Palm Trees

When I was back in Utah for Jon's wedding, my sister asked if we have palm trees around where we live. I snapped this photo of the view out our back window.

The tallest palm tree is like 80 feet tall.

Coconuts are so cheap and easy to get here because coconut trees grow everywhere. So…hopefully that answers the question. Yes, we have palm trees. :)

Mama Wangare

My sweet friend Sherri (from Provo, then Pasadena, then back to Provo again and ever since) decided to take advantage of our being here in Kenya to do some real service this Christmas. She spread the word to friends, ward members and family that we were here, and rounded up a bunch of donations from some very generous people. We were given money which is being used to help Brother Richard with his own business, Brother Karani with his school fund, our branch with materials and members preparing documents to travel to the temple in South Africa. 

She and her immediate family donated money to buy Christmas gifts for a widow that Hunter met on one of his excursions.

The widow's name is Mama Wangare. She's a sweet lady around 40 years old, who cares for and works to provide for a 7-year old daughter, Julia, a 4-year old son, Isaac, and a 3-year old granddaughter, Johan. 

Hunter said when he met her, he was impressed. Her home, another typical Swahili home with mud walls and floor, was kept very neat. It seemed she had a place for everything. When he was interviewing her, he had asked her what a typical good day was like for her, and she said "I haven't had a good day in a long time."

I learned from our friend Mishi, that Mama Wangare and the kids mostly needed clothes. Somehow, she discreetly figured out everyone's clothes sizes, and I got to do the shopping. Normally, I enjoy shopping for other people so much more than for myself, but this time was a bit challenging considering I had never met them before. I did the best I could with what little time I had. I took a gamble that she would like the style of dress I found. I bought a Kenyan style of dress that I've seen people wearing all over Mombasa. Solid color with cool embroidered details. 

After buying the clothes, I had some money left over, so I bought a matching bracelet for the mother, some wheat and maize flour, beans, rice and sweets for the kids.

When they saw the clothes, they were very happy. I was thrilled everything fit. When the mama came out in her dress, I was ecstatic! She looked radiant, and the dress fit her so well! The kids faces were covered in sugar as they wasted no time to chow down on the treats. So sweet. Anyway, the video and photos say it all. Such a special memory.

This video captures it even better. Check out the link below:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3qTDvN0DV8

Christmas Morning

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!!!! Our Christmas in Africa did not disappoint. We had a wonderful morning.

We bought the kids pajamas to open on Christmas Eve. Here are the boys' pj t-shirts. I thought they were fitting for each child.

And may I ask, who on earth gets up on Christmas morning and naturally looks like she belongs on a cover of a magazine. Geez, Reyna. You're too gorgeous!

I keep wanting to upload some videos, but the files are too big, and I'm not sure if I'm using youtube right, so I simply have to wait for Hunter to find time to help me. Sorry, dudes! We've got some really cute videos of Christmas morning, but I'll just post the few photos and screen shots of the videos that I have for now.

The boys still got to open some gifts from me and Hunter, Santa, and even from some of you! 

The highlights: Santa got our family a dart board!---it's become Hunter's new latest hobby. He's quite good actually. We googled the actual rules, and Hunter can deliberately throw a certain score, or throw a bulls eye when he wants to! So many hidden talents, this guy!

I bought Hunter an awesome, genuine cotton traditional African shirt. 

Hunter bought me a cool bag that he had sewn from a lesso. Inside was a matching scripture case and change purse. Lessos typically have a phrase written on the edge of them. Mine says "Nikikuona moo hutabasamu," which means "when I see you my heart smiles" or something like that. Isn't that sweet? I especially like that it has these cool stylized mangoes on the print--cuz I looooove mangoes!

Magra got the boys a hex bug battle bridge. It's awesome!

Paulo also got this cool little microscope/telescope from Joey.

It's actually quite cool! We've been looking at the surfaces of everything in our house! Did you know that if you look at your cell phone screen under a kid microscope, you can actually see the RGB colors? Bet you didn't. Sweet eh?

Andre loved his Simon game from Auntie Kami.

It was a wonderful day. But the best part, I will write in a separate post about Mama Wangare. Stay tuned.

Swahili Stockings

With all our Christmas parties and preparations, we had overlooked one thing--we don't own any stockings! I said to Hunter, "Maybe we can just use your big socks?" He said, he didn't want them all stretched out, so Hunter came up with a fabulous idea.

We bought a "lesso" and had a mama across the street who has a little sewing business sew us some stockings. I had to explain every detail, and even drew a pattern on a newspaper for her because she had no idea what a stocking was--those crazy Americans and their weird Christmas traditions. [I have to tell you that I felt especially silly explaining to Miriam about our belief in Santa Clause. The more I explained, the more ridiculous it sounded to my ears. I mean, how do I explain that Santa is this big fat man who wears a big red suit and he flies around in a sleigh driven by flying reindeer, and then he jumps down your chimney to deliver gifts, etc etc…No wonder Kenyans don't really know or care about Santa. Sounds crazy, right?….yes it does…moving on.]

So this is how the stockings turned out.

I think I could have done a cleaner job on the sewing for sure, but they're pretty cute, and I'm happy that we now have a cool set of Swahili stockings so we can forever remember our Christmas in Africa!

Reyna's First Birthday

On Reyna's birthday, we woke up and gave her her first breakfast in bed. She was so cute.

She got to open the present that Paulo and Andre picked out for her. It was a walker. We've since learned that we have to be ultra careful to watch her now that she can put herself in danger more easily. I hunted down an electrician shop and bought covers for our electrical outlets. Thank goodness that's not a problem anymore.

Since we didn't have any family around to celebrate Reyna's birthday with us, we decided to do the next best thing and invite our surrogate family: Miriam and her family, Brother Karani, and my VT companion, Sister Ann, and her kids.

Here she is getting ready for the party:

We had a wonderful little birthday/Christmas party. When the kids arrived, we had them decorate some gingerbread cookies.

They were DIVINE!!! Then we ate a nice meal...

...and had a birthday cake for Reyna. We kept the tradition and decorated her first cake with her "Teddy Buppy" (I spell it "Bapi" and the kids spell it "Bupee", but whatever.)

In case you're still confused, this is what I'm talking about:

She loved it. It turned out to be the best buttercream frosting I've ever made. Yum!!!

Here the kids are playing Bop-it. Betty's quite a natural.

Happy Birthday, my little angel!!!! I can hardly believe it's been a year!