K6 UAE

Recently, there have been some changes in the ranking of certain members of the Kautz Clan. Now, there are not only the ranks of "Little", "Mid", (or "Bigs") and "Parental Unit", but if you happen to have been to the orthodontist recently, you may also be eligible for the revered title "Metal Mouth". The Metal Mouth Brigade has three divisions in our household so far, and each division specializes in a different branch of cake hole conundrum: Greta Adrielle Kautz Codename: OG MetalMouth The first member of the Metal Mouth Brigade Equipped with: Spacer Soon to be modified to include: Jaw Expander Eliza Claire Kautz Codename: TrainTracks The obligatorily second member of the Metal Mouth Brigade Equipped with: Braces Soon to be upgraded to version 2 featuring: Tongue Crib Henry John Kautz Codename: He has no code name. No nickname. CERTAINLY NOT BraceFace The third member of the Metal Mouth Brigade Equ...

That's "welcome" in Arabic! It's pronounced "marhaba". Isn't it gorgeous? My family and I have recently been learning Arabic, and we've just started to move on to the numbers after we finished all the letters. I decided to write a blog post on writing numbers in Arabic because I personally love this language and I wanted to share a bit with you. Bear with me as I run you through this latest crash course, and perhaps I'll learn you a thing or two. Right, first off there are some things you should know before I jump into the numbers. Arabic numerals are written left to right, contrary to the way the words are written. (Right to left) Second off: The decimal point in Arabic is a comma, so to my knowledge, there is no way to distinguish hundreds from thousands, thousands from millions, etc except by counting digits. Zero:  This is a tricky one because it looks just like the decimal point in English, and is even written near the botto...

Hello Family and Friends (and future self and lovely wife and kids)!  Thought I would record some things the Lord has impressed upon me thus far so that I remember them, like the rock pile alters Israel left all over the Middle East when they were waiting on the promised land.  These are in no particular order, just as the Lord brings them to mind as I write. 1 - That Jesus does not need the pasty white middle age guy from the United States to build His church.  I always knew this intellectually and theologically, however now I am learning this by experience.  I suspect that we all have an unspoken "arrogance" about our own cultural  traditions and understanding that we do not fully realize is there, and it is good to have God yank it out of us so we can know He is building the church, and we all collectively are His laborers.  This is a good thing. 2 - Pastor Janke from our US church stated in a sermon that we know who Christians are because "they have...

We had a hilarious adventure yesterday. Backstory: Ben has a remote-control truck that Henry broke a part on by smacking it into a lightpost at 20 mph and so we have been scouring all the hobby stores in AD to no avail. Our last hope was this place called DragonMart in Dubai which was supposed to have a store that sells his truck brand. We had heard recommendations to visit this DragonMart ("You can buy anything there -- cheap!") and so we drove there expecting it to be a mall of Chinese import stores. The newly opened DragonMart2 is just another giant mall here, except full of Chinese import stores that don't carry Ben's replacement part. BUT the original DragonMart, just across the road, is another adventure. It's a maze of little Chinese Import kiosks. We had a blast checking out the knock-offs. One of the most popular are Legos . Except they are Lepins . Apart from the names, almost everything on the box is a direct rip-off from Lego. Star Wars becom...

A few weeks ago Dad joined a boat club and today we reaped the fruit of Dad's captaining lessons. We took out a boat ("It has everything, including the kitchen sink" ~Henry) and drove (Piloted? Steered? Motored?) around in the waters between Yas Island and Raha Beach in front of our apartment. It's awesome because when you're out on the water, soaked with sea water, with the breeze whipping around you, you can't feel the heat hardly at all. Here's the selfie Mom took with us, probably right before we started tubing. Here are Ben and Greta dabbing during their second try on the tube. They were the guinea pigs while we figured out how to use the tube. It was basically a disaster the first time around. Funny for those in the boat, but scary for those on the tube. Anyone who has been on a tube that's pulled behind a boat quickly learns three things: #3: Be aware where the other person on the tube is, and make sure not to smash into them. #2: Ho...

It's the middle of Eid al Fitr now, the three day celebration of the end of Ramadan. We moved to Abu Dhabi just as Ramadan started, so we really don't know the city any other way and I really don't know if some of these impressions I have are Ramadan-specific or just par for the UAE course, but here are my thoughts of the past month. Ramadan is a month-long Muslim holiday most notable for the fact that almost everyone fasts between sun-up and sun-down. So this year here it's about 5:30 a.m. to 7:15 p.m. But the sunrise and sunset times are different even between Abu Dhabi and Dubai and each city has its own official suhour (breakfast) and iftar (dinner) timings. They shoot off a cannon at the big mosques to signal time to break the fast which people traditionally do with some dates and water. So in the evenings, at shops or grocery stores or gas stations there will be dates and water available for people. But during the day, most restaurants are closed and there i...

Hello! On June 22, (my birthday) we went to Legoland. And the Legoland Waterpark. It's kinda expensive, but AWESOME.  We got a Ramadan deal which means unlimited food and drinks! LEGO wave The lazy river has bricks floating in it and little pads on the floaties that hold the lego bricks so you can build on your floatie. Me and Henry both built lego turtles and we memorized the design for them. Ellie and Greta collected colors of bricks and just stacked them on the floatie. Greta on the lazy river Eliza on the lazy river Me on the lazy river Henry on the lazy river most of the kids on the lazy river  Eliza and Greta on the lazy river Eliza and Greta at the Joker Soaker  Eliza slipped on the steps of the Joker Soaker, racing Greta to Mom, and had to visit first aid. Eliza at first aid  We did family slide races. There were six slots in this one slide which is pretty perfect. Dad won both times. M...