Adventures with four girls: Abu Dhabi summer: Beat the Heat Take 1

We are five days into the 14 school-free days we have until we start our summer travels. Since the temperature is well over 100 degrees most (all?) of these days, beating the heat is high on the list of priorities!

We've been swimming on three of those five days - either late in the afternoon or early in the morning as our pool doesn't have a lot of shade. I swim laps with a group of ladies and one day both Jane and Regan joined our workout. On the second day, we lost Jane but Regan hung in there for another full hour of a swim workout. I may have a bit of leg up on endurance but Regan is definitely able to beat me in terms of speed. She's fast!

Over the weekend, Jake and I taught Meredith's children's church for the last time this year, we hit a play and an ambitious set of art workshops out at Saadiyat Island. On day one of no school during the week, we went to a kids' salon for haircuts and summer pedicures. The salon is attached to a fun, new indoor play space with a giant (and steep!) slide that made the girls squeal on their way down. Anna wasn't up for trying the super-steep slide but she did try a spiral slide that was two stories tall. Yay, Anna!

Day Two of Jake marching off to work while we take it easy started with more swimming and then we tried out a new adventure place for bigger kids that opened a few months ago. It's a place called Adventure HQ and yes, it was definitely adventurous. Regan, Jane and Meredith did an obstacle course thing called a Cable Climb that was a real challenge in terms of nerves and tackling fear. It was a high obstacle course where they are hooked in by a rock climbing harness and go through different challenging (and high!) elements. I must say how incredibly proud I am that these girls finished the Cable Climb. The elements were probably about 12-15 feet off the ground and it was scary as it took a lot of balance to get through it. Jane and Meredith were in serious tears right before the 20 short swinging log challenge but I really credit the Adventure HQ worker who got up there with them and managed to convince them to give it a go. Even Regan was quite nervous (she's my one who is usually most afraid of heights!) but she definitely took her eldest child/ role model role seriously and put a big effort into keepin' on and keepin' on. Seriously impressed with these three girls (and Anna has said she wants to do it when she's tall enough (she has another 3-4 inches to go)

We topped the Cable Climb off with a very fun oriented stop in Adventure HQ's trampoline zone which was a giant room filled with trampolines (and trampolines on the side walls you could bounce off of). This was a big hit with all four girls - even Anna got into the fun.

Five days down - nine to go before we head to the airport. I'm not sure we can keep up this same pace as we have some rooms to tidy, clutter to de-clutter and bags to pack, but we have a few more fun beat-the-heat things on our bucket list.

Happy Summer!

We had an *interesting* snack in Meredith's childrens' church class- the blue pudding is the Red Sea and the chocolate chips were the Israelis escaping through the parted Red Sea. We thought this snack would be a real dud (as the blue pudding did look rather slimy looking) but surprisingly it was a huge hit!

I took Meredith, Anna and Meredith's friend Alicia to see Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaur play - very cute!

This was such a fun art workshop that I took Regan and Jane to - we worked with a silversmith and they made their own coins. They designed the mold and used real melted pewter to make coins. I was so impressed with how they let kids use all kinds of real tools and the kids were completely focused their task.

Jane filing down the "sprue" off her coin

A sampling of the coins that the kids made

Jake took Meredith and Anna to make the oldest known board game (where the rules are known) - the Game of Ur

Anna paper-mache-ing her Game of Ur

Enjoying the nice evening weather and frolicking in the museum garden after dinner

A little bit of a lull in the weather and the kids enjoyed running around the restaurant garden after dinner.

Jake went back to work and the girls hit the kids' salon for haircuts and pedicures. Here are Anna's nice butterfly toes.

Regan thought getting a pedicure was a bit ticklish!

Fireworks for Jane, Zebra stripes for Meredith, music notes for Regan and butterflies/ flowers for Anna

Next stop: Adventure HQ! Jane getting all suited up for the Cable Climb

All ready to go - no one is too nervous just yet.

Obstacle One: This was an easy start to the challenge.

Regan did okay on the second one (a row of about 20 swinging logs) but we almost lost both Jane and Meredith on this one.

The kind and patient worker was the only way Jane and Meredith made it over obstacle #2. You can see some of the panic on Jane's face.

See that worried look on Mereith's face? She perked up a bit once she was 1/2 way across but she is clearly still very, very worried at this point.

This was Regan's most challenging moment. It was a long log about 12-sih feet long. After a few false starts, the worker gave her the tip of leaning into the wall. She was yelling at me as I was taking this photo that she didn't like me standing under her (so I quickly moved away). She said she could pretend she wasn't so high up but if she saw me with her peripheral vision, then she knew that wasn't true!