The Gulf.

Last month we took a little family vacation to the country of Bahrain during Eid al-Adha.

Eid al-Adha is a Muslim holiday, also called the Festival of Sacrifice, commemerating Abrahams willingness to sacrafice his eldest son Ishmael in obedience to a command from Allah- and Ishmael's acceptance of this command.

Mike received three days off of work for Eid. (We don't get other Christian holidays off like in the US- Eid is pretty much it.) Most of camp clears out taking trips around the world, we decided since we had all of our paperwork and a car we should head out of town too.

Bahrain is another country right off the coast of SA. It's about 20 miles off the coast of Khobar and is connected by a long cause way with the border and customs and such half way on the bridge. It could take an hour or much longer to get there depending on traffic.

We stayed at a fancy five star hotel called the The Gulf and traveled there with our neighbors who also have a little girl. It was so nice, I wasn't quite sure what to do with ourselves.

We had a King suite, brought the portable crib for Owen and Carter slept on the couch. Here's a picture of the bathroom. The boys loved taking a bath and watching TV.
The Gulf was really pretty kid friendly. The have babysitting available, you call the front desk and they send someone up when you need them to watch your kiddos in the room. We had babysitters both nights and she would put the boys to bed for us, while we went to dinner. SO nice!

Our favorite part of the hotel were the pools. We spent most of our time at the kids pool. The boys had so much fun and we enjoyed the time to relax by the pool too.

*Should have added, I could wear my normal swim suit and clothes around town. Part of the attraction of Bahrain is that they are more relaxed about all of those things. A nice change. We ate lunch and ordered smoothies by the pool each day. Carter loved the strawberry smoothie. They served Chicken nuggets with french fries and green peas. Carter liked those too, and called them dinasour eggs. While we were there we went to dinner with our friends to the Gulf Night Out Buffet. It was amazing and a large production. An amazing buffet with over six restuarants, and several different styles of food. Complete with a buffet of fancy desserts. I promptly told our group that I would try one of everything on the dessert table. I don't think they believed me until I came back with my plate.

See below. yum!

While in town we did some holiday and grocery shopping. There are a lot of things in Bahrain that you can't find here in town. It was like Christmas to find a bottle of Kraft Zesty Italian, Bisquick and Graham Crackers.

We also took the boys to see Mega Mind and enjoyed some Papa Johns pizza. Which was exactly like back home and the best pizza we've had in the past two months.

We laughed while sitting at the pool one afternoon, when Mike looked at me and said, "So this is what vacation is like." We've taken vacations before, but they were usually trips to see our families. This was all about our little family and was really just a relaxing weekend to spend together.

We're all ready making plans to go back.