Ba-who?

The other night, my great pal Liz and I and all our kiddos went on a visit together. Her two, Morgan and Micah, are Lucy's best pals and we knew that if we took all 3 of them, they'd be wonderfully distracted and have a blast. Liz and her kiddos moved yesterday to another country. We miss them already! We've known them for over 2 years and are so blessed by them!

Lucy, Micah, and Morgan loved playing outside with our friend's sister.

It was a great visit, including lots of laughter and many rounds of food -
1. Fruit Juice
2. A fruit platter, including amazingly delicious mangoes (and once I told our friend's mom that I loved mangoes, she proceeded to peel and 'feed' me 2 whole ones. yum, but wow!)
3. Dates and coffee - the traditional Arab 'offering' when you go for a visit
4. A chocolate cake they made
5. These local pancake type things that the kiddos love

....hmmm...what else... maybe that was it. It seemed like a ton of food, but maybe that's because I drank my glass of fruit juice then was force-fed 2 whole - YUMMY - mangoes.

I especially love visiting this friend because we laugh a lot together! She speaks wonderful English and has a great sense of humor. *Yes, we speak some English when we're together. But, Yes, most of the time, we speak Arabic only!* She's the director of our nursery school and we love her!

So, the "ba-who?" title... let me explain.

It's a tradition in this culture that when you have female guests, you feed them, of course, and then as they leave, you help them to smell nice! Before I left this visit, I had 3 different fragrances of perfume put on me - for some of you, this may seem like torture, but I actually like all the smells! It's better than BO! And then after the perfume, they light up the incense and waft if all over you - under your dress/shirt/whatever, so that you leave smelling like their home. And Incense in Arabic is (phonetically spelled out for all my non-Arabic speakers/readers) "ba-khoor"

YAY! My title makes sense now, right? Cause a lot of you are now saying, "ba-who?" I can just picture it...

Here are some pictures of this wonderful event. Starting out with a cute one of Lucy & Morgan playing with the potpourri - see, they like smelling good, too!

 "Mama" was trying to do it to Lucy here. She wasn't all about it.

 And here's Morgan, getting her 'smell-goods'

And me. It was quite a site. I hadn't planned on this being as long or as big of a visit as it was and I opted, for the first time in 2 years, and maybe last time, to go casual. Yikes! So, she wanted to make sure I got my smell-goods, so she pulled out the edge of my shirt! This is only about 6 inches from my skin, and it was HOT! So, I suppose I was wearing my "entertainer" hat at that moment, too, and I was kinda yelping and making everyone laugh. But seriously - it was HOT up against my skin!

 Gotta be careful not to breathe in that smoke! It can be quite overwhelming!

 And here's precious Liz. (And appropriately dressed, might I add)

It was a fun, fun, fun night - even though Lucy and I both went straight to the bath when we got home!