Better late than never...a quick catch up on the end of 2015 and the start of 2016

Poor little blog - a record 11 months has gone since our last post. You never know how much free time you have, until you have none courtesy of a lovely little monkey who is now 16 months old.

So what has been keeping us so busy since we returned to Dubai from our trip to Australia? Brendan's business IT@Home has gone from strength to strength, becoming a household name in Dubai as the saviour of all wifi woes (and Dubai has its fair share!). I went back to work in August last year, not long after we returned from Australia. Oh...and there is little Jackson who is not so little anymore. He has kept us well and truly occupied as we have embarked on a year of wonderful firsts with him - his first tooth, first crawl, first Christmas, first steps, and of course, his first birthday.

Christmas 2015 was spent in Dubai and we were lucky enough to be joined by a lot of family to celebrate. Santa and Mrs Clause (aka Father and Mother Gregson) paid a visit to the Al Reem 3 community and were a huge hit with all the children (and many of the adults)! We lured Aunty Sarah back to the desert for her second trip to Dubai and Tim made his virgin trip to the middle east. Jackson's first christmas was fantastic - the stockings were hung, the tree was surrounded by presents which took us most of the day to unwrap and Brendan's suckling pig was a sight to behold!

New Years Eve started with a picnic and bonfire out in the sand dunes with our neighbours and a bunch of their friends. Although Jackson was a little too young to join in the sand duning with the bigger kids, he decided to free-form it down one of the dunes and ended up with a facefull of sand. He wasn't entirely pleased, but regained his composure and was right back at it crawling through the sand. We then spent the rest of the evening with family and friends in the garden as we said goodbye to a very eventful 2015 and welcome in the new year.

I won't take us all the way to April and the little man's first birthday (let's see if I get to that before he turns 2)! Instead, i will finish up with one of the highlights of 2016. Jackson's first trip to the zoo courtesy of his Dubai Godparents Flora and Daniel. In February we did an overnight trip down to Abu Dhabi where they have a zoo that you can stay overnight in rooms that back on to the Giraffe enclosure. It was a fantastic zoo for younger kids with lots of hands-on petting area, as well as the larger animals. It was love at first sight for Jackson and the ducks and we even managed to get him on film quacking. A lioness also took a particular liking to him and we can't tell if it was in an affectionate long-lost cub sort of way or a "you look very tasty" sort of way. I like to believe it was the former, but i guess we will never know.

That pretty much takes us up until March 2016. Stay tuned for the next catch up - hopefully we can get up to date before we jet off to Amsterdam in 2 weeks time for our first family vacation in a long time!!

Love to everyone xoxox
Photo spam to follow below :)

Kate

 

95 days to Christmas....where has 2015 gone?

With only 95 sleeps until Christmas (and our last blog post in April!!) another post is certainly overdue. Jackson is no longer a tiny two week old, but a large and in charge 5 month old who is quickly getting ready to take on the world. But i am getting ahead of myself here and need to go back a few months to cover the events of the Burke household.

Brendan finished up working at the British Embassy in May (more on that story later in the piece) which meant that we really got to spend some quality time with Jackson while i was on maternity leave, which included a 3 week trip to Australia in June.




In mid June we trundled off to the airport with slightly more baggage than we usually show up with (mostly because of the 1001 outfits for Jackson in preparation for him to spew his way through the trip). A 14.5 hour flight with a 2 month old....what could go wrong? Actually, he was a trooper and despite the enormous vomit down mum's top which happened 15 minutes into the flight, he flew right through it (pardon the pun). I even managed to watch a couple of movies!

We landed in Sydney to a rainy cold Sydney day, which made a great change from Dubai which was really heating up with 40 degree + days. Early in the trip we attended Jacob's baptism - Jackson's cousin who was born in Sydney two days after him! It was great that Jackson and Jacob got to meet (i'm sure they will remember it well!).

After a couple of days in Sydney we headed off on a little detour to South Australia for a week. It was one of the areas in Australia Brendan and I had always wanted to explore and even with baby in tow, we managed to do some great wine tasting in McClaren Vale and Langhorne Creek. Thanks to dad's contacts in the area we got to do quite a lot of behind the scenes exploring (including my first ever tank samples!). With Jackson in the BabyBjorn I'm sure we looked the part and i only splashed red wine on him a couple of times.


We also got down to Victor Harbor and Port Elliot - beautiful ocean front towns with loads of chalm and lots of antique stores!

 Back in Sydney and we had the chance to properly catch up with our families and see a lot of our friends at Jackson's baptism. Father Paul Marshall, who married Brendan and I over 10 years ago carried out the baptism so it was great to see him again after all this time. Thanks to all our friends and family who made it out to Jackson's baptism. It was a busy day so we didnt get to speak to everyone as much as we would have liked to, but we really appreciate the effort to be there and loved seeing you all. Jackson was well and truly spoiled.

 Before we headed back to Dubai there were a couple of major milestones and birthdays to celebrate. My parents 40th Wedding Anniversary for starters!! We also celebrated Elizabeth's birthday and Tim's 30th birthday. For Tim's birthday we headed down to the Sport and Recreation camp in Jindabyne where he has been working. Jackson got to see snow for the first time and Brendan and I got to sharpen up our archery skills - we were a little rusty for the first couple of rounds but found form towards the end despite losing to the fiersome Tim & Dad archery combo.

Now back in Dubai life is moving at a crazy crazy pace. So much so, i started writing this blog post when it was 125 days to Christmas. I have been back at work for a couple of months and Brendan officially launched his business IT@Home in August and it is such a big hit that he has already recruited an old work colleague from Sydney who has come over to join him. Jackson loves playing with his dad and all the computers (he is destined to be a nerd) and he has already become somewhat of a mascot for the company.

In other news, our little man is now over 5 months old and threatening to crawl any day now (he has started shuffling backwards so will expect to find him reversing under the couch soon!). He loves going swimming at the pool every afternoon, is happiest when he is in a room full of kids, giggles when he sneezes (and bursts out crying when we do) and is generally a really happy, easy going little boy. Oh...and he started sleeping through the night two days after we got back from Sydney. What a champion! We remind ourselves nearly every day how lucky we are, not just that he is a great sleeper, but that he is healthy and happy.

Ok, thats long enough for now. Going to end it here so i can post this blog entry before another 6 months passes. Lots of photos to cover, so will cram them in below for anyone keen to take a look.

//Kate