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| High Speed InternetI have so much I should say, but my time right now is booked solid. In a nutshell, we are in the US and already on the road for our month long road trip through some southern states. I'm enjoying high speed internet. In honor of such a beautiful convenience I am finally posting the picture that I tried and tried to post in Nairobi, but continually failed to get to load. Enjoy the headline our newspaper in Kenya from January. Best headline ever!
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| We are a week and a half from our departure day. This week I have really felt the weight of what needs to be accomplished. Yesterday I buckled down and packed 6 totes. Only 4 more to go.... We are at the point where we are finding ourselves scheduling every little thing in as quick as possible. There is much room from breathing on some days.
Part of my anxiety and rush is wanting to finish the bulk of our packing and cleaning this week. On Saturday we are picking up our furlough replacement couple, the Mangels. Jeff and I have moved out of our bedroom and into Emily's room. She's staying in the boys' room. I wanted to get our room empty (of our junk) and cleaned so that the Mangels can move directly into our bedroom and start settling in the 10 days we live together.
I wanted to plan some time for our family to enjoy some fun things here before we left. That hasn't really worked out. Although, Saturday is Elliott's 9th birthday. We are all going (plus Miriam) on a game drive through Nairobi National Park and we'll have a picnic lunch there. That afternoon, we'll surprise Elliott with some cake and ice cream (Doh! Forgot to buy the ice cream...) and a few small gifts that we've bought for him. He isn't expecting anything because we are having a big cookout/pool party to celebrate his and Edison's birthdays right after we arrive in Indiana. Even so, I didn't want the day to pass with Jeff and I packing and cleaning. And I really wanted one last game drive. The Nairobi park isn't bad, it's a good day trip kind of thing. But it's not Maasai Mara, that's for sure.
I wanted to post a funny headline that I read a while back. Unfortunately my internet connection isn't so good today. I think it's the move from our room to Emily's. I'll try to get it another time.
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| Not Prayer Card WorthyThree weeks until we leave Kenya and I'm just now sitting down to go over my pre-furlough checklists that were sent to me in March. I'm scrambling around trying to get a decent family picture. The current one being used on all our newsletters makes me cringe every time I look at it.
This picture will not be on our prayer card.
At first I was thinking this one might be ok. But once I cropped it to this size, I realized several things. Yes, my two older kids look supremely uncomfortable. It's almost as if we have a machete we are holding behind their backs forcing them to smile. Unfortunately, they are at that age where all our photos have that look. So that's not the reason I won't use this picture.
I won't use it because of my smile. I have the lottery smile. I didn't even know about the lottery smile until last year when Alisa C. emailed us a link to these two blog postings by the same guy (post #1 & post #2).
My smile is so big that you can't even see my eyes. What the heck was I laughing about at that exact second? No one else in the picture is grinning as big as me. Well, really no one else besides Jeff is really even smiling in that photo.
Thankfully we had two pictures taken at the same time and the other one has a happy smile, but not the lottery smile. And I have someone who is going to photoshop Elliott's cold sores out. Now if only they could photoshop a smile on my kids' faces.
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| Plain and Simple are my friendsKenya has been a country of first times for me. It makes sense that when you enter a new culture you will experience things for the first time, like foods, music, smells, clothing. I can now add buying curtains to that list.
For the first time in my 33 years, I bought curtains. It was a stressful time. The measuring and re-measuring. Realizing that I should have measured in meters and not inches when it was too late. Trying to sort through bolts of bright vibrant colored curtains looking for simple and plain. There's a reason I've never done this before.
When we owned our home in Michigan City, we had cheap venetian blinds in every window. We had two curtains in that house, one in the kitchen and one in the nursery. Jeff's mom bought both of those for us otherwise those windows would have remained naked.
When we moved to our apartment in Mishawaka, we continued with the venetian blind theme. But the little living room had a large sliding glass door that opened out to a pond. Apartment policy said we had to put up a neutral colored curtain within two weeks of moving in. Jeff ran out and bought some beige curtains to put up there. I could have cared less.
When we first moved to Kenya, the house we took over had curtains in all windows except the kitchen. I was more than happy to leave them all right where they were. But now our apartment has huge windows. We live on the bottom floor and frequently people walk by the windows (especially the large sliding glass doors) and look in to see what we are doing. We've solved the issue in the bedrooms by hanging Maasai blankets in the windows with clothes pins. It looks tacky since none of the blankets match, but it does the job.
On Friday I went to Nakumatt to finally pick out some nice calm neutral bland curtains for the apartment (especially for the large sliding doors ~ Maasai blankets are too small to cover them). One thing I've learned through this fabric buying experience is that there is no such thing as calm, neutral or bland when it comes to fabric here. There are a lot of crazy ugly designs.
In the end I found one last bolt of beige-ish fabric with some small floral designs. I was trying to stay away from any pattern, but that's completely impossible here. In the kids' bedrooms, I bought kikoy curtains. They are bright and colorful, but cheap and that was the biggest selling point for me.
I'm looking forward to having curtains. It would mean that I could wear shorts around the apartment without worrying about offending one of my neighbors. Or that we could have some guests over and talk in the living room without the gate guard walking by to look in and see who we have over. Plus I think our furlough replacement couple will be happy to have us take down the Maasai blankets and return the clothes pins to the laundry area.
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| Sex Boycott UpdateA Kenyan man is suing his wife over the week long sex boycott. No, his name is not Jeff Brown. Here's the link to the article. I love the fact that he suffered sleepless nights, lack of concentration and mental anguish. And how do backaches come into play? Wait, maybe I don't want to know.
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