For my family and friends who really want to keep up with the McClan’s comings and goings 🙂

So best I get on with trying to recap October before it is ancient history… as November has crept up on us so swiftly with the feeling that it will be over before I can even catch my breath, so October has left us sweetly in the dust.

I am so thankful for the fact that I am camera happy and take photos of every event in the kids lives, if I did not have this nasty little habit of being the one saying smile, cheese, look here, I am sure we would forget what we have done each month. Steve often comes wafting into the front door, with a “Hi, how was your day? What did you do today?” and I go “Huh, what the…” and have to sit down and really think hard about what the heck I have done. And so goes my life, one long running day after another, when often I sit and reflect and figure that the days are going by so quickly I am loosing track of them all.

So via my photos collected loving over the month, here is October:

The kids and I have been stopping on the odd occasion to take random photos of things we find interesting about Doha, here are a few of our pics….

The first is a house on the way to school that has Corvette’s parked outside, under a make shift carport. Take a look 🙂
Seriously would you leave your babies on this type of road out in the boiling heat??

You have got to love the “need to be renovated” yellow one

to the “I have a few more km’s in me” red one

and the “I am new” Shiny blue one.

This is my favourite picture, there is always so much building going on in Doha and loads of these pipes lying around to be placed into the ground.

We planted our little herb patch in the back garden and it is coming along nicely thank you.

Ella and I got ourselves very involved in the paper mache project in the Year 5 class and between practicing with Ella and Morgan at home and having 5 children around my kitchen table, we perfected the art with newspaper, four and water. The year 5’s made some lovely brains that were then painted a week later and labelled to be taken home and studied.

The best part of October happened towards the end. The WTA Tennis Champs and the Doha Tribecca Film Festival. I have written about the DTFF and here is the link again…..

With Tennis being my ultimate sport and one that I grew up playing, watching and living since I was a littlee of oh gosh too many years ago, having the opportunity to watch the WTA Tennis Tournament 3 years in a row with the top players in the world playing is unforgettable. I love it and am looking forward to the men playing here in January for the last time. We are all joking that it is a good excuse to visit Turkey to see them all play again….

Woziacki vs Clijsters (winner)

Hmmm, then that elusive tooth fairy (well actually the elusiveness of falling teeth in our home) paid us a visit on the 25th. Jessica spent at least an hour coming in and out of the study, wiggling her tooth and being convinced that if she did not get it out one of her school mates would knock it out with the football the next day. “Look Mom, it is coming out….look look look” was her statement on the 10th time into the study. Wiggle wiggle wiggle and there it was, the little wiggler out with blood trickling (no squirting thank you very much) although from her screams you would have sworn a sword had just dug it out.
She was overly pleased with this little piece of good luck that would ultimately make her at least QR10 richer than she was and help buy her some more silly bangles. The tooth fairy did make a visit that night and the lucky girl got QR20 for being so brave (according to the tooth fairy who leaves little notes each time she visits) and who let her know that her tooth would be lovingly planted in her garden to grow into a star tree. Jess now feels it is time for a lot more teeth to fall out and has started wiggling at least 3 to see what will happen. Her little money making scheme may just be working though, as there are 2 new loose ones….

The 26th was a class outing for the Year 4, 5 and 6s to the Music Academy performance. The school is auditioning students from the ages of 8 to 10 to be part of the first 6 months of the schools formal opening in September. The concept is that these 60 students will be their guinea pigs to determine what is required to run the school when it opens. I applied for them to audition in November, so hold thumbs that they are chosen. Check the link out.

Finally, to finish October off on the proper note we of course had to celebrate ….. HHHHHAAAALLLOOWEEENN, in true American style. So off to the Party Shop we trooped, with our American friend. Where we found some nick nacks to put up outside the house.

I then took the kids back to buy their costumes. Oh my word, if I had known the drama of buying a Halloween costume could be so dramatic, I would have desparately tried to sew one …..waaahahaha!
On entering the tiny shop, I was pleasantly surprised that we were only 3 of 10 shoppers. We slowly started to go through all the costumes, with shouts of “I want to be the scariest monster of them all, how about this one, ggrrrrr” coming from a shrill little voice next to me. To big brother declaring he was the scariest of them all and pushing daggers into our ribs.
After about the 10th costume I started realizing that I was getting poked and prodded from all sides and that our 10 shoppers had transformed into 30 within 20 minutes and that the experience was getting a little too halloweenish for me. The claustrophobic feeling of masks, costumes and body odor was rather overwhelming and the kids started loosing the costumes that they had initially clung to. I begin to get that feeling where in those movies woman started fighting over a piece of clothing at a bargain sale, shouting “mine mine” like the seagulls in Nemo. It was time to grab the closest thing and gap it….. the ultimate was some local kids coming in to buy costumes and décor for the Uni Halloween party, wt …. With little jibes of “we have enough money to buy the shop, but you know we must learn how to budget…” I knew for sure it was time to get out of their before I lost my cool and stuck a sickle, fork or axe (plastic or not) where it did not belong….
I convinced Sean that a little red number belonging to the half devil half grim reaper would be the scariest of all the costumes, while Jessica’s werewolf would have everyone running for safety, we made it out in one piece and so did everyone else.

Sean and Jess then had a proper Halloween Party hosted by our American friends who celebrate it to the fullest. So the month ended with the kids Trick or Treating, Steve watching the finals of the Currie cup where, yay The Sharks won (probably because I was not watching) and I got to go to the tennis with my wonderful girlfriends.