Kids say the darndest things

Still on vacay (horror of horrors, Calabogie now has internet! I'm trying not to over use it, but this was just tooooooooooooooo good not to share).
A scene from the beach:
Dubai-Mommy sitting on the beach with Dubai-Angel, while Grandma, Dubai-Angela and yours truly are swimming in the lake.
Dubai-Mommy: Angela, 10 more minutes and it's time to get out for a nap time.
Dubai-Angela (to Mommy): Okay. (To Grandma): Grandma, I want you to get out with me
Grandma: to nap?
Dubai-Angela: no, to work.
Yours truly: it's vacation! Grandma's not working.
Grandma: what would I do.
Dubai-Angela: well, you could always cook dinner, for example...

Sigh...

And We're Off!

It's that time of the year again - Calabogie is just a few hours away. It's our crazy family reunion (although we've *mostly* all seen each other in the past couple of weeks as the various parts of my family trickle into Ottawa from Dubai and Cali, it's not official until we're sitting around the dinner table - elbowing each other and asking someone to pass the salt/salad/water, with the windows open and the lake just a few steps away).
M and I are tacking a little weekend getaway to TO on the end of the week, to hang out with his folks and the always articulate K.
I hope to come back refreshed and sunburnt (and, ideally, with a pile of great nature photos and hilarious stories about my little angels discovering nature.)
Talk to y'all in a few days!

Work (or more accurately, vacation)

Tomorrow it's back to work after 11 days off. M and I were thinking about the last time we've actually each had this much time off and we decided that our honeymoon didn't count - I know, I know, we're coming across as very very hard to please and also a bit ungrateful, but let me preface the decision: we were looking for the last time we had a lot of time off that was essentially "pure". This means, not a lot of travelling, not a lot of having to get up at a specific hour, and A LOT of vegging.
Now, let me give you a summarized itinerary of our honeymoon:

• Montreal to Paris - 6 hours in Paris
• Paris to Cairo - 3 days in Cairo
• Cairo to El Gouna - 7 days in El Gouna
• El Gouna to Alexandria - 4 days in Alexandria
• Alexandria to Cairo - 4 days in Cairo
• Cairo to Paris - 1 day in Paris
• Paris to Montreal

Through out, suitcases were opened and closed a million times and all luggage was taken to all locations. Also, as this was the first time we were meeting each other's extended family (the folks still living in Egypt - and there are many!) we were constantly visiting with others, sometimes doing 2 or 3 visits a day. Even the time in El Gouna, which included a breakfast buffet with out accommodations, meant we had to be up early enough to eat breakfast. The bottom line: tons of fun, but very very little vegging. Sometimes, you come back from vacation feeling like you could use another vacation.
So, if we go back before that, the last no strings attached, long time off chunk we've had was Calabogie in the summer of 2007. Which is not that long ago, but we were both ready for a good chunk of vegging time...
And "vegging" we did: in TO, with M's parents and brother... I swear, the breakfasts we have at M's parents place are the kind that can go on for ages, where you start with eggs, and then you go for jam, and then cheese (goat cheese, and sheep's feta cheese, no allergy problems for Noha here) and then smoked salmon, and fava beans (traditional Egyptian breakfast food - prepared to excellence by M's father) all next to your fabulous cup of coffee, and topped off with very very very good conversation with a million tangents... This is true vegging.
So I come back from vacation feeling like I've actually relaxed, and as ready for work as you can actually be (are we ever actually ready for work? Like, really, truly, ready? I mean, no matter how much you like it, and I like my work, it's work, right??)
Happy end of vacation to all. Hope you had good ones if you were off.... and Happy New Year...

The Best Reminder

We're in TO for the week, visiting with M's family, and we spent the weekend at the RIS conference, listening to a lot of great speakers talk about the importance of contribution and involvement, how being a Muslim is all about giving and serving. We heard a lot of great things, but one of best reminders I heard was the mention of this hadeeth (prophetic saying). So simple and succinct, but so clear in its message.

The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, 'Allah, the Mighty and Exalted, will say on the Day of Rising, 'Child of Adam, I was ill and you did not visit Me.'

The man will say, 'O Lord, how could I visit You when You are the Lord of the worlds?'

The Lord will answer, 'Do you not know that My servant so-and-so was ill and you did not visit him? Do you not know that if you had visited him, you would have found Me with him?

O son of Adam, I asked you for food and you did not feed Me.'

The man will answer, 'O Lord, how could I feed You when You are the Lord of the worlds?'

The Lord will say, 'Do you not know that My servant so-and-so asked you for food and you did not feed him? Do you not know that if you had fed him, you would have found him with Me.

O son of Adam, I asked you for water and you did not give it to Me.'

He will say, 'O Lord, how could I give You water when You are the Lord of the worlds?'

The Lord will say, 'My servant so-and-so asked you for water and you did not give it to him. Do you not know that if you had given him water, you would have found that with Me?'

So often, we make religion so complicated that we forget the essence. Visit the sick, feed the poor, care for those who need to be cared for. This we can do. This we should do.

More of my favourite pictures from Calabogie last weekend... Although these were taken with my dinky digital non-fancy camera... Check out M's pics for the good stuff...

Calabogie 2008

It's that time of the year again. We're going to be in Calabogie (see it here and here), but this year, we go for only the weekend. Our internet access is dial up there, so if I happen to have something brilliant to communicate, I will. Otherwise,highly unlikely...
On Monday, I have a holiday, and it's another perk of living in Montreal but working in Ottawa... M, my sister, and my brother-in-law will all be back at work. I'm planning a cross between some laziness and some getting things done for my extra day off. Maybe cook? Maybe sleep? Take an extra-long bikride? Maybe read and write? We'll see what happens...

What do you mean they're bad for your teeth?

Having lived in a country where Christmas is a big deal all my life, I have to say that I appreciate how much more cheery and positive everyone gets this time of year. All through school, I got 10-15 days of holiday over Christmas and New Years, and that's enough to make anyone love the season. Now, in my third full year of work, I'm still adjusting to the fact that, in the federal government, there isn't a built in two-week holiday for everyone. If you want vacation at Christmas, you take your vacation at Christmas, and I almost always want my vacation in the summer time for trips to Calabogie and such.

Nevertheless, I enjoy the quiet time at work for that week when the office almost becomes ghost-town-like. Most of those still around are others like me who don't "do" Christmas, although some are people who are just saving their holidays for another time of year too. I like getting a chance to catch up on whatever I've fallen behind on (which is A LOT this year). I like chatting for a bit with whoever's still around.

As a child, I know I loved the lights on the buildings and trees. Now I'm not so sure because I worry about the energy it all consumes. What I definitely loved when I was little, and still love now, are candy canes. I can't describe it, can't pinpoint exactly why they're any different from those candies or mints you get at restaurants at the end of a meal, which I'm not addicted to, but candy canes are definitely a favourite treat of mine. Maybe it's because they're not available all year round, or because I forget about them and am pleasantly surprised every year when given one at some point in mid-December. This year, one of the gals at work stuck little stockings up on the outside of everyone's cubicles and filled them with Hershey's Kisses, Reese Peanut Butter cups (mmmmm.....) and Candy Canes. I've had one Peanut butter cup, no Kisses, and finished my Candy Cane and gone back down to the pharmacy to buy another package. I love these things. I try hard to ignore the fact that sucking on a stick of sugar all day and then only brushing your teeth when you get home must be a recipe for cavities. At the end of the day, it's ignorable. They just taste soooooooooooooo good.