We've got wheels!

Well, we’ve gone as long as we could, but it was time to get a vehicle. That vehicle ended up being a Mercury Mountaineer, a beast of an SUV, and no friend to fossil fuels. I believe the word I used when talking about people who drove SUVs was 'unconscionable.' Now, the buses and cabs made getting around the city very doable, but not always pleasant. There were some drawbacks to being a car-less family of six in Abu Dhabi.

• I will not miss those looks of pity as we walked away from church in search of a cab, nor will I miss the apologies people have made for not being able to squeeze the six of us into their vehicles.
• I will not miss the sense of guilt I felt sitting in the front seat with ample leg room while my wife and four children squished into the back of a Nissan Altima.
• I will not miss mentally having to calculate the weight of the groceries in my cart because I had to get everything from the cab to the apartment in one trip.

We're really looking forward to how having a vehicle will open up the rest of the country when we come back in the fall. There are so many places that we want to visit and experience. We're running out of blog fodder.

Some Karate Pics of Liam and Miranda

Some friends invited Liam and I out for a day on the ocean. It was a lot of fun, but we paid for it with sunburns (I could've sworn the sunblock said Waterproof).