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Happy New Year... slightly late. We hope your new year is off to a good start. We have been busy settling back into school and work, and we are happy to have routines in place after a month off from school for Alex and Tyler.

In Dubai, New Year's Eve celebrations were cancelled to show solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza, so, instead of a New Year's celebration, we had a family barbecue. We invited a hodgepodge of our Dubai friends, which included Natalie and her family and in-laws, our neighbors, and some friends from ASD. All in all, we hosted about 15 adults and 15 children, and everyone went home by 10pm. We even spent most of the evening outside, which was fabulous.

Alex and Tyler went back to school on January 4th, and we hit the ground running to get them more involved in activities. Alex is now taking swimming lessons at school twice a week after school. Tyler is taking an arts, crafts and cooking class once a week at school. They both are taking tennis lessons at school once a week on the weekend. We are glad to be taking advantage of the beautiful winter weather here (highs in the 70's). It is hard to believe it is January, and Alex is swimming in an outdoor pool!

I have also been getting back into the swing of my routine. My class toward my MLS resumed the same week as the kids' school. This quarter I am taking an Introduction to Cataloging and Classification. The class has a nice mix of people and although the material is slightly daunting, my affinity for rules and order helps me along. I volunteer once a week at the school library, and in March that will blossom into a full time job until the end of the school year. The elementary librarian, Natasha, is taking maternity leave, one of the library paraprofessionals, Noreen, will take over for her, and I am filling in for Noreen. I am nervous and excited to go back to work full time, so I am glad it is a limited commitment. I had a small taste of it two weeks ago, when I substituted for one full day. The first week of February, I will sub for the whole week, so that will be an even bigger test of how it will go. I even substituted for the para in Tyler's class one day, and I definitely like being in the library better than being in the classroom. I hope that my experience in the library will help me decide between specializing in Digital Information / Competitive Intelligence vs Youth Services. It's a tough call considering my research background, and fortunately I have some time to figure it out.

Alex's big news is that he got glasses last week. His teacher mentioned to me that he was having difficulty seeing the board. Last year, preliminary tests at school made the nurse think he might also be color blind. So, on Tuesday, we visited Dr. Grim, a South African ophthalmologist. She was lovely, regardless of the image her name conveyed. She determined that Alex is red/green color blind, although he can distinguish a red sheet of paper next to a green one, if an image contains both red and green bits he can't distinguish a thing. So, he'll never be a pilot or electrician. He is also myopic, so we left the doctor's office with a prescription for glasses in hand. After much deliberation, Alex chose a pair of red and black wire rimmed glasses with gray and red checkered sides. We picked them up on Thursday after school, and so far he is enamored with them. As long as he wears them when he needs to, I am thrilled. He got quite a kick out of putting them on and off to verify how much better he sees with them on... reading the menu at Baskin-Robbins, looking at the clouds, reading street signs, etc. I anticipated a fight over his wearing them, and I am pleasantly surprised.