January 2005

Our Oman Holiday. (for the pictures click here)

It felt like we had an extra long Christmas, as we didn’t have to settle back into real life for too long before we were able to shoot off and go on our fabulous holiday. Mummy used the excuse of it being daddy’s 30^th this year and that this was his present, a bit early but the best time for us to take a diving holiday. Any excuse hey?! But no one was complaining.

The flight over to Oman was fine it was in the evening so we all just settled down after the initial excitement of being on an aeroplane, and pressing every button and looking at everything. Grandma and Grandad C met us at the airport in Muscat, they had flown in from Bahrain the night before. It was great to see them as we hadn’t seen them for a long time. Daddy and Grandad picked up the hired car, a Toyota landcruiser( which worked out as a lot of fun over the days) mummy, grandma and the kids went in the airport van, it was interesting as we picked up a few hitchhikers on the way. We drove the 100km to our resort the Al Sawadi beach resort. It was fabulous. Grandma and granddad had a room separate from us and mummy and daddy had ajoining rooms with the children.

The rooms were not quite ready for us when we arrived so we went and sat by the pool to chill for a little bit, to wait…mummy had other ideas, she thought it was the perfect time to go and break her finger!! Something about rescuing the girls off a rather badly blown up bouncy castle like thing, with dodgy safety standards. Any way there we were first day not even booked in and a run to casualty, what made it more fun was that it was Eid holiday (their equivalent to Christmas day) so no staff in the clinic, they had to phone someone to come in and man the x ray. Anyway we got a lovely picture of mummy’s dislocated and fractured finger.  Of course the worry was that She wouldn’t be able to dive with it, oh no mummy is hard core she just strapped a lolly stick to her finger with some insulating tape an away she went!

  We all thoroughly enjoyed the resort pools, to have a good splash around in. There was a nice size baby pool that the kids could safely play in, and experiment with their snorkelling stuff. The weather was a lovely 26 degrees c so lovely with out being too hot, we did have a couple of days  of cloudy, rainy weather, where the diving was cancelled but we just jumped in the car and went and played in Muscat. We went to a really fun children’s museum there, and in the evening a very “cultural” Muscat festival, I am sure we all starred on Omani telly in some form. Probably disturbing the dancing by having to take the girls to the toilet and then escaping by jumping over the wall, although grandma lost her nerve half way though and nearly got stuck, we are still not sure how she got out of there.

Other days were spent on the beach, either playing football, collecting shells or just building sandcastles and splashing in the sea.

We also really enjoyed the food there, always having a wonderful breakfast, in the resort; this is where Scott discovered French toast. Usually some toasted sandwiches and chips for lunch, with a few pastries we had saved from breakfast and then good Omani food for dinner, whether it was BBQ of shish kebab , room service, of homus and tabuli or mum’s favourites room service steak sandwich. I think we did sneak in one Mcdonalds. Grandma and Granddad were great fun to be with, and mummy and daddy really appreciated their help looking after the children while they had some time together, either diving, or enjoying a night out. It was great meeting some of the members out there, and making new friendships. They were inspirational to us as they keep the faith in their small numbers; we enjoyed a lovely ward meal together.

We also met one of daddy’s friend form Yorkshire diver’s Neil, he had us all over for a wonderful BBQ at his place, it was like a palace. Very nice family.

One of the highlights was playing on a nearby sand dune, mummy really wanted to this to relive child hood memories of playing on the dunes. It was so much fun, Scott astounded everyone by racing to the top of a giant dune before the rest of us were even half way, granddad struggled a little but made it. Even Emily got to the top, we all loved racing, rolling, jumping down. We just had to watch out for the 4 by 4s, who were also having a lot of fun on the dune.

On the 30^th we caught a quick flight over to Bahrain, to visit at Grandma’s and Granddads. We enjoyed chilling with them, the kids loved playing with Yorkie, although I’m not sure she was quite so thrilled. We went on a boat ride to see dolphins, which was cut a bit short because of engine trouble, but still nice, we then did a reminiscing tour for mummy, going back to Awali, and her school St Christophers, she met up with an old teacher of hers Mr Gaunt who gave her and Scott a tour around, the girls we asleep so daddy stayed with them. We went to a big play centre, where we were the only children. Mummy and daddy then had a night out, shopping at the souq, going to the new mall and catching a movie, Ocean’s twelve. A fun time.

The filght back was a little more eventful as we were delayed by a visit by the King who was flying out, which closed the airport, and we were then diverted to Abu Dhabi to pick up some stranded passengers, so a nice 6 hour direct fight, became a really fun packed 11 hour fight, plus having a drunk thrown off for being abusive to the staff. Luckily the children were exceptional and we got through it not too badly tarnished. Mummy and daddy have written an appropriate letter to Gulf air, so hopefully we will be able to go back soon, for free!!