Long Awaited Photos

I have promised many people that I would pass on photos from our honeymoon safari. With Jaclyn in the US for the past few days, I have finally taken the time to sort out some of my technical problems (thanks Jeff) in order to post the photos. These are only from the safari. I haven't had time to work on the photos from our short beach stay where we got some great shots of monkeys.

Baby Elephant

Giraffes are very friendly and like to pose for the camera.

Impala

Warthog (Pumba): These were my favorite.

Don't know why.

Leopard: by far the best thing we saw.

These creatures are awesome (~20 yards)

~25 yards

These lions were honeymooning too (~25 yards)

Hippo

African Buffalo

As you can probably tell, we upgraded our camera so that we could get some good, close shots of the animals. We each took about half of the pictures. Jaclyn is learning to handle the camera pretty well...

We also went on a quick weekend trip to jordan in October. We landed in the capital city, Amman (2 photos of Roman ruins at the Citadel), took a day trip to Petra (ancient city carved into a canyon; google it!), and experienced the sunset at the Dead Sea (lowest place on Earth, saltiest water on Earth). The Dead Sea actually requires unique swimming techniques because of the buoyancy of the water. The water actually feels like baby oil.

We were only in Jordan for about 40 hours, which wasn't long enough, but we got to see some cool things.

Look at the size of the people on the steps.

We have thousands more pictures...way to many to go through. Send me a line if you want to see any more of a particular setting.

Christmas in Dubai and Maggie Pics

Since Jaclyn and I will both be back in Illinois for Christmas, and because we will be uber-busy when we are there, we celebrated the Adam-Jaclyn-Maggie Christmas on Dec. 11th this year. As far as we could tell, we did a pretty good job with our first Christmas.

It all started on the evening before (the 10th), when Jac and I made Christmas cookies. It turns out that neither of us are especially fond of sugar Christmas cookies, but we made them anyway. At least with the cookies, we had something to give to the neighbors. Jaclyn whipped up the cookies and icing (it may have been frosting, I cannot remember the difference) from scratch and we made a proper (British term) mess.

At one point, Maggie got ahold of something in her mouth that I did not want her to eat. I promptly went after her to pry it out of her mouth. As you can see, 'Maggie' became 'Spot' for about 20 minutes. It was just too cute to clean her off.

The next morning we celebrated Christmas (complete with our $2.75 tree and $40 limit on gifts). It was fun, and Maggie really liked ripping into the presents.

After the gifts, we proceeded into making brunch. Within about 2 hours Jaclyn was able to whip up quiche (with home-made crust), coffee cake, and biscuits all from scratch (she is really a top-notch wife and cook). I offered my assistance as her Indian Chef (the real term is pronounced 'soo-chef', which I can only assume to be spelled 'Sioux', which is obviously a tribe of American Indians) and by making the gravy. It was quite a feast, but it is kind of a let-down when we spent so long cooking and only the two of us got to enjoy the food. Christmas Day continued with naps and movies. All-in-all, it was a great success.

I took Jaclyn to the airport on the night of Dec. 15th for her return to the US. I will be leaving on the night of the 23rd. Hope to see you soon.

Adam

The Blog

Hey all,

I think that you all received an email from us about rugby yesterday. It was actually the first post on our brand new blog site: www.adamandjaclyn.blogspot.com

It also contains links to some of the other Meinhart blog sites (shibatas, kochers, wilkes, righters).

You can spread the word about the new site.


Adam, Jaclyn, and Maggie

Dubai Rugby Sevens

This weekend in Dubai was the annual "Dubai Rugby Sevens" Tournament. Rugby Sevens is a new'ish' version of rugby where each team has 7 players (instead of the standard 15) but the game is still played on a full-sized pitch. Each game is only 14 minutes (2 - 7 minute halves), so a new game starts on the field every 20-30 minutes. Between games (and during half-times) is a big singing and dancing session in the stands. There is no assigned seating, so the stands do tend to get pretty rowdy.

We enjoyed two days of the action in year number 2 for the new "Sevens Club". Check out the stadium pics:

(The stadium is built entirely out of construction scaffolding)

(The bowels of the stadium look very different from most stadiums)

(The stadium looks good from the inside.)

Here is the group that we went to the tournament with. We were all a little bit subdued (the picture was taken on day #2):

Here is Jaclyn, supporting her win-less USA team:

The headlining act (crowd-pleaser) at the Sevens was Austin Powers, leading the dancing from the field.

(Oh, and costumes are an integral part of the event.)

More to come soon...

Adam and Jaclyn