"Cats and dogs living together -- mass hysteria!"

I felt like I was transported to another dimension this morning, because something took me less time in Qatar than it would have in the U.S.!
First some background: Rachel and I decided to trade up our used car for a slightly less-used car, so we spent about a month looking and finally found a nice 2010 Kia Mohave pretty close to our price range. After getting it checked out at a mechanic and test driving it, we decided to buy. Remembering the giant paperwork hassle that it was last time (getting some document typed up in Arabic, waiting in two different lines for more than an hour, etc.), I planned for the worst when I showed up to buy the car from the seller this morning.
Instead, the seller pulled out her iPhone, typed my Qatar ID number into an app (Metrash2 from the ministry of the interior), and transferred registration for the vehicle to me online, then drove me to the traffic office a block away to pick up the newly-printed card. We were done, start to finish, in 15 minutes!
Only in Qatar could you exchange ownership of a car by phone, but still have to wait in two separate lines at the grocery store to buy vegetables.

Baby update and photo dump

We're at the halfway point for Rachel's third pregnancy, and last week we got to have another ultrasound. The results? It's a girl! She's still a little camera shy, but we got some nice 3-D snapshots to share. She's oriented vertically in these pictures, so her head is at the top, and you can see her arms and hands. Elliott and Amelia are both excited. Elliott thinks we should name her Happy Anniversary because we got the ultrasound done on our 6th anniversary.

And here are links to all our photos and videos for January, February, and March.
I know I haven't been posting much lately, but we'll be going to Spain soon, so you can bet I'll post about that!