A room with a view

"Such a feelin's comin' over me
There is wonder in 'most ev'ry thing I see
Not a cloud in the sky, got the sun in my eyes
And I won't be surprised if it's a dream" - The Carpenters

This last week I took Yvonne's parents to the Burj Khalifa (aka: The Tallest Building in the World).  They don't let you go all the way to the top.  In fact, are only able to go up about 2/3rds of the way... but it was still a lot of fun and quite impressive (and still the highest public observation point in the world).



I won't bore you with all the facts, but here are a couple of pics of our adventures on the tower of babel.

A cool scale model at the base of the tower

Directly beneath the tallest building is.... the largest mall in the world

With Yvonne's mom at the lookout point  She is normally scared to death of heights.  I think her fascination won out over her fears (and the glass enclosure helped:) 

We could see the man made world islands from the lookout.

Overlooking normal sized skyscrapers (still very tall) on Sheikh Zayed Road.

We could also see the man-made Palm Islands in the distance

They love their Sheikhs here

Does this even look real?  Overlooking the largest water fountain area.

They had a gold vending machine at the top.  The least expensive amount of gold you could purchase was about $250.  

Sunset over the Atlantis Resort on the Palm Islands

View at night

Born in a Foreign Land

"And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding..." - Elton John

Announcing the birth of our brand new baby boy!

Here are the specs...

• Born: Jan 3, 2012 8:43am
• Weight: 3.555 kilos
• Length: 47.5 cm
• Hair color: Brown
• Gender: Boy
• Name: Rigdon Zayed Anderson

Yvonne and Rigdon are healthy and doing well. They came home from the hospital on Saturday. Little Rigg is eating, sleeping, and pooping just like a newborn champ and Yvonne is recovering right on schedule.


It was an interesting adventure to have a new baby in a different country.  Some things are a bit different (I'll let you covert the baby specs on your own ;).  Things are still pretty chaotic, so I will save the details for another post.  In the meantime, here is a pic of the view from Yvonne's hospital room:

We feel blessed that everything went smoothly and Talon and I are happy that we are no longer outnumbered.  The new little guy may look like an wrinkled, angry old man (don't all newborns?), but the other kids keep telling me he sure is cute.

If you are interested, you can view more photos of the new kid here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/111736034436504926035/albums/5693824939963064289?authkey=CM3JqMPou6_gCQ