Pied in the face for charity

Our school celebrates Pi Day annually by devoting one of our half days to a bunch of circle-themed activities that help students learn their geometry. We also collect money for charity by allowing students to pay for the privilege of hitting a teacher in the face with a plate full of shaving cream (we've been advised not to use actual pie or whipped cream because wasting food is frowned upon in Islam). I came in second place this year with about QR 1950 ($535) donated in my name. It probably helped that I sent a reminder to parents the day before about students' required absence make-ups. :) Here's some video of me getting pied:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0E1o0VZy2iNSXZPSUFaelV2bC03NFd2blFKVGllYzlCbkJB/view?usp=sharing

Easter dust storm

Our kids went to an Easter egg hunt last week hosted by some friends from work. As they did last year, they got lots of people to pitch in and set up the whole park with eggs. The kids loved it... or so I'm told. I went to my monthly RPG night instead!
Wednesday night Rachel woke me up and said the air in the kids' rooms was dusty when she went in to feed Little L. Then when she looked outside, she couldn't even see the mosque across the street! The biggest sand/dust storm in recent history had just hit, and our house's construction is so poor that it was hard to breathe in the kids' rooms. So we moved them into our room for the night and shut our door, which kept most of the dust out (our room is on the leeward side of the house). It was still bad enough in the morning that school was cancelled for kids (though not for staff...?). Unfortunately, every non-vertical surface in our house is still coated in the dust, so we have a long day of cleaning ahead of us tomorrow.
Here was the view to the mosque in the morning:

Yemen conflict

During church last week, we heard Qatari air force planes taking off to go perform airstrikes against rebels in Yemen. The president of the Yemen is Sunni (one division of Islam espoused by most in the gulf countries, and the majority in most other places), and the rebels are Shiites (another division of Islam mainly followed in Iran, but also in pockets throughout the world). A coalition of mostly Arab states (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, Pakistan, and Egypt) supported with intelligence from the US, have been dropping bombs on Houthi / ISIS / Al Qaeda fighters throughout Yemen this week.
We aren't nervous about the situation, but we are vigilant. We haven't been given any warnings from the US embassy here, and they're usually pretty trigger happy with warnings about safety concerns. But we do keep a close eye on regional situations like this, and we have emergency plans in place if the threat spreads.

Back pain is back pain, no matter where you are in the world

I threw out my back the other day. I was trying to get Lydia's car seat out of the car the day after I had spent my whole evening carrying the other children over my shoulder and running around the playground with them. We were playing prison escape. I was the prison keeper, and the kids would escape from the play structure that I kept them in as a prison and I would make a show of getting irritated with them when they escaped, chasing them in a grumpy voice, calling them back to the prison. Of course they loved it. Then when I tried to take out Lydia's car seat, I was also tense and been sitting all day, so that probably didn't help it.
So for the last two afternoons and evenings I've been laying on the couch trying not to move much. I don't think that it's a herniated disc. There's none of the nerve pain that I think comes with a herniated disc. And with the heating pad and some ibuprofen I've regained some range of motion. But it doesn't feel like the pain has decreased significantly. Rachel has been amazing, doing most of the work that the two of us would normally do, since I can do anything that doesn't involve carrying or bending over. Unfortunately, that means that she is the one who ends up hauling Lydia around all afternoon and evening when I normally would be the one doing that.
And here are two more recent pictures: one of them is me standing in front of a science expiration museum in Orlando Florida, where I was sent to attend a training. The other is Lydia asleep on my lap during church one day.

Blog change to Google+

Okay, so I haven't posted on my blog since January, but I've been thinking of starting up again. Because Google limits the number of people who can read my blog if it's private, I've decided to move it to Google+ so that I can keep adding readers while keeping it private.
I know many of you only followed my blog because you were getting ready to move to Doha. If you're no longer interested in following, it won't hurt my feelings. Just let me know, and I'll remove you from the list of who receives updates.
I also know a lot of you only follow it to see our cute kids, so here's something for you:

Wow, blog much?

Apparently I don't. Not anymore, anyway. As predicted, things have become just life as usual here, so I rarely feel the need to share them with anybody. Still, many of you follow this blog not because we're in the Middle East, but because you care about our family, and you'd appreciate an update now and then.
We're all good. There's your update! What, you want pictures, too?
Well, instead of bothering with a whole bunch of photos in a blog post, why don't I just share the links to our albums for the last few months? If you're curious about anything you see, comment on it or email me, and I'll explain.

April 2014
May 2014
June 2014
July 2014 - Lydia is born!
August 2014
September 2014
October 2014
November 2014
December 2014
January 2015 - Um, possibly this won't be fully uploaded by the time you see this post, so give it a day or so... we have a very slow upload speed here.