It’s the Eid holiday here in Dubai. The weather is finally perfect (87° and sunny), the children are off school, and by a stroke of luck my DH’s trip to London got cancelled.

Thank you, crew scheduling! (and thank you, DH, for not disappearing off to Tokyo instead.)

We’re just coming to the end of four days of family time, and thanks to the mercury dropping, we’ve been outside nearly the whole time – honestly, we tough it out through the long hot, sticky summers for glorious days like these.

Since water-based activities are still the order of the day, we kick-started Eid with a dhow cruise around Dubai Marina – and I just loved the twisted tower, pictured left, that we sailed past.

But the thing that made me laugh was that while we were on Captain Jack’s family wooden boat – sitting comfortably on enormous bean bags atop the deck of the beautifully varnished vessel – several super yachts sped by, one with a pair of bikini-clad blondes at the helm who turned the heads of the dads on our boat.

How children change everything, I smiled to myself!