Valentines Day in Oman

Here's the deal with me and Valentines Day:  I like the concept, but I hate the inflated prices and crowded restaurants.  I don't want flowers that cost less any other day of the year.  I loved the boxed chocolates, but I was always encouraging Stephen to get them the day after at half price.  I like going out to eat, but I want to go during the week to avoid the crowds.  I was really irritated the one year we ended up at a Japanese steakhouse (our tradition) at lunch time to learn that they would be charging dinner time prices just because it was Valentines Day.

I have no idea how much of this applies in Oman.  I know some hotels had special dinners.  We didn't go out to eat, so I have no idea how full restaurants were.  I know my in-laws found some special emoji chocolates for the boys, but I never saw a heart-shaped box.   I know without a doubt that if there had been chocolates that they would not have been half price on February 15 because Christmas items were still full price at the beginning of the year.  I did see flowers at the store, but I don't know how much they cost.  They are not normally there, so there is no telling if even the given price was inflated.

Healthy Chocolate Melting Cake

This cake is based upon the recipe for Carnival Cruise Line's Chocolate Melting cake that you can find online and freely provided by them.  When on a CCL cruise, I get this every night.  Every.  Single.  Night.  One night I made the mistake of ordering cheesecake.  It was a massive mistake.  I made mine healthy by making it low carb (I'm a carb cutter) and replacing the sugar with date paste (I'm sugarless, too).

Low Carb, refined sugar free chocolate melting cake with banana ice cream.  Excuse the slug shape of the ice cream.

Joy

Thanks to Air1 losing their minds and playing old, melancholy worship songs, I've switched to listening to music on YouTube.  I've been listening to different mixes featuring TobyMac (my fave) and similar artists.  The song "Joy" by for King and Country played the other day.  It is admittedly not a deep song, but I still love its upbeat tempo in the mornings.  It also reminded me of a thought I've been struck with multiple times lately:  There is a certain amount of happiness and joy that we can choose in our lives.

For reference, here is the music video:

Bandar Khairan Hike

One recent Sunday, the girls and I headed a little farther out of town to hike around Bandar Khairan (or Bandar Khiran or various other spellings or BK as I will now refer to it) to see where the paths took us.  We knew we would get to a beach, but we really had no idea what we would find.  What did we find?  A beautiful, secluded, unpolluted beach.

The beautiful beach

Riyam Hike Take 2

My in-laws are in town, and we thought a great hike to take them on would be the Riyam Hike.  Let's just say that if you do this one in the winter and/or in the afternoon, your experience will be much more enjoyable than our first, way too hot experience.  In fact, we went from it being my worst idea ever hike to a "so much fun" hike.

All smiling faces overlooking the large Frankincense burner.

This time, we were hiking in February rather than September or October.  The high for the day was only expected to be 74F.  And this time, we didn't head out until 1-1:30pm.  We were in the shade of the mountains for much of the walk.  It even got a bit chilly if we rested too long.

Throwback Thursday: Summer with Grandma and Pa

As mentioned before, there were a few years where I would get to spend a week with my Grandma and Pa all by myself.  I would then go back for another week later in the summer to spend a week there with my sister and my two older cousins.  When my younger cousins were old enough, we all went together for what was then named "Camp Cousin Huggin'."

Cheesy names aside, it was really a lot of fun.  The first year, my Grandma had shirts made for all of us.  I'm pretty sure my older male cousin was mortified.  My aunt even went around and took pictures of us all together.  One of these pictures still sits in my room as a fond memory of the past.

At Grandma's house, we would play cards, ping pong, and billiards.  We would sleep in the garage apartments to feel older.  We would play soccer in the front yard or at the local school.  We would walk to Sonic to get slushes.  We would check out movies from the (I kid you not) local bait, ammo, and movie store.  It was 5 movies for $5 for 5 days.  We checked out a lot of movies.  We would go to the lake to swim and ride jet skis.  We would go to the farm for hay rides, fishing, s'mores, and feeding the cows.  We would swim.  We would do egg hunts with a prize egg with money inside.  We would laugh A LOT.  We would walk to or from church or Pizza Hut.  There was even the time we were practically kicked out of Pizza Hut for making too much noise.  I still blame Pa who taught us how to make loud whistle noises with our straws.  We would check out where Pa worked and play around in his antique cars.  To this day, I'm still shocked that I didn't know back then that he had a pilot's license and plane.  Why did we never go see that?