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
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Kate