about while I was fixing...

"We grope for the wall like the blond..." instead of "We grope for the wall like the blind..." (see Isaiah 59)
"Or we can listen to Stan..." instead of "Or we can listen to Satan..." (see Divine Discontent)

That Stan! Always messing things up!

Vienna, Day 2: Mega Museum Day (October 7)

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 11:55:23 +0000

This was my third time in Vienna, so you might think I would be getting familiar with the city and feeling pretty comfortable. But you would think wrong. In truth my base-level anxiety is pretty high so I actually approached the whole situation with quite a bit of trepidation and really had to convince myself that I could, in fact, leave the house, navigate the city, and have a good time all on my own...with Zoë in tow, of course. It was fine once we got going!

Patrick and Hadis both had to work on Wednesday and Thursday so we were on our own, which is fine—we fared well! I didn't ever lose Zoë, who in fact was quite handy at figuring out the metro, didn't ever complain about being tired or hungry, and was—in essence—a delight.

I can brag about not losing Zoë in Vienna because, as Patrick pointed out, we have set a rather low bar for ourselves, seeing how Zoë was once (lightly) kidnapped, and Rachel was nearly abducted by Italians when Patrick took her to Salzburg (I don't think I wrote about that on the blog but they were going through Mozart's birth house and Rachel got sucked into a field trip of Italian high school students and when she tried to get away from them—and not on their tour bus—she was chastised by a chaperone and had to work a little to convince them that she really wasn't with them). Anyway, we have a history so Patrick was proud of us for not losing Zoë and I was proud of us for not losing Zoë.

We were doing pretty great in the not-losing-kids department.

And then Andrew texted me and was like, "Hahaha so we ran to the tram bc the train had just arrived, and we all ran down the stairs except Phoebe, who decided to do the escalator, and was stuck behind someone. So some Bangladeshi guy on the escalator picked her up and ran her down to us and we all got on just in time. Super nice dude. Phoebe is 10000% convinced that it was Ben who helped her—she wasn’t paying attention to anything 😂"

So apparently he was having a harder time keeping track of kids back at home. I have questions, like, "Why was no one holding her hand?! She's four!"

But I also know that she's getting rather good at navigating the metro, herself. She loves to study the maps and learn the names of the stops so she has a pretty good grasp of things—perhaps too good of a grasp because Andrew also sent me this tale:

"Haha oh man, so after we did the gate mall and went back into the DECC metro stop, Phoebe was walking really slow so we told her to hurry up bc we were all hungry. She sprinted off by herself and made it all the way to McDonalds—through the station, outside, across the street, through the mall, and up to the food court completely alone and at full speed. We lost her for a bit when she got to the food court, but she was dutifully waiting at McDonald’s for us."

Apparently when Andrew has difficult news to share with me he begins with "haha" to soften the blow, which is better than simply "eek."

Anyway, I didn't lose any children the whole time I was in Vienna—which in our family is apparently saying something. And the metro is really quite easy to figure out in Vienna (as most metro systems, blissfully, are).

Here's Zoë outside parliament (full disclosure, we actually took the tram to Volkstheater/Parlament, not the U-bahn, but the tram system is a wonderful extension of the metro system):

And here we are together:

We walked past the Rathaus, which had a circus set up in front (where all the Eurovision stuff was when I visited Vienna in May):

On the left of the picture below you can see there are benches ringing the grassy area; Zoë really liked that way of fencing off places the city didn't want people to walk because at least it gave them places to sit!

We walked through the volksgarten towards Hofburg and admired all the roses that were still in bloom:

I was drawn towards the changing leaves:

And the bees, too, of course:

Here's Zoë outside of Hofburg (she liked the red carriage):

I of course gave her the brief history of the Neue Burg balcony (that the last person to give a speech from it was Hitler when he "unified" Austria and Germany and how we don't really know what to do with the balcony—no one has used it since...does that venerate the history or condemn it?) and told her why the Karl von Oesterreich-Teschen monument is famous (it was the first equestrian statue to balance on only two points of contact and is thus somewhat of a marvel of engineering).

We went inside Hofburg to visit the papyrus museum, which was pretty cool. We're studying medieval history right now, so getting to see some medieval texts was pretty neat. We studied the Tabula Peutingeriana for quite some time. It was such an interesting perspective of the World According to Italy in the Middle Ages (it's been in Vienna's library since 1738).

One of my favourite displays was on how books were reused for other purposes, some book-adjacent and some otherwise. For example, there is this book—"of grammatical-rhetorical content"—from the 19th century, but which is covered in "a thirteenth-century luxury parchment" from a Latin Bible:

There were some palimpsests on display (parchments that have had ink scraped off the page in order to be used again) and all sorts of things—pages that had been used to stuff caps or sleeves, papyrus that had been reused to wrap mummies, etc. I imagine all these reuses make it rather difficult to determine the dates of books, precisely the field Uncle Patrick is in. For example, he explained in his defense that they can't sample the spines of the books to determine their age because spines are worn out and replaced with greater frequency than the covers (which more often stay with their original book). Anyway, it was a very interesting part of the museum.

Children can go to (most) museums free of charge in Vienna and they often have at least a little activity for the children to do. At the papyrus museum the kids could make crayon rubbings of various things (the Rosetta Stone, other hieroglyphics, some drawings):

Our next stop was the Literature Museum. I was rather excited about this one, though the museum ended up being less than we'd hoped. But, we successfully found our way there, so that was good!

We passed the Roman ruins in the city center:

We passed the National Library (where we should have just stayed and skipped the Literature Museum altogether):

We passed this exhibit on the sidewalk that warned would-be quasi-public urinators that their quasi-public peeing could be made fully-public due to the cameras around:

We thought it was pretty funny, although honestly Vienna is a little smelly. Right when we got off the bus, Zoë asked, "What...is that smell?" The smell was Vienna—urine and tobacco. It's kind of a problem.

They've been working to rectify the problem—including making toilets free for everyone (they first made urinals free, but that's unfair to women...and men are still evidently peeing in the street). Patrick said the city is also working on making an agreement with business owners about subsidizing bathroom costs so that places will allow people to just pop and in use the toilet (instead of having to install public toilets everywhere). Currently a lot of places keep their toilets under lock and key—even McDonald's requires you to purchase a toilet coin before you can get into the bathroom.

But...they're working on it.

Zoë was unimpressed with the cleanliness of the city overall. She said that the way Miriam and Rachel talked about it, it sounded like Vienna was a beautiful, clean city..."but it's not!" To be fair, they were comparing it to downtown Atlanta and I think, honestly, that Vienna is much cleaner than Atlanta. But Zoë is comparing it to Doha and...Doha is much cleaner.

Here's Zoë waiting at a tram station that she considered a little sketchy...

Anyway, let's see...we were making our way to the Literature Museum...past the Roman ruins, past the National Museum, and now past the Albertina, an art museum we didn't go into:

But the mural on the stairs was so convincing from afar that people seemed to be floating down a solid wall. It was a little less convincing from up close, but Zoë wanted to pay those stairs a visit:

We walked for a bit longer...

And finally we found it! The

Lite
ratur
muse
um

It was all in German, which made it more difficult for us, and a lot was actually focused on movies rather than books, which was...not what we expected. But we did have some good conversations about things. For example, the exhibit on children's books showed an example of a story trying to redeem itself in later editions by changing the characters into actual monkeys (instead of describing them as monkey-like people). I'm not sure it entirely worked...but it at least shows that people have been questioning how people are depicted in books for many years.

They had a fun wall (not pictured) with writing prompts (that I translated into English, with a little help from my friend Google Translate) and we spent some time writing together...

But on the whole, I feel this was a museum that we easily could have skipped out on.

When we were finished there we headed back towards Stephansplatz to try to find some food for lunch.

And, of course, ended up at Billa to get a snack from their bread section—they have such a lovely array of pastries (and it's much cheaper than a restaurant).

After lunch we headed back to the National Library to visit the stadthalle, which Patrick promised would be very much worth it (and it was).

They had an interactive exhibit where you could leave a message to the world. Zoë's says "a loving heart achieves...everything."

The state hall was rather impressive!

When we were at Schönnbrun, Zoë wondered at the...opulence...of it all. How could such a large garden filled with so many fountains be meant for such a select group of people? Why does anyone need a house that large? And, I suppose, one could question why a library needs to look like...this...

It feels almost wasteful—and I suppose it rather is, especially when that money could have gone to helping people. However, there's also the fact that these places are still filling people with awe so many years later. Isn't there something to be said for that, too?

Architecture (and art in general) can be rather inspiring:

It was also fun to see some books about Dante's Inferno, since we're reading that right now (or, at least, a children's translation of it). There was a little display devoted to Dante, with several books pulled out showing him with Beatrice or him with Virgil.

We saw many beautifully illuminated manuscripts as well...

But the state hall is only so big, so we were finished with it quite soon. Feeling tired, but still adventurous, we decided to make our way to the Wien Museum.

We were a little surprised (though not terribly so) to find a statue in Vienna that matched one we'd seen in the Doha airport. It seems Vienna and Doha share quite a bit of art.

This museum was phenomenal—and free! I wish we could have spent more time there, but we unfortunately put it at the end of our day's plan. Next time we will be sure to hit it first! They had so many hands-on exhibits for children (and grown ups). Zoë built her own city, judged her character according to Medieval ideals, tried on chainmail, and wrote her name in Braille (among other activities).

Chainmail is heavy!

Zoë had a hard time with the braille. The instructions were to write it backwards (from right to left) using the inverted alphabet, and then turn the card over the other direction to feel the indentations the proper way. Zoë flipped her card and said, "This still isn't right...S-S-I-E...what did I even spell!?"

"In English we read left to right," I reminded her (my younger children specifically have been experiencing renewed confusion about this now that we've been studying Arabic a bit).

"I forgot!" she said. "In my defense they had me write from right to left and since that's a valid way to write I just figured we were reading from right to left as well."

Honest mistake. She remembered how to read, though, and deciphered the card (upon which she had written her name).

She made a grimace when she realized her mistake, which was quite funny to me because just beyond her was a statue of a man making a similar grimace. Below she is laughing, but you can see the statue in the background:

I made her go see the statue and make her little frustrated face beside it because it was just too funny:

There were three stories to explore in the museum and we got through about 2.25 of them by the time they announced the museum was closing. Next time we'll be sure to stop by earlier, but we were honestly glad to have a reason to leave the museum and head home—we were rather exhausted, our step count was off the charts, and we were ready to rest up for another big day of sight-seeing the next day!

Yes, but...

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 22:03:11 +0000

There's a "Yes, But" comic about the "two sides of every coin" and I couldn't help thinking about it when we rejoiced over finally locating our beach access. We did not do a beach trip with the kids this summer because we were moving to Doha—which is surrounded by beaches! But we haven't made it to the beach yet even though we live on an island!

So, yes! We finally found our beach access point!

...but then Phoebe took her socks off on the couch and got sand everywhere.

But having to clean up sand doesn't bother me too much (yet), so that's okay. We're still excited about the beach—I just thought it was funny!

Alexander is 9!

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 21:59:33 +0000

I am woefully underprepared for celebrating birthdays right now, so after the little kids and I went to the library for a crafting activity (on the 13th, the day after Zoë and I got back from Vienna) we just met Andrew, Miriam, and Benjamin at good ol' City Center on our way home from the library to grab some dinner and then let Alexander pick out a toy from the toy store (that he's been thinking about wanting for about a month now).

He also wanted to pick out some new socks (done!) and chose a Minecraft t-shirt and some new runners as well (his shoes were getting a little raggedy). He had picked out a cake mix with Andrew earlier in the week and really wanted to get home in time to bake it himself (with Zoë's help).

They mostly did great, but mixed it in the new KitchenAid bowl that hadn't been washed and had only recently been unpacked...so there were bits of, like, styrofoam in the batter. So we put that into a container in the sink to deal with later and set the kids to work making another cake (luckily Andrew got two boxes of cake mix in the flavour Alexander wanted—orange).

They did a great job, finishing up shortly after 11:00 and determining to wake up early to decorated it (with Phoebe's help) in the morning.

Phoebe had been terribly upset about being put to bed when we got home, being summarily excluded from the cake-baking process and was quite intent on waking up to help decorate the cake.

She ended up waking up around midnight and was a complete chaos machine!

She got a drink from the water cooler upstairs, but put too much in her cup...so she walked with it all the way downstairs to put it in the sink, sloshing water the whole way. And then she was curious about what was in the sink—a container of cake batter! (Yes, still—midnight was not so long after we finally got Alexander and Zoë to bed, remember?)

She dipped her hands in and flung them about, more or less, on the dish drying mats.

She wiped quite a lot of batter on the mats, but not enough to have clean hands...we know this because Andrew eventually intercepted her to put her back to bed and somehow didn't notice her hands at all until we went into the kitchen (after she was back in bed) and noticed the cake batter that was everywhere.

It was then that he looked down and saw that he had little batter handprints on his pant legs where she hand grabbed him in a hug in the hallway.

It was a fantastic mess.:

But true to their word the kids got up early and were decorating the cake when I got out of bed this morning (looks like broad daylight, but keep in mind the sun rises at, like, 4 am)

We put together the solar powered robot Alexander had picked out and learned that I'd have to go back to the mall before he could wear his shirt (because they didn't take off the little "don't steal me" tag and I hadn't noticed when we were at the mall), which was a little disappointing for him, but he got over it.

Lucky for him, I had to go spend the afternoon at the health center getting my blood work and x-rays done for my residency visa. I stopped at the mall on the way home (with the receipt) and they took the tag off the shirt, so I was able to bring home a now-wearable shirt for Alex, which he was excited about.

Andrew made homemade tortillas and homemade salsa and homemade everything for dinner. We haven't really had a good Mexican dinner since arriving, so this was quite the birthday treat for Alexander:

After his dinner we went for a walk along the corniche. We walked all the way down to the bridge, off Gewan, and onto The Pearl.

Here's a picture of a little crab that was scuttling along beside us in the water for the entire length of the promenade (we also enjoyed watching the fish jump in the water):

And here's Alexander with The Pearl behind him:

I took some pictures of the lovely flowers along the promenade for Susanne—we do have beautiful nature here as well...it's just...been so hot that we haven't been outside much and it's so desert that we have to really look for it sometimes.

Prepare yourselves for too many pictures of the promenade because it's pretty:

Crossing under this bridge allows us to cross over to The Pearl, where we discovered our beach access. We've been trying to figure out where we're allowed to use the beach and, as it turns out, this is one of the "public" Pearl beaches (public is in quotes because it's really closed to the public, but open to Pearl residents and since we are residents it's open to us).

Here are Zoë and Alexander jumping to try to touch the underside of the bridge:

And here we are at the beach wondering whether or not it's a beach we can use (there are some beaches here that are only accessible through a hotel, for example). But it seems that we can use it...and we did use it! We walked the whole length of it!

The kids touched the water, but didn't go in (there is no swimming allowed at the beach between dusk and dawn). We really like following rules here, so we read all the rules on the sign before committing to a stroll on the beach.

I also took a picture of this sign, which I find perplexing:

No dogs, no biking or skateboarding or rollerblading, no littering, and then...what?!

No...falling? How could that possibly be regulated?

No...jumping? No...moonwalking? No...crazy trust exercises? No...clicking of heels?

Like, what is it that we're not supposed to do?! Ideas are welcome because clearly I do not understand this sign. Fortunately the list of rules for the beach were written in plain English (and Arabic).

Here's a view of our apartment complex area from across the water (I loved those little bird footprints—we found some big bird footprints farther down the beach):

Benjamin found a (dead) crab:

And when we walked to the end of the beach area, we realized that there's definitely an access point right off the other bridge that's quite close to our house—probably about a five minute walk from our door!

We went home, put candles on Alexander's cake, and sang to him (Andrew chose the starting note).

When asked what his favourite part of being 8 was he said, "Mom!" (as is tradition) and then tacked on, "And learning how to code!"

"Not moving to another country?!" Andrew asked.

And then people started offering other ideas—not getting baptized? Not flying on a plane? Not swimming in county? Not...whatever...

"Those are all good things!" Alexander said. "I like them all! I just really like coding!"

And his mother, of course!

It was fitting that on his last day of being 8 (yesterday), Phoebe picked out Robert Munsch's I Love You Forever (which I know people have all sorts of feelings about...I happen to like it). It was fun to read because on one of the pages of the book the mother is talking about her son who "grew and grew and grew" until he was nine years old. I nudged Alexander with my elbow and he snuggled sweetly into my shoulder and remarked that he didn't do any of the naughty things that that nine-year-old boy did (which is largely true). Alexander is a sweetheart.

I said (faux-pouting) that I couldn't believe it was his last day of being 8.

"And in a month it will be Phoebe's last day of being 4!" Zoë pointed out (unhelpfully).

I faux-pouted more. "I can't believe my babies are all getting so old!" I whimpered.

"Don't worry, Mommy," Phoebe said. "You’re already very old! And you’re getting older, too! Older and older, every day…older and older and older and..."

"Ahem. Thank you, Phoebe, for pointing that out," I said, cutting off her string of oldifications. "We are all getting older, it's true. And it's not sad at all. It's something to celebrate!"

So here we are having cake!

It took Alexander several times to blow out all the candles.

And here he is taking a bite of his cake-slice popsicle (forksicle?):

It was a pretty good birthday for this boy, even it it was a bit slapdash. We're excited to try out the beach this weekend (after we get the kids off to Abu Dhabi for youth conference tomorrow...and after I get my fingerprints taken at the police station for my visa and after...anyway...we hope to treat him to our first Doha beach day this weekend).

Silly sayings

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 21:12:19 +0000

When we first arrived in Vienna—after traveling all night long—I spent a minute trying to get my bearings so we could meet Hadis at the metro and follow her to the apartment. The issue was that the CAT (city-airport transport) train line was down so instead we rode the bus substitute and...I had no idea where it dropped us off.

I couldn't figure out how to make my phone accept the fact that I had travelled to Vienna (though I did eventually figure my SIM cards out) so I was without data for a minute and it was rather early in the morning and I just...wanted to figure out where to go.

I looked around for anything that might tell me where to go and saw a sign that said EINBAHN.

"Einbahn!" I said. "That sounds familiar!"

To be fair, I didn't brush up on my German at all before traveling (and, again, it was early in the morning and we'd been up for most of the night). I've been working on Arabic...and also Tagalog...and just...things have been busy.

But "einbahn" really did look familiar, so I made the executive decision that we should head toward "einbahn." It couldn't hurt!

While walking towards the sign I ran the word through my mind a few times (einbahn, einbahn, einbahn) and realized that I know the word "ein" (one) and the word "bahn" (way) and thus also realized that walking toward that particular sign would do nothing to orient us in the city: we were headed towards a one way street, nothing more.

But! But...while we were walking towards the not-at-all-helpful "one way" sign, I saw a blessed U sign.

"I know what that means!" I said, pointing to the sign. "U-bahn! That's where we want to go!"

So perhaps the einbahn sign wasn't entirely useless after all.

*****

Andrew mentioned needing to get some candles for Alexander's birthday cake this morning, which was absolutely true. We neglected to get any candles for his cake, but he was turning an age where candles don't means as much as they do when you're turning 9, so we needed candles for Alexander's cake.

"Daddy, I'm scared we'll also need a lighter," Phoebe said solemnly.

He looked at her quizzically and said, "We have a lighter already."

"We do?!" she said. "That's great!"

"It is," he agreed. "But...why did you say it scares you?"

"What do you mean?" she asked. "It doesn't."

"But you said you were scared we'll need one..."

"Oh, I'm not really scared," she explained, skipping off down the hall. "That's just something people say sometimes."

It took us a minute to realize that she meant afraid and had used scared instead as if they were completely interchangeable—which they are...sometimes. "I'm scared of the dark" and "I'm afraid of the dark" mean essentially the same thing, but I'm afraid "scared" can't be substituted for "afraid" in the phrase "I'm afraid." It's too idiomatic for such a switcheroo.

*****

There are many different delivery services available here. The kids are fascinated by all the little motorcycles going around with boxes on the back and can identify them by colour. Keeta is yellow...

Talibat is orange. Snoonu is red. Rafeeq is purple.

Anyway, Phoebe loves these delivery drivers and would like to be one herself when she grows up. She would like to drive for "Tablet," she told us and squeals whenever she spots a "Tablet Driver!"

After many, many times correcting her she has finally begun correcting herself.

"Oh, look! A tablet driver! I mean Talibat!"

*****

There are valet service workers all over the city. We had them at the hotel and we also have them here at our new apartment. We don't have a car, so this service means little to us, but the workers are present and they wear uniforms emblazoned with VALET.

There is a primary song called 'I Will Be Valiant.'

Phoebe has been pointing at the valets and saying, "Look at all those valiant servants!" lately.

Valet. Valet. Valet. I remind her.

(...and not servants).

Schönnbrunn and Billa (a guest post by Zoë | October 8)

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 20:38:39 +0000

Last week we were in Vienna visiting Uncle Patrick for his PhD defense, and we got to go to Schönnbrunn Palace/Park. It is BIG. Like, really big. There’s basically a forest inside of the grounds. The servants’ quarters alone are ginormous–I thought that they were the palace but then Mom told me otherwise.

Zoë in front of Schönnbrunn Palace

Schönnbrunn’s name translates to “beautiful spring,” or “beautiful fountain,” and it’s not wrong. There are so many fountains there that are really pretty. There are massive ponds/fountains–I think there are about 3 or 4–with sculptures on them, and there are sculpted Greek gods (and Roman gods I guess?) lining the hedge.

Sculptures lining the hedges

Zoë correctly identified Perseus (as well as several other statues), thanks to (a) our recent studies of Greek mythology, (b) the Percy Jackson series, and (c) the Goddess Girls series

There is a hill that we went up that has a perfect view of the grounds–you can see how everything looks together. It’s beautiful!

Mom's addendum: There's also the perfect view of the hill with the Gloriette on top of it, which is quite a stunning view. When I knew we would be turning the corner to see it, I turned the camera on Zoë instead of on the Gloriette and her face did not disappoint!

The view really is quite incredible!

We had a lovely time hiking to the top of the hill and then spent a little more time enjoying the woods before descending again. It's been awhile since we've been surrounded by trees. It was lovely!

Hadis lent us some rain jackets for the morning because it was a little bit chilly and "spitty." They came in handy, but then the weather cleared so we packed them back up in our backpacks.

Zoë in front of the Neptune Fountain

Neptune Fountain

The Gloriette

Zoë on the balcony of the Gloriette with the grounds sprawling behind her

(Now back to Zoë):

In Vienna, I reached my step goal twice per day, meaning I hit at least 20,000 steps a day. Schönnbrunn was no exception! There was a little path down a forest area that went to the parking lot, but also to the entrance and exit. It is such a pretty path.

The path actually took us to another fountain portraying a woman pouring out a jug of water with a child by her side.

Once we moved on from the fountain, we came to…drumroll please…yet another fountain! This time with sculptures of Greek gods on it and women dumping out jugs of water. We turned so many corners, and found so many fountains. We were not using Google Maps, or any sort of navigation, but we found our way back to the familiar flowerbeds and pond fountains of the main entrance and exit.

Faux Roman ruins were in vogue the 1700s

After getting out of Schönnbrunn, we needed to find somewhere to get food for lunch. So, since we had gone to Billa, a grocery store, with Patrick to get lunch and drinks for his defense, (which you can read about here) so I suggested we go there to get lunch,* because they have delicious bread there—and it’s fairly cheap! Maybe like 2 dollars at the maximum. I don’t really remember, but it’s pretty inexpensive.

* Mom addendum: Facts. Zoë loved getting bread at Billa, but in truth we went from Schönnbrun to the UN and then went to Billa for lunch...yet again.

I will also add that we really liked the rows of trees—in part because we haven't been surrounded by trees quite like these in some time, but also because they're simply romantic (as Anne of Green Gables would say).

Kinda chic to have a daughter who says, "Now I'll take a picture of you!" (nearly) every time you say, "Let me take a picture of you here!"

I also really liked this little dragon handle we found on a pot:

And I appreciated the maple motif outside of the visitor's center (the tree is—obviously—a maple and then the wall behind it also has maple cutouts in it):

I'm also just going to add that Zoë found the open track system in Vienna quite terrifying at first—and there are many justifiable reasons for feeling that way! It's loud, you can feel the train rushing past you, people get pushed onto the tracks...it feels way more dangerous than our closed system in Doha, where the train remains behind a wall and there's really very little "gap" to "mind" at all.

But here's Zoë waiting patiently for the train outside:

And here she is reacting to the rush of wind preceding the incoming train:

Uncle Patrick's Defensio

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 21:39:43 +0000

When Josie and I planned our trip out to Austria in May it was technically originally supposed to be for Patrick's PhD defensio, but that ended up being postponed until now...which is why I'm in Austria again. It's been a wonderful—and exhausting—week! Patrick had his first week at his new job and was busy preparing for his receptions (which we helped with) and Hadis had work and her studies as well, so Zoë and I were on our own for a few days to do touristy things, but it all worked out.

Friday was the big day!

Here's Patrick in his office, making some final changes to his presentation:

And here's Zoë holding a (cheesy) baguette on on the street after we went to buy some fresh bread for his post-defensio reception with Hadis:

Uncle Patrick thinks it is very important to take a picture holding bread in Europe—he made both Rachel and Miriam pose for a picture with bread when they visited him back in 2024:

"But why?" Zoë wanted to know.

Once back at Patrick's institute, we set to work preparing for the reception:

He had bread and cheese and meats and vegetables and a table of sweet treats:

As well as tzatziki and kashk bademjan with some chips for dipping.

Patrick wasn't too worried about his defense. He knows his project very well and had already received a "1" on his written work, so he knew that even if his defense didn't go marvelously he would still pass. That being said, he prepared well for his presentation and did an excellent job. The room was full of friendly faces, he presented confidently, and answered questions by examiners and audience members well.

Here he is introducing one of his advisors to the room:

He wore an Austrian vest and jacket (though I forgot to take a picture in the full outfit—he looked great). Here he is presenting his first slide:

He wanted to know if I thought it was strange for him to connect his research to the Bible and I was like, "With my background in critical religious literacies...no." His project was using light to excite matter to make it measurable in order to appropriately age items (specifically leather book covers) without touching them—so dealing with light and matter.

Here he is discussing some of his methodology:

At the end of his presentation, everyone knocked on the table instead of applauding (it's tradition) and then the floor was opened for questions. After he finished answering questions we again knocked on the table and then were sent out of the room so his examination committee could deliberate.

We honestly weren't in the hallway very long before they invited Patrick in and congratulated him (I think most of us missed hearing the actual news because they invited him back into the room first—but he passed with a "1," which is the highest grade, a sehr gut).

His friends and Hadis put together a terrific lab coat for him, filled with memories of his time as a PhD student (as well as his life in general):

They had pictures of him in various stages of life, with lots of friends and family, busy at work, and so forth, as well as pins representing his interests, some badges of inside jokes, and so forth. They also presented him with a special graduation cap filled with inside jokes—including a 3-D print out the frame he designed to hold the equipment he used to take all of his measurements:

Here he is spinning around to show everyone the beautiful work of art:

His jacket says Dr. Layton on it (and all his friends gave him gifts addressed to Dr. Layton). Oh, Hadis also presented him with a sash that said, "It's Doctor Actually."

Here he is taking a minute to examine the hat:

Not only did his friends take the time to thoughtfully decorate the cap, they also gave him a card telling him that they'd collected funds for his first "post doc" grant but that he'd have to solve the riddle to get to it. The clue was that it lay under his feet. Initially he thought that if he tipped the hat off his head he'd find the grant, but then he realized that he was also standing on top of his own head since there was a cutout of himself on top of the hat—his gift was inside the box on top of the hat:

Here's a picture of Patrick and Hadis:

It was beautiful to watch them embrace—entering each other's arms like a sigh.

Patrick's relief was palpable and Hadis was so proud (everyone there was proud of Patrick, but Hadis was perhaps the most proud).

This moment represented years of hard work for him! I'm so glad we could be there to help him celebrate.

Patrick also came armed with presents for others—he brought books for his advisors and, of course, planned the reception for everyone else.

Here is the room ready to toast him:

He went around and "cheers-ed" everyone in turn. Clinking glasses seems to be a cultural norm here—I've done more clinking and had my glass clunked more time than I can count in the past 24 hours.

Patrick made sure to prepare some special non-alcoholic sparkling cider for himself, me, Zoë, and his Muslim friend who came:

I learned that—at least for Patrick's Muslim friend who was present—saying "cheers" is haram (and renders the drink in the cup also haram). I had never heard of this—and evidently it is somewhat open to interpretation, with some people considering it "haram" because while it isn't imbibing directly it is mimicking drinking culture. In Mormon parlance this would be like saying that it is important to avoid the appearance of evil. But, other Muslims interpret "cheers" a bit more neutrally. It's not really something that I've ever encountered in the Middle East, but it was a bit of a tricky moment for Patrick's friend to navigate since cheers-ing is rather huge here.

Oh, and one of his friends (Nadia) from his German course (which he's been taking the past few months while he's bene looking for a job...which he now has) is from Russia and she remembered him telling her that I used to live there, so she brought along an Alyonka chocolate bar (which has been sold in the same wrapper design since 1966). Zoë is holding it (below):

Nadia was so wonderful. We spent a lot of time talking with each other since neither of us knew many people there. She has children...so we had a lot of common interests to talk about.

Here's a close up of some of the pictures (I wanted to send this picture to Auntie Josie):

Patrick wanted to make sure Zoë spent some time with his colleagues—most of whom are female scientists—so that he could hopefully spark something inside of her to keep her in science (she's currently interested in becoming a doctor). So he put his lab coat on her:

And sent her off on a tour with Laura (I believe she's a post-doc from Italy) leading our little group (all his friends who were still present also went along for the tour). Here's Zoë with some of the equipment Uncle Patrick used:

But we also got to see the microbiology lab, the DNA extraction lab, and many other labs with a bunch of fancy equipment. It was fun to get to see where Patrick spent so much of his time!

After the tour we tidied up and headed home for a little rest before heading out to celebrate some more!

Here's Zoë playing some balloon volleyball with Iulia (from Romania):

The fall weather we've had has been so lovely! I'm a little sad to leave it all behind in a few days...

It's so fun to get to crunch through the leaves on the pavement and see the trees such a brilliant yellow.

Anyway, Patrick's celebration dinner was in the evening, around 8:30 PM at the Hard Rock Cafe (where Hadis currently works). We left a little bit early so that we could look at some of the sights of Vienna at night:

Here's Zoë waiting on a big fancy couch inside the Hard Rock Cafe:

And here she is (finally) enjoying her dessert:

She spent most of the evening playing games on her phone to escape from the (a) boredom of the adult conversations and (b) loudness of the restaurant atmosphere—they play rock music, of course, so it was rather loud in the restaurant. But, I must say that Patrick's group of friends is quite wonderful! They were all so supportive of Patrick and very welcoming to me and Zoë:

He's surrounded himself with some wonderful people!

It's rather fitting that his defensio was almost four years to the day that he moved to Vienna (October 10, 2022). I can't imagine my PhD taking only four years (since I've just entered year three and I think I still have at least three years to go), but I suppose everyone's journey is different...and I'll just keep plugging away...

Congratulations, Dr. Layton!

Mission completion: High five to Doha

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 20:14:24 +0000

One thing that Zoë really wanted to do in Vienna was to find the Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al Thani International Anti-Corruption Excellence Award statue—the one that matches the one on the corniche in Doha. We knew it was on the grounds of the United Nations in Vienna, but we didn't really know what that meant.

I figured it would be somewhere public on the grounds of the UN, but I figured incorrectly...and thus we arrived at the UN woefully under prepared for a more formal visit.

We had not purchased tickets in advance. We had not brought our passports with us. And we definitely had Uncle Patrick's keys with his Leatherman keychain (which made me worried about the airport level security we would ultimately need to go through). That felt like three big strikes against us.

Fortunately, I was able to buy tickets online for the next available tour, they would take my driver's license as ID (and Zoë wasn't required to provide ID because she's a child), and security didn't consider the puny pocketknife a threat. So, we made it inside and could see the hand across the courtyard:

But we had to wait for the tour to begin...

And then we had to go through the entire hour-long tour (which we don't really regret). Here's Zoë wearing the badge for a minute—she didn't actually get a badge because she had a child's ticket and only adults get badges.

Even after going through the entire tour, however, we still weren't quite within reach of the hand. The tour guide started leading us through the courtyard away from the hand, trying to point out items in the courtyard from all the countries of people in the tour...so I reminded her that we were visiting from Qatar and rather wanted a picture with the hand sculpture...and she gave us permission to leave the group to snap a picture with hand and then hurry back to rejoin everyone.

It may have taken us three hours, $24, and a slight bending of the rules, but we succeeded in giving Doha a high five from Vienna! And...we got a tour of the UN to go along with it.

Here are the kids with the statue in Doha (which is much bigger than the one in Vienna) back in August:

Vienna, day 1: Some parts of the world experience autumn!

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 22:20:36 +0000

This little camel didn't make it into our post about the Abu Dhabi airport, but it's available to come home with anyone who wants it for the low, low price of $21000.

Zoë and I both managed to sleep on the flight from Abu Dhabi to Vienna—the flight wasn't quite full so we had an extra seat in our row, which was nice—but we were still fairly exhausted when we arrived. The City Airport Train is out of commission for the time being, but they have busses running the route, so...after a bit of misdirection...we managed to get on the bus to head into the city. Zoë was excited to be on a bus because, to her memory, this was her first time on a bus!

I was thrilled to look out the window and remember that there is autumn in the world! To quote Anne of Green Gables, "I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers..."

We don't have much of a hint of October in Doha yet (or ever?) but it's lovely to see the golden trees here.

Here's Zoë standing by the open track in the U-Bahn:

I was trying to explain to the kids how metro stations are in other places—open and dangerous. We're quite spoiled in Doha, where every station is enclosed and every train lines up accurately to the doors and everything is clean and bright and there are never any drunk people. But the children were most perplexed by the open-track concept (and Zoë is still a little freaked out when the trains come rushing into the station).

Hadis was kind enough to meet us at the CAT station to escort us to the apartment. I'm not sure we would have made it as seamlessly through the door in our "stayed-up-all-night" stupor if she hadn't been there to lead us. She left to go to the lab and we settled in for a little nap...which turned into a longer-than-intended nap (which was fine).

Here's Zoë looking out the window into the courtyard:

Uncle Patrick came to pick us up to run some errands in the afternoon, see his lab, and take us on a few sightseeing adventures.

Here's the view outside of his (temporary) office space, where he's currently squirreling away refreshments for her defensio celebration:

He took us to Central Cemetery after we swung by his lab. This is where Mozart is actually buried, though no one really knows where he's buried... It was a little bit of a walk and we were a little bit hungry so we popped into the store and grabbed some pastries to eat on the way.

Here is the monument for Mozart, where an angel—exhausted from its continual search for Mozart—rests:

And here we are in the cemetery—the trees aren't even that fall-y yet, but I'm still happy we get to see them:

There were little dishes set out with rocks for bees to clib in and enjoy a little drink:

And I found this statue of a headless child rather creepy (spooky season is upon us, and yet...we feel rather unspooky where we are):

We went to the shopping district to look for a few things—Zoë was excited about this sign because from a distance it looked like there was no apostrophe, so it was TARDIS (like from Doctor Who):

We of course walked past St. Stephen's Cathedral:

I was still very excited about the trees...so I took a few pictures of the walkway...

Andrew will be so proud because I actually bought a new bag—it's a little backpack style thing that Uncle Patrick and Auntie Josie both swear by. It's big enough to fit a water bottle and whatever else you might need to pack around the city, but it's low-profile enough that you're not going to bash into people with it when you swivel around (and they're fairly cheap, so Zoë got one as well):

This view is from the top of IKEA, where we picked up a blueberry pie because Patrick saw it and wanted it (we had actually been talking about pie—or the lack thereof—in areas outside of North America when we picked out our pastries earlier and Patrick was talking about how the pastries are good but he would give just about anything for a good piece of pie and then we walked through IKEA (for the roof experience) and—boom!—there was a pie right there in the freezer section!).

It's Thanksgiving on Monday, so the pie was timely.

Here are a few more views from IKEA's rooftop:

You can actually order food at the IKEA cafe up there and eat on the roof, looking out over the city. We didn't do that, but we did go back to Patrick's apartment for pizza and pie (which was just as good...and we could take our shoes off and get comfy, so was perhaps even better).

He made us stop at the Heisse am Gürtel for a picture on the way home from the metro:

And that about sums up our first day in Austria...

Doha to Abu Dhabi

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 22:18:05 +0000

Zoë and I are in the Abu Dhabi airport, waiting for our connecting flight to Vienna! Compared to Doha, the Abu Dhabi airport seems both busy and little lackluster. No offense to Abu Dhabi, it's just that the Doha airport has a rainforest inside...so...that's kind of difficult to compete with.

*****

We spent the morning homeschooling, dealing with a power outage, and then heading to our friends' house to do our art and history co-op lessons. We left the boys there for a sleepover. Zoë and Phoebe and I went to the library for Arabic storytime, and then Andrew popped over from campus to pick up Phoebe and take her home while Zoë and I hopped on the metro to go to the airport (Miriam stayed home and then went to the orthodontist).

We arrived at the airport plenty early, so had a little bit of time to explore the airport. We saw the famous bear statue (which I actually think is a little bit creepy—there are better statues in the airport):

I like this one better (though it's still a little odd):

We took the connector train to the far end of the airport so we could walk through "The Orchard," which is the rainforest garden in the middle of the airport.

It's really pretty cool! They have a walking path and a bridge, little play huts for kids (though they were filled with people napping), secluded seating areas, and a waterfall...

This statue of dining animals was rather cute (we were quite sure Phoebe would have loved it):

The waterfall drowns out all the annoying sounds of the airport (so keep an eye on your watch if you're the kind of person who depends on the "last call" announcements to catch your flight) and you can almost pretend you're not at the airport...which I think is key to a good airport experience.

We saw a sign here in the Abu Dhabi airport that promised a way to "experience the magic of the airport without the flight" and I...am afraid I don't understand. Airports are not magical. They are places of limbo, of torture, something to be endured for a greater prize. I have no desire to experience the airport without the flight...like...what does that even mean?

This feeling was especially poignant considering that we got off our plane here in Abu Dhabi and were immediately herded into a line for another round of security. We guzzled the water in our water bottles, re-screened all our carry-ons, went through the body scanners...all over again. And now we're sitting at an airport with announcements going off left and right, gate agents yelling out names of missing passengers, and just...sitting here with no rain forest in sight.

Sad, right?

But it was a good flight! There was a darling little boy (from Turkmenistan) in front of us and he insisted on playing with Zoë throughout the whole flight, demanding high fives, turning around to play peek-a-boo, and just having a great time with her. When we disembarked from the plane he held her hand all the way until his parents peeled him away when we had to go in different directions.

She's quite the baby whisperer!

Conference and crystals

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 21:22:42 +0000

With General Conference this weekend, we weren't sure if we would be able to speak with Rachel since Saturday is her P-day, which, as Phoebe described it fairly accurately, is "the day that missionaries don't have to do any very much work and can just do things like laundry." It's also the day missionaries are allowed to write their correspondence and—in this day and age—call home.

But she managed to arrange a time to call us between her breakfast and the beginning of conference, right around 5:00 for us. I had just taken the kids for a pre-conference stroll...

And Rachel was ready to call right when we got home. She has two companions (both going to Thailand) and was made a Sister Training Leader and has already seen her cousin Michael (you can read this week's letter here). She says she has seen him pretty much every day since she's been in the MTC. I told her that it helps that he's so tall. She said it helps that he yells her first name out whenever he sees her (which is technically against the rules).

Phoebe was really excited to talk to Rachel. She told her about how our "lift wasn't fully openational" during the fire alarm earlier this week (which was rather perplexing for Phoebe) and that "lift is another word for elevator." She listened to Rachel's stories and then parroted advice back to her, "I have four things to say to you: don't fall, don't get lost and wander around in the dark, don't lose track of your companions, and be a good missionary." Something like that.

She also wanted to see what was in Rachel's bed (she has been requesting such things "show me where you keep your pyjamas," "show me your table," "show me what's in your bed" since Rachel went away to college), so Rachel spun around to show off her bunk bed and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

"Whoa! Who is taking your picture?" Phoebe asked.

"That's...just me..." Rachel said.

"Oh! I didn't recognize you!"

"You've just been talking to me!"

"Yeah, but I didn't recognize you in the mirror!"

Soon enough we had to say goodbye to Rachel so we could all settle in for conference. Andrew actually had to go off to a dinner for work, so I watched with the kids. We don't have a television yet, but Andrew went out in the morning and picked up a projector (which we plan to use upstairs so we don't have to always have a TV out, and which is much easier to bring home in a shopping bag).

We set out some special conference snacks, which looked a bit different than our typical conference snacks, but which were still very good. We tried rambutan...

And some other yummy things—Andrew ordered some awameh and baclava for us, and seasoned peanuts, as well as more familiar things like apples and bananas and mangoes...

We watched the Saturday morning session and then went out for a bedtime walk, arriving home shortly before 10:00. While the nightlife here is active, as I mentioned, it's more our speed than the nightlife at the hotel in West Bay! I am so grateful to not have pounding club music drifting through my window and instead hear only the distant hum of conversation, punctuated by tinkling laughter of children and perhaps the odd car honking (which we also got downtown, honestly).

Rather than loud pounding club music, as we could expect at our hotel, the sidewalk speakers were piping out smooth jazz tunes and acoustic samba music (interestingly) this evening—it was just very quiet background noise.

But, as I told the kids, if you go out late enough at night when the music is off and most of the people have gone home to bed, you can hear crickets! We have hardly seen any bugs here (Miriam just got rather excited about seeing a beetle this evening), so knowing there are crickets around felt rather exciting.

We walked slowly to appreciate the crystal displays once we were back on the Crystal Walk.

The kids noticed that there is a little crystal bird in each case—no matter the subject of the scene—and enjoy looking for it in each case. We imagine it might be like an artist's signature (but that's entirely conjecture, so don't quote us on it).

Here are some horses Phoebe rather appreciated:

Here's a well in the middle of a desert, surrounded by rams:

And here's a well in the middle of the desert, surrounded by rams, surrounded by curious children:

Sleep schedules

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 09:33:32 +0000

We've been in our apartment for two sleeps now—two sleeps that just happen to coincide with the weekend, which is always quite busy on Gewan Island, and has left us wondering when, precisely, anyone here sleeps. To be fair, while we can hear a distant hum of conversation coming from outside—where people are up and active until late in the evening!—on the first floor of our house, we cannot hear much at all from the second floor of our house (where the bedrooms are).

When I say "late in the evening," I mean that there are still families walking up (and running, depending on their age) up and down the Crystal Walk until 10...11...12...1 o'clock in the evening, which is pretty incredible considering school hours typically start at 7:00 am (I know this is the weekend, so we might see fewer children out on weekdays, but I don't know).

Here's a picture from about 10:30 PM and you can see all the cafes are quite crowded:

By midnight the air conditioning seems to turn off and I would say most of the families with young children go home. I will admit, however, that we were up quite late last night. I was behind on my homework (from having been busy moving all week) and had to finish a few assignments and when I was done, I suggested that we (Andrew and I—our kids were in bed!) go for a walk...at 1:00 in the morning.

That's how we know the air conditioning must switch off around midnight because it certainly wasn't on.

It's cool enough at night to be comfortable now (around 90°F or 33°C—hahahaha!) so we weren't too hot walking around. Here's a picture from around 1:30 am (much less crowded, but still a few people walking around, including many security workers—and I just happened to catch both photos while the lights were purple...they actually rotate through a number of colours):

We went to check out the promenade, which is also apparently air conditioned. We had walked across the bridge to The Pearl islands as a family earlier in the evening so we could try to find the bus stop—we're still figuring out transportation options—and we skipped the promenade on the way home because we weren't sure it was air conditioned and by the time we'd crossed the bridge twice we preferred the route we knew was air conditioned. But apparently the promenade is also air conditioned.

Here's the bridge leading over to The Pearl:

The Promenade runs along the water:

Shops close down for the night at various hours. Some restaurants (particularly the coffee places) were already closed when we went outside; the pharmacy was just closing at 1:00, but there's a little convenience store that is open 24/7.

The lights on the Crystal Walk turn off around 2:00 am (we were home by then).

So, I would say being out with your family (small kids!) until midnight is fairly common, with nearly everyone home by 2:00 am.

The fajr (dawn) prayer is then around 4:00 am (with the window for that prayer ending with sunrise, which is around 5:30 am). For many, this is when their day begins—schools start around 7:00 am, for example—but some get up to pray and then return to bed for a few hours. It's wild to me to think about having my little kids out until midnight and then up and out the door before 7:00, but people do it.

This study showed that there was little difference between a consolidated sleep schedule and a split sleep schedule (those who got up for fajr and those who did not). Participants weren't allowed to nap during the study...but I think napping must be key to surviving the sleep-wake schedule I've observed here.

This study discussing "Sleep from an Islamic Perspective" notes that: "A short mid-day nap (called Qailulah in Islamic culture) is a deeply embedded practice in the Muslim culture, and it takes a religious dimension (Sunnah) for some Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said, “Take a short nap, for Devils do not take naps” [Sahih Aljamie. Alalbani 1647]."

Benjamin Franklin may have said, ""Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise," while Muhammad (pbuh) suggested that “Sleeping early in the day betrays ignorance, in the middle of the day is right, and at the end of the day is stupid” (Fath Al-Bari, p.73).

So nightlife is alive and well here...with napping being rather important as well, I suppose...

Alexander, A Valiant Servant

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 23:17:32 +0000

We are busy getting settled in our new apartment, figuring out all the ins and outs of everything, unpacking, and so forth.

The island itself has an electronic "access card" that we can use for island amenities, such as entering certain beaches, but also just for entering our block of apartments. Currently I think Andrew, Miriam, Benjamin, and I have that card.

There's also a separate app for our front door. We have a couple of actual keys (made of metal and everything) but we can open the door remotely as well. Andrew was getting that set up this morning before we left for church and he mentioned to the kids that "everyone down to Alex" should have access to the door from their phones/devices.

We didn't get everyone's devices set up with this app, however, because we had to leave for church.

Choir was pretty cool! We love meeting with the Tagalog Ward!

Because we know how to read music and play the piano the director (who sings with the Tabernacle Choir upon occasion) immediately roped us into being section leaders (so we can break into groups and practice parts separately). I'm in charge of the soprano section, Andrew is in charge of the bass section, Miriam is in charge of the alto section (even though she's a soprano, but she's so musically inclined that he's not worried about her not learning her part), and he takes the tenor section.

He taught himself how to play the piano as a child, walking from school to the church building and playing music by ear until he figured out how to read music, which, he told us, not many Filipinos can do—so they have rather long rehearsals to give everyone time to learn the music by ear and heart (or h-ear-t). The good news is that last week they had food before the practice and this week they had food after the practice, so it hardly even feels like a burden to be there for so long (though for Phoebe, food after was better than food before—it broke up periods of having to be reverent).

(Last week Phoebe asked me "Is this the last song?" after every single song during sacrament meeting and I couldn't figure out why she was so impatient to get out of there...until I remembered that she'd already been sitting quite well-behaved through 1.5–2 hours of choir practice...only to then have to sit through sacrament meeting?! It was a lot. She did better this week with some fresh food in her belly).

Here she is eating ube pandesal with cheese filling:

They also had Spanish bread (it's not from Spain; it's just what they call it/a remnant of colonization), milky cheese bread (we rather like this), an ube/rice dish, and a Maja Blanca (a coconut pudding with corn, topped with grated cheese). Here's Zoë showing off her plate:

It was incredible!

So, we ate, and then went down to listen to Miriam play prelude.

Beside me, Alexander sighed heavily and put his head in his hands.

"What's wrong, little buddy?" I asked him.

"Nothing much," he said glumly before letting everything bubble out: "I guess we just need to go home and figure out how to get that door app on my device so everyone else can do it, too. It's just kinda tricky because my Gmail is always signed in as Zoë and I don't know how to make it not do that, so I don't even know how I can get to the invitation link in my email while I'm on that device, so I don't even know if we can put the app on that phone and...it's just kind of a lot. But we've got to do it because, as Dad said, it all comes down to me..."

He was really stressed out about this—thinking he was the linchpin of the entire operation.

"Oh, sweet boy," I explained, rubbing his back. "Daddy didn't mean 'down to you' as if you're the one responsible for making this happen. He meant 'down to you' as in a range of people—from Daddy to Alexander, with everyone in between in age order. Except for Phoebe..."

"Wait...what?" he asked lifting his head up suddenly and sitting up a little straighter.

"Yeah," I laughed. "It's nothing you need to worry about."

This made him feel rather relieved—a little silly, perhaps, but quite a lot better.

And Andrew (our resident "app man" and general "IT guy") figured out solutions to every hurdle Alexander mentioned. I think the only phone we have to install it in is...mine.

I don't love this "app for that" world we live in.

There are apps for everything and I just...get really stressed out about creating accounts and passwords and logging in to everything and keeping them all organized on my phone. It's...too much for me.

Luckily there are people like Andrew who can help me keep it all straight because if it all came down to me? Well...I would probably also be sitting with my head in my hands.

Enjoy this picture of Phoebe running down the hall toward our apartment (we are right at the end of the hallway) so she can open the door after Andrew uses his phone to unlock it remotely—Alexander is on the left:

And here's a picture of everyone (except for me and Alexander) sitting on our new couch having family screen time:

Because the family that screens together...leans together? Careens together? Intervenes together? Rages against the machine together?

I don't know...we do something together, surely.

To be fair, the reason we were gathering with our devices in the first place was to have our evening scripture study and since we shipped most of our physical scriptures (and our shipment hasn't arrived yet) we're currently using our phones because...there's an app for that!

Slow down! You're moving too fast...

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 21:24:53 +0000

Happy Last Day of September to all who celebrate!

In our family we apparently celebrate by...moving...because today was the day we moved out of the hotel (more or less) and into our apartment and today was the day that Rachel moved into the MTC (missionary training center).

What did you do to celebrate? (If you didn't move, it doesn't count.)

Andrew, Miriam, and I stayed up far too late packing up virtually everything in our hotel room and getting it ready to cart downstairs. Here's a shot Miriam took of our things in the hotel room:

In the morning we alerted the front desk that we were ready to start moving things downstairs. They said they would send up 2 trolleys for us. We reminded them that, uh, we had 27 suitcases between the 7 of us...plus some other acquired goods (like such as a piano and some folding chairs and a dollhouse)...and they were like, "Sure, so...two trolleys."

It took many more than two trolleys. And the porters were—probably fairly—ticked off about it.

But here's the thing: they don't let you just take the trolleys to use on your own. And they don't really just let you wheel your luggage around the hotel (like barbarians). So they insist on moving your luggage for you. They're just mad about it.

And...I get it.

I wasn't exactly thrilled by the whole process myself. The past several months have been, in a word, exhausting. I'm ready for things to settle down a bit.

We have prepared a tip for the porters.

Our ward (church congregation) was a wonderful help! Our Relief Society president arranged for five vehicles to help cart our stuff (4 sisters and 1 brother). We probably could have done it in 3 or 4, but five worked well, especially because we squeezed in all our kiddos at the end for a ride to our apartment. They named our group chat on WhatsApp "Heiss Heist," which was perfect (and rather descriptive of what the day felt like). They all win the award for "Ultimate Human/Genius" in my book!

It took us one hot and sweaty hour to load up all our stuff, drive over to the apartment, unload everything, and get it up the elevator and into the apartment (using only the single trolley in the building and by just stuffing suitcases into the elevator).

It was a mess and it felt overwhelming and I honestly wasn't sure if this amount of stuff was going to be absorbed into the apartment (let alone the shipment we have coming—oy, vey!) but after we got started organizing things it started to feel a lot better. We still have a long way to go (we have no bookshelves and about a million boxes of books arriving by mid-October) but things are starting to fall into place(s).

Good thing I'm, uh, leaving for Austria on Monday??

I'm excited to see Patrick and Hadis but the thought of packing and getting on a plane right now just about makes me cry. But it'll be good. Sometimes doing hard things isn't as hard as thinking about doing hard things, and when you show up to do the thing it isn't really that hard at all—it's just fine. Fun even.

In our family not only do we celebrate September 30 by moving, we celebrate it (and everything) with ✩°｡⋆⸜ 𝓪𝓷𝔁𝓲𝓮𝓽𝔂 ⸝⋆｡°✩

Sounds fun, right?

We're the kind of family that asks each other, "How's your tummy?" whenever there's a big thing coming up because chances are our tummy is not alright.

Rachel was up texting me this morning (night for her) and I told her she'd better get some sleep...and then proceeded to work and work and work for hours on end...and then texted her this evening (morning for her) to ask her how her tummy was feeling (it's a sign of affection).

Her tummy was fine.

But it was less fine later in the evening (for me...day for her).

When we called her (around 9:00 PM our time, noon her time), just before she left for the MTC, she told me that at least two people had inquired about her tummy today.

"Who?" I guessed, "Me...and my mom?"

"Yes!" Rachel said.

We sang "Happy MTC Day to you!" for her, which isn't a real song...it's just one we made up to the tune of "Happy Birthday" because we needed something to do to break the ice when she answered. And then we had to sing it again because we—unjustly—sang it while Phoebe was in the middle of changing into her pyjamas (because that's when Rachel had the audacity to answer our call). She came running down the hall (wearing nothing but underwear, trailing her pyjamas behind her) crying about how we'd left her out.

So we sang "Happy MTC Day to you!" to her again, with Phoebe included this time (still not quite in her jammies).

"Because if you weren't serenaded by a half-naked vocalist on the day you enter the MTC, does it even count?" I asked.

We had a lovely little chat with Rachel, offering her advice like: don't fall, make friends, do things, seek out opportunities, work hard on language classes, eat your vegetables, learn lots, don't ever forget to pray...and so forth.

Then Phoebe called out, "I have one more device for you!" and offered this awkward little nugget: "I really hope there are babies at the MTC so you can move your body in an appropriate way."

We were all a little baffled by this remark and asked Phoebe to expand upon that idea, which she did. After a few minutes we realized that Phoebe had been recalling part of a conversation we had about appropriate stimming—something everybody does. Perhaps you tap your foot, twirl your hair, twist your rings, run your tongue along your teeth...whatever it is, chances are you do something to regulate your body, release little bits of energy, cope with chaos. It's perfectly normal; however, some of our children have been engaging in rather noisy, large, distracting stims recently.

We had this discussion during scripture study the other night (when I just couldn't take it anymore) because Alexander was kicking the leather ottoman in the living room of our hotel with his bare feet, making it squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak...

Gently kicking your feet might be an okay thing to do.

The squeaking noise was getting awfully annoying, though.

Gently kicking your feet might be an okay thing to do...but you don't want kick your legs with such vigor that you shake the whole pew at church...or whatever.

Gently kicking your feet is fine...but how can you do it in a way that doesn't detract from anyone else's experience?

We're all capable of reining in our need to self regulate without causing annoyance or distress for others, right? And by "we all" I mean "in this house" and by "capable" I mean "of working on."

Anyway, during this conversation I had mentioned that I missed having little babies to hold because babies are the best stim—you get to rock them and pat them and in doing so you treat your own little nervous system to that rhythm, but I just can't quite get away with that anymore now that my babies are grown.

So that was the advice that Phoebe was trying to pass along to Rachel.

All too soon it was time for Rachel to leave (and for us to get ready for beddy), so I told her to "Have fun storming the castle!"

She's been joking that the MTC is kind of a like a zoo. My mom lives close to the MTC, so sometimes she and Rachel would go for walks past the MTC so Rachel could look at the animals on the inside before going to live in the zoo herself.

But we realized it is also somewhat like a castle, which made me think about...castles.

There's a metro stop on the green line called The White Palace or القصر الأبيض (Al-Qaṣr al-Abyaḍ) and while I was riding the train last week I looked up القصر because it sounded like "castle" to me and I wondered whether it was truly a cognate.

One person (Naveed Islam) wrote specifically about the root قصر to show how many quasi-related meanings can come from a single root word (similar to the way English...and I'd wager most other languages...works):

Arabic works the same way: words from the same root will have related meanings! But sometimes, this relationship can seem very loose. On the surface, many roots appear to produce totally different meanings:
قصر: (noun) a palace; a building home to someone powerful (qasr)
قصير: (adjective) short, opposite of long (qasir)
The two words are from the same linguistic root. They look and sound almost the same. The only difference is an extra letter in the second word to make to make it an adjective. How is shortness related to a palace?
An explanation is that a palace is where its owner’s safety is confined to, where he or she is bound to stay. The palace marks the boundary and thus the shortness of their safety and freedom, outside of which that safety runs out.
On a spiritual level, these two words also link a palace (a symbol of worldly power) to shortness (and ending). Truly worldly strength lasts a short time before it becomes worthless. Like this, the root قصر (qasr) contains meanings of both shortness and a palace.

When I told Andrew about this he equated it to the word "keep" in English (meaning a(n extra) fortified section of a larger castle). Qasr is also the root word for "confine" and even "to keep under control" (according to Hans Wehr). So all of this makes sense, and Rachel seemed to like the idea of entering a castle—of a place where she'd be kept safe (physically and spiritually). And may it be so!

But, the Online Etymological Dictionary (and we all know how much I respect the OED) attests that castle and قصر are, in fact, related through some (seemingly circuitous) borrowing, ultimately from Latin:

Latin castrum in its plural castra was used for "military encampment, military post" and thus it came into Old English as ceaster and formed the -caster and -chester in place names. Spanish alcazar "castle" is from Arabic al-qasr, from Latin castrum.

So perhaps the etymology is a little less poetic than the first explanation I read (what a disappointment) and thus the fact that it shares a root with "short" is more coincidental than anything. This website notes that words that share a root are often (but not always) related.

Anyway, here's Rachel ready to storm the castle (of the MTC):

Because my mom lives so close to the MTC she got permission to walk Rachel there instead of driving there (her original instructions stated that no walk-ins would be allowed and that all missionaries must arrive in a car, but my mom's got wasta and pulled a few strings to make it so, as it were).

It looks like a lovely day for a walk!

And as Rachel's roommate/friend Hailey noted about Rachel: "“If you are ever worried about Rachel’s well-being, just take her on a walk, she’ll be okay. She’s like a dog! You just have to feed her a bit and then walk around and let her go to bed.”

So this walk was probably good for Rachel—her last day on the outside for seven full weeks!

Here's her last selfie with Auntie Josie and Naanii (they each pulled a suitcase for her, pulling off another great Heiss Heist on the other side of the world):

And at 10:09 PM we got radio silence.

For years we've been telling Rachel, "Get thee to a nunnery!" whenever she's done anything...amiss. And now she's actually done the most equivalent thing she could muster as a Mormon*—she's entered the MTC as a sister missionary.

Tonight when she goes to bed, we will be leaving our hotel for the last time in our morning!

We're sleeping here one more night because we don't have curtains in our new place yet and the sun rises at like 4:00 in the morning, which...we don't really want...so here's a picture of Andrew playing the game of Hearts with Benjamin, Zoë, and Alexander before bed:

It was a great way to end what was once again a day of big changes for Heisses across the globe!

I can't believe it's October (perhaps in part because it's still quite hot). أرنب أرنب أرنب The world can stop spinning quite so fast whenever it wants to...I won't complain.**

* Member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But...for the purposes of alliteration...it needed the /m/.
** I would probably find a way to complain.

Shifting and walking scientists

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 22:01:41 +0000

Shifting, as they call it here, is no joke! Moving across the city is certainly easier than trying to plan an international move...but there are still a lot of moving parts.

And I'm one of them!

I have maxed out my metro card three days running (each card is charged for a maximum of three rides per day—anything after that is free...and I have certainly been taking advantage of that this week).

Yesterday Miriam and I carried big IKEA bags full of sheets and duvet inserts from the hotel to the apartment...while also dragging Phoebe along. It was...exhausting.

And then today I packed up a big IKEA bag full of towels to take to the apartment (because we sure wished we'd have thought of bringing towels to the apartment yesterday). The towels were actually far lighter and much fluffier than the sheets and duvet inserts (which were packed rather tightly), so it felt much better to be carrying that through the metro.

But then I also had on my backpack so I could do some work at the apartment (I have a proposal due tomorrow and a review due soon and homework due...all over the place). And the kids each had a backpack on. Only Phoebe didn't have a backpack—she carried her stuffed puppy Titus.

And still I wound up carrying her half the time.

We hung out at the apartment for a while—setting up water, putting sheets on beds, doing homework, and so forth—and then came back to the hotel for dinner before heading off to mutual.

It was a busy mutual night, with Miriam heading one place (to do henna), Benjamin heading to another place for a movie night (Andrew is the YM leader so he met Benjamin there after he got off work), and Alexander and Zoë meeting at another place for their first primary activity day.

Technically Benjamin, Zoë, and Alexander were all going to the same compound and Benjamin could have just dropped them off, but I didn't feel comfortable with that their first time (just in case anything went wrong). And Miriam even went to the same metro stop (but then got a ride from a leader to the second location) so could have at least helped them get that far. But I went with them just to make sure everything went smoothly.

But also...it's been an exhausting few days, physically more than anything.

*****

Benjamin has been trying to be more...aware...of my burdens recently. Andrew recently gave him a little talking to about how he's approaching manhood and needs to think of others a little bit more, and he's been trying to man up.

For example, when Miriam and I arrived at the apartment laden with heavy IKEA bags, Benjamin was standing there waiting for us (because it's a teensy bit possible that I had no idea how to get to our apartment last night). He had arrived earlier and Andrew had sent him down to meet us and show us where the apartment was, a job he was very excited about!

"It's this door here!" he said. "Come on!"

And he just bounded away.

Meanwhile, Miriam and I are lugging these ginormous bags (which we'd been carrying for a good half hour already). So I had to call him back and remind him that he—in his refreshed and youthful state—should be offering to take the burden from either an exhausted or more elderly person.

"Well, I don't know whose bag to take..." he answered.

"I don't care which!" I said. "But it's silly to be so far ahead of us waiting impatiently while we lug these bags around when you could slow down, walk with us, maybe carry something."

He ended up taking Miriam's bag, which was fine.

Anyway, he had his big backpack on and was carrying a small bag full of other things and he saw I had the big IKEA bag of towels and he was like, "I...don't know that I can carry that, too!"

So I told him that just because he's expected to step in and help out doesn't mean that he has to carry everything or that I don't have to carry anything ever. It's just that...

"Oh!" he said. "I get it! It's just, like, if you have something heavy and I have nothing then I can offer to help!"

Something like that, yes.

*****

Anyway, we got into the elevator to head to mutual. I still had my backpack on because I wanted to work on my proposal during the activity and I'm sure I looked exhausted (perhaps because that's my default look these days).

Phoebe was clinging to me (and she very often insists on being carried in the metro) so Benjamin told her, "Now, Phoebe. You're going to walk in the metro station..."

"How do you know?" she sassed.

"Because you have two functional legs..." he retorted.

"You're not a walking scientist!" she shot out.

It was...hilarious.

Also...the metro was so incredibly crowded that I ended up carrying Phoebe...again.

The downside to that is that carrying her through the metro is quite the workout.

The upside is that it's quite the workout—everyday is arm day and my biceps are poppin'!

Moving In, Membership Station, and Personal Storytime

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 22:02:24 +0000

We got the keys to our apartment yesterday and to celebrate we went and got gelato. Both Benjamin and Alexander chose the black vanilla flavour (coloured with activated charcoal). It was rather horrifying to watch them eat it, but they said it tasted just fine (and, in fact, I think most of us sampled a little bit from their dishes).

Apparently it only takes a little charcoal to colour the ice cream black, so it shouldn't be dangerous to their bodies (it can block the absorption of some nutrients and medications in large doses). Their lips were very black when they were finished.

It reminded me of the time (toddler) Auntie Josie and her friend Charissa got into the fireplace and played in all the leftover charcoal. Those girls were just covered in soot. I'm pretty sure we were constantly telling them not to eat charcoal. And now here are my boys...eating charcoal.

Tonight, after a very long day of doing so many exhausting moving-in, our neighbourhood celebrated us...with a dazzling display of fireworks!

I actually have no idea why there were fireworks today, but they were a fun surprise! Phoebe was so excited to see fireworks "for my very first time!"

"You've seen firework before," I told her.

"For my very first time in Qatar!" she clarified, and that qualifier makes it true.

I'll bet it would have been even better from the roof of our apartment! Alas, we had already come down to the street to catch an uber to take to the metro to come back to our hotel. We're not quite moved in so we're still sleeping at the hotel and, honestly, I'm a little bit sad about moving so far away from the metro line.

And by "so far" I mean...like a three-minute drive.

There is a free taxi service on the island that will take us anywhere we want to go...on the island...for free. But it won't take us to the metro, unfortunately.

So we've been taking ubers to fill that transportation gap (Andrew called it "The Final Mile Problem").

My sadness fueled some curiosity and I found...the Metro Express! I have seen these little vans around but haven't really investigated them (since we have been living above a metro station). They will pick you up from anywhere within a designated zone and drop you off at the metro station or they will pick you up at the metro station and drop you off wherever within a designated zone.

And our new apartment happens to be in that zone!

Riding the Metro Express costs 2 QAR, per person, per way...unless you then tap into the metro station (or have just tapped out of the metro station). If your tap-ins and tap-outs prove that you're using it to solve the final mile problem then you ride for free (which I think is awesome, and makes me feel so much better about this move).

They have smart ways of calculating these things. The last few days have been very busy metro days for me, so I was a little flummoxed when I tapped in for my fourth ride of the day and saw my card total drop—because there is a 3-fare cap per day (any ride over three rides should be free). But when I tapped back out, my fare went back up...so the ride really was free. The same thing happened on my "journeys after three journeys" today.

I'm sure some incredible background magic happens to track our tap ins and outs to calculate our Metro Express fares.

We're excited to try it!

(There is also a bus that runs around the island that I think has the same fare deal as the Metro Express...but it only comes around every 15 minutes or something...and still leaves many, including us, with a smaller, but no less real, final mile problem.)

Anyway, today. Today was long and full and frustrating and productive.

Andrew went to the apartment early this morning to receive all the various deliveries and services we arranged for today. Internet was installed, windows were measured for curtains, furniture was delivered (from three separate places), etc. It was a frantic day for him.

I stayed at the hotel, worked with the kids on their lessons, did some laundry, and communicated with Andrew about delivery details. There was so much to coordinate. I completely missed sending the kids to their friends' house for art and history! I had even asked if it would be alright this week if they came without me because we were just...swamped...and then I forgot to even send them!

Well, technically I remembered that I needed to send them, I just was an hour late in doing so (but I've fixed my calendar events to reflect the correct arrival hour, so hopefully I won't make that mistake again...but, honestly? I wouldn't rule it out entirely).

And then I had to head out with Phoebe to take some money to a person we bought some furniture from. His family went back to India because they have an autistic child (among other children) and his wife needed more support from her family. So he was downsizing to move from a family-sized apartment to a studio apartment. We bought a bed and a rug from him.

I took Benjamin with me when we went to look at things yesterday, and then I brought Phoebe with me when we went to pay him today. Just before we left, I asked Phoebe to use the potty and she did...and accidentally got some pee on her pants. So she had to change her pants and underwear.

But in the meantime, our "shifters" (movers) had arrived early to pick up the bed from this apartment. So they texted Andrew to say they were there, Andrew texted me to say they were there, and I texted the guy to say that they were there (because only Andrew was in communication with the "shifters" while only I was in communication with "the guy"). So we were texting things back and forth and I wasn't really paying much attention to Phoebe when we headed out the door.

"Is it okay if I wear my tunic in the metro?" she asked.

"Of course," I said, still texting.

It wasn't until we got to the very bottom of the elevator and walked out into the lobby that I realized she had asked that question because...she had neglected to put pants on at all!! She had put on fresh underwear and then just...forgot about the pants part.

So we had to head back up to the 40th floor so she could put on some pants.

Her tunic seems long in this picture, but if she bends over it definitely shows off her bum, so pants are quite necessary with it, in my opinion. Fresh pants in possession (and properly put on) we were off again, only a few minutes later than before.

"The guy" texted to say that he went down to meet "the shifters" and they were now in his apartment disassembling the bed frame. I texted Andrew to say we were all good. I texted "the guy" to tell him that I was on my way with the money. And Andrew texted me to say that he already knew that because "the shifters" had texted him to let him know.

I don't even want to know how many text messages I sent today.

It was...many.

At least this time I knew precisely how to get to the apartment from the metro. Yesterday Benjamin and I took a good twenty minutes to arrive at the apartment, taking the circuitous route Google recommended (Google is often not very good at directions here). In reality it is a three-minute walk.

It just looks...a little sketchy. Like walking across sandy/gravel lots...

Past some...janky trailers...and stuff like that.

But we arrived much less sweaty!

We paid for the furniture, looked at it to make sure it was still what we wanted, and then tried to set off. But first "the guy" had to give Phoebe some cookies—a whole package of cookies. And some water. And some Mirinda. And then we left.

We had just pressed the elevator button when "the guy" opened his door and said, "Wait, wait! Come back! For her...she can come select something for free if she wants a toy!"

"Toys?" Phoebe asked.

"Yes, toys! Come, take!"

So we went back in and he pulled out a bin of toys and showed Phoebe the merits of several. "Take it, take it, take it!" he insisted. "I have too many toys!"

"This is so great!" I said. "All of our toys have been packed away since June!"

"No toys since June!?" he said. "Take it, please. Take this one! And..."

He ran off and brought out a cardboard trunk and started filling it with toys.

"And this colouring book! And these Qatar flags—good for national days! And..."

(This picture was taken after storytime when we sat to have a little snack before getting on the metro—but you can see the size of the trunk I was lugging around!)

In reality, he has much less than we do, I'm sure. He is a service worker. We are...white collar.

However, I have also been in his position of wanting to empty out a living space quickly, and I understood his actions as wanting to clear things out (and I just gave away 90% of what we owned so we really are starting from scratch over here). So we accepted his gifts (which were so very fun to haul through the metro, let me tell you).

Phoebe and I made it to the library for Arabic storytime, but just barely. We sat and read books while we waited for it to start. But...it never did.

Here's Phoebe drawing a fairy (she found a "how to draw fairies and mermaids" book that she thought was so very cool) while we waited:

Eventually—at around 4:35—I went up to the librarian to ask about storytime.

"Yes," she told me. "Storytime ended at 4:30."

"But...I got here before 4:00," I said. "Storytime...didn't happen. How could storytime have ended if it never began?"

"Oh, I walked around the library at 4:00 but didn't see any children who looked like they speak Arabic, so I didn't call for storytime," she explained.

"Oh," I said. "Well, we came for Arabic storytime..."

She explained that it would be in Arabic. I told her that was the reason for coming—to listen to Arabic. I read to Phoebe in Arabic at home but it is laborious. It's good for both of us to hear Arabic being spoken.

This sweet librarian said, "Then I will select a story to read to your daughter!"

And she did! She found a board book that she thought would be at Phoebe's level and read it to her and...that was storytime for the day.

I very much appreciate the generosity of the librarian in doing a personal storytime for Phoebe, truly I do. But after such an exhausting day it was a little bit of a letdown because the book was so simple that even I could have read it to Phoebe...so we may as well have just gone home after paying for the furniture instead of heading all the way to Education City.

At least we figured out how to change lines easier! When we were coming home from Education City yesterday (we went to a homeschool picnic event) a very kind girl—from Bangladesh, but born and raised here, attending uni at Qatar University—struck up a conversation with me and asked where we were going. When I said we were changing to the red line at al Bidda she said, "Oh, come with me to Msheireb! You can just walk right across the platform onto the red line. It's backtracking on the map, but you don't have to rush up and down the escalators to switch trains, and there's higher chance of getting a seat since everyone gets off at Msheireb...."

Sold! We followed this girl to Msheireb and the train switch was just that easy!

Today Phoebe asked me if I remembered the "life hack" the girl had taught me at "membership station."

I did! And we used that little "life hack" twice—on the way to the library and the way back to the hotel to pick up Miriam (and some stuff) and head to the new apartment where Andrew was waiting with the kids...who had gotten dropped off (along with Miriam's organ pedals, which we had shipped to our friends' address since we didn't have a permanent address when we ordered them and didn't know when they would arrive) by their friends' dad.

We had celebratory shawarma for dinner (we still need a few chairs—we wanted to get a bench...one of the main reasons we chose that table...but they were out of stock...thanks to the Straight of Hormuz) while we waited for a few other deliveries (we gave up on the last delivery and got a notification that it was just delivered—at midnight)!

And we set up a few things (though we also paid to have our IKEA delivery people assemble everything they brought so that made set up rather easy for us):

And then we caught an uber to take us to the metro so that we could go home...phew.

I was telling Andrew about how Phoebe kept reading Msheireb as "membership" and she said, "I don't want to change trains at all! I'm so tired from today!"

(She had also taken many metro rides today and changed stations several times).

"Good news," I said. "We don't have to switch trains at all! It's just four metro stops down the red line."

"Okay, good!" she said. "My legs are so tired!"

Mine, too, baby girl! Mine, too!

How bazaar, how bazaar...

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 21:12:46 +0000

We went back for round two of volunteering at the service workers' bazaar this morning. This time our task was to arrange items in the category-sorted bins (last weekend's task) onto tables for people to shop from. Clothes were sorted out by size and gender, our family did a lot of toy and book sorting (which was somewhat difficult for some of our children, who are, by this point in time, feeling a little thirsty for toys themselves—we haven't had "stuff" for months now), and there were also kitchen supplies, linens, office supplies, and so forth.

It was a lot of work to get everything set out but, again, many hands make light work and we were finished before the bazaar began. We only signed up for an hour, but we ended up staying a while longer so we could help "man" the stations while people were shopping for things (rearranging items to keep the tables organized and help people find items).

The service workers were lined up like it was a Black Friday event, waiting for the countdown to when they would be allowed through—and there was an official countdown!—and then they rushed upon the tables with quite a lot of excitement.

It was wonderful to witness, honestly, though I was a little concerned that a little tussle over a suitcase was going to turn ugly (though they seemed to work things out). I was so happy watching the stuffed animals get snatched up, knowing they'll make some children very happy.

It was interesting to be there not to shop.

Trading tables used to be my lifeline—I organized an event every few months when we lived in Durham (that's where we picked up Baby Dora years and years ago...she's with us here in Doha!), and went to BYU's trading table events when we lived in Utah. These events were literally where I did the bulk of our Christmas shopping and clothes shopping and...every kind of shopping...while we were in our penny-pinching years (which seemed to last for quite a few years—shout out to grad school).

Our stake in Georgia organized an annual event like this for the community, and while I wasn't in such desperate need of free shopping when we lived in Georgia, I did like searching for a few new-to-me items while volunteering (to be fair, I also lived for the Buy Nothing Group in Georgia). A good deal is hard to pass up!

Today, however, was a strictly "no shopping" day. I did enjoy getting to watch others shop, though, because I know that there is such a disparity of pay between service workers and professors on campus and I know how much it means to have the freedom to just shop, to look over items and choose what to take. I felt like trading tables gave me quite a bit of "control" in my life and I was so happy to see that same kind of ease creep into people's faces as they shopped. They could be frivolous, they could be indulgent, they could say "why not".

I watched a man rifle through a pile of stuffed animals and pull out a big panda bear and a little panda bear and place them in his bag. His child is going to love those.

Perhaps he gave them to his child immediately upon coming home. Perhaps he hid them away in his closet for a special gift-giving holiday or an upcoming birthday celebration. Who knows? It doesn't even matter because I know what that moment feels like—when you find the perfect gift for your child (who you feel like you can't give very much to) and it's 100% free so you can finally say yes instead of no.

I'm sure we'll be back to volunteer at future bazaars!

Exploding with happiness and medieval dolphins

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 23:00:00 +0000

We went to a birthday party this evening for a little friend of Phoebe's. There was an inflatable water slide that dumped the kids straight into the pool. Zoë knocked herself in the forehead with her knee during a failed cannonball. Phoebe swallowed a bunch of pool water and threw up all over the deck. Alexander broke his watch.

But...

They had an amazing time!

Phoebe was overjoyed to get a birthday bag. She sang about it all the way to the uber (such a savvy kid—we all stared at the elevator, not quite sure what to do, and she just walked right up, punched the G and said, "G for ground! Going down!" so that solved that—to be fair, we had G, M, C, L, A, and B as options, in addition to the numbers. But G was the right call).

"I'm so happy, happy, happy!" she sang as she got into the uber, which made the driver chuckle. "I am exploding with happiness!"

Then she started to sing, "If you had a birthday, shout hooray! We want to sing to you today: Happy birthday to you!"

We tried to tell her that she was missing a line in there, but it was no use. She sang the song like that the entire ride home. Every so often the driver would glance at her in his rearview mirror and smile.

When we got home we recorded her singing that song for her little friend (because her friend's dad had mentioned wanting to gather friends to sing...but I'm not sure that ever happened).

She was, truly, exploding with happiness. But she was also quite worn out.

I had signed the kids up for a illumination tutorial, which was at 8:00 PM. But by 8:00 PM it's been dark for two hours already and her little biological clock is telling her that logically she should be tired. She kept yawning while we were waiting for our lesson to start and...Andrew suggested she might not be able to stay up through the whole class.

"For a little bit of it..." she said. "And then I'll go to bed."

"But I want to go work out," Andrew said. "So if you want me to be in your room while you fall asleep, we need to do that now."

"But I want to do this," Phoebe said.

"How about...you can stay up to do this class with us," I suggested. "But then when you feel too tired and want to go to bed we'll do just a quick bedtime. I'll come tuck you in and sing to you and give you a kiss...but I won't sit with you because I need to be out here with the kids."

"Sure," Phoebe said, swallowing big. "Let's...do that one."

She sat back in her chair, her eyes welling up with tears, her little lip quivering (clearly no longer exploding with happiness).

"It doesn't really seem like you really want that choice," I pointed out.

"I don't," she moaned. "How about...they are recording this class?"

She wiped her eyes and took some deep breaths.

"Yes, the class will be recorded," I assured her. "Benjamin plans to watch it later, too."

(He went to hang out at a friend's house and watch Jurassic Park 3; Miriam went to the library for a philharmonic concert)

"Okay, okay," she sniffed. "Okay. So I will go to bed now and do the class tomorrow."

She wept while she gathered up her doll and blanket.

"This is what you want to do?" Andrew verified.

"Yes!" she wailed.

"This was a hard choice to make," I said.

She tends to feel big emotions—she can be exploding with happiness one moment and then experience gut-wrenching grief the next. There's definitely some in-between moments...but if there's an emotion to be felt, Phoebe will feel it intensely.

I went to help tuck her in and then Andrew sat with her until she fell asleep. And Alexander and Zoë and I went through the tutorial—make a D with a (medieval-style) dolphin in it.

Tomorrow we'll do it again—maybe we'll even explode with happiness while doing so.