5 Miles

• I used leftover rice, a pork chop and some veggies that needed to be used up to made fried rice. I was feeling so good and proud of myself for using leftovers to make another meal, until I was cleaning up supper–and I realized it appears I  now have more leftovers then I did before…they’re just all in one bowl now, instead of several.
• Alex’s zipper on his coat broke the other day. This is coat #3 for the winter. The first one was Will’s hand-me down, I wasn’t surprised. The second one was an $8 one from Wally-world. Again, I was not surprised. This third one (a well know brand I got from a consignment store) did surprise me. This time it’s the tab that lets you pull the zipper up and down that broke off, so we’re trying to made due. Do you think he can wear his coat, unzipped, the rest of the season?
• We got the sale fliers for the various grocery stores today. In one, the fish were all on sale, under the headline “Lenten Extravaganza”. While I know I am not an expert in theology, even I know that’s just wrong!
• The boys came down with colds in the last few days. Sadly this was about the time we had a nice warm up. They did end up feeling good enough yesterday to play outside a bit. Today they both acted much better (even with the runny noses) and so we went out for the first bike ride of the year. Will was a bit rusty on his and and needed a bit of help getting started the first time or two and then he was back to riding fine. Alex was on the Big Wheel, and I’m hoping this is the time he learns how to petal on his own. He was almost getting it–but then I think the snow boots he was wearing made it a bit more difficult! (HE wanted to wear them, along with his bike helmet, as he was pretending to be a policeman. Or a motorcycle racer who kept crashing.)
• Tomorrow Will gets to celebrate his half-birthday at preschool (Technically, that would have today, but they didn’t meet today). I was telling him he was officially 5 1/2 years old today and he said “I can’t believe I’m already 5 1/2 years OLD!”   You and me both, kid!

I’m stuck and can’t think of anything interesting to title this post. We planted our seeds today! Each boy picked out a flower they wanted to grow.

Will: BIG sunflowers 

Alex, a sunflower mix:

We got the cool peat moss pellets to start the seeds in. I know you don’t have to start flower seeds in these, but in the past few years I have not much success with planting seeds so I’m going to try it this way this year.

It took some time to get our system down, but once we did the boys were a great help. They started the holes for me while I got the tags ready and then helped put the seeds in the right spots.

We started tomatoes & peppers and some flowers.

We’re also going to have lettuce (which I might start in a week or two, I’m going to read abit more about that), carrots, basil, peas and beans. We’re having a simple garden this year.

Also today, the boys decided to make Movie Theater Posters. The 2nd one is was my example for Will, he wrote the other two. The last one in the row is Alex’s. He likes to make letters, but isn’t quite at the point were most are identifiable. I guess they were making posters of what they wanted to watch.

This poster is for Sid the Science Kid:

One of these is for Curious George:

We planted over a hundred daffodils and tulips last fall. I’m already starting to see a few tips coming up. I’m not sure if this is good or a sign I didn’t plant them deep enough.  AND– Today we saw the first robin of spring! Will was quite excited be the one to spot it. I’m not sure if we’ve been keeping track of this in the past and if this is earlier then normal or about the same. We all appreciate the hope it brings, but are aware that it’s only the last week of February.

This last week Will and I were talking about spring coming and I said “The first day of spring isn’t until March 21st”. He said, in a very disappointed voice, “Really?” In the previous days he’d been counting down the days to March for me and I suddenly remembered that and asked him “Did you think it started March 1st?” Yeah, he did. Sorry, bud, we have a long ways to go!

(Boy I sound like a pessimist here, don’t I? I’m just trying to be realistic! This is a rough time of year for me and I just know, after 15 years here, that spring takes a LONG time to come, so I try to appreciate the little signs, but realize it will be a long time until the warm days I’m hoping for!)

The last few days have been either rainy, or cold. We got a bit of snow Saturday, but not enough to play in (according to our standards at least! ) and it’s been rather windy and cold as well. So we’re finding things to do inside.

I got 2 new footstools in January. Both have storage inside to put throw pillows, extra blankets, things I’m tired of seeing around or on the floor. The problem is, the boys have decided they are fun to use, so the items keep getting thrown on the floor anyway! But when they’re this creative, I really can’t complain.

They made a ramp and were having the cars zoom down it and then having fun watching the cars flip over as they fell into the footstool.  It was quite entertaining for them.

Later in the day I had them take baths and let them have extra bubbles.

One of the problems with such a great trip is, it’s hard to settle back down into the day to day sameness of life. At least as far as blogging goes. Really, we have gotten back into our routine pretty well. I think some limits were pushed in the last week, making me feel like I spent most of the week in “cranky Mom” mode. Or maybe that’s just part of getting used to being home?

It was pretty much a mundane week–thus the lack of blog posts….and why I started trying to go back and do more on the trip. I felt I needed to update with SOMETHING. We celebrated Valentine’s Day  with chocolate,  a heart shaped cake and a special dinner. I was rather proud of the feast (London Broil, baked potatoes, warm spinich salad, sweet peas and wheat rolls).  We had decided we wouldn’t go out and I thought I’d make our own “dinner out” for home. We all enjoyed it a great deal.  Then Sunday James and the boys enjoyed seeing the first NASCAR race of the season. The boys were quite excited to see racing start again and have been playing Race Car Driver.

Monday we went up to visit my mom. It was a sunny, but chilly day. The boys had a great time seeing her, playing games iwth her and with the toys there, and then going out and poking holes in the ice at the edge of the pond (I was right behind them the whole time).  We left at 6 (to be home by 7) and Alex fell asleep about the time we got to the freeway. And then he woke up 2 minutes from our house. He was rather cranky but we got him into pjs and he eventually fell back asleep.  And this was the start of a busy week–so further updates will probably take awhile.

Here’s my attempt to tell those of you who are interested more details of our trip. I’m going to try to go in order of our time there, so we’re starting at the beginning here and I’ll try to add a bit each day. If you’ve checked out my Facebook pictures or the team blog, there may be some repeat, but I’ll try to mix things up to give everyone a bit new. (The nice thing about this, verses making you sit down to a slide show of our vacation pictures, is you can walk away any time! I’m doing this partly for us, so I can remember our trip…as I do this I’m amazed at how fuzzy details already are getting. I won’t be upset if you skip over these!)

First, two days before we drove to Philly, we had a packing party where we gathered together, packed & WEIGHED bags (important, no one wants to pay overage fees) and then prayed for the trip.

James was a huge help with the weigh-in.

Saturday we drove out to James’ sister’s house in PA. It was an uneventful trip and we were thankful there was no bad weather on the drive. The boys did a really good job–and considering they had just done that 2 weeks earlier, it was even MORE impressive. But I’m not going to start driving out that way ever month or so to keep them used to it!

We flew out Sunday, the day of the AFC/NFC Championship games. We flew out of Philly, so we saw lots of Eagle and Steeler Pride on display. We got to Detroit in time to see the beginning of the Cardinals/Eagles game…we got to watch the first half in a bar while waiting for the rest of our team to show up. We were a bit nervous to see one of the flights from Indy was delayed (and projected to get in just as our fly to Amsterdam was to take off), so we were quite relieved to see our team members appear at the gate (they were on the other flight). We got on the flight with the Cardinals quite in the lead, and were shocked to find out in Amsterdam that the Eagles had come back to make it a close game (and we had to use one team member’s Blackberry to find out the final score. By then we found out who the two teams in the Super Bowl would be, and that was the last we heard. Kind of nice to miss out on the two weeks of Press Coverage!)

We landed in Nairobi around 7 pm local time. By the time we got through immigration & bought our visas, got all our luggage and gotten out the door, it was dark out and we were all a bit weary. But this was a nice sight to see:

Thankfully, ALL our luggage arrived!

We were met by David, a friend of Ed’s and the man who helped plan much of our travel arrangements. We were able to get all the luggage on the top of the bus (as you can see below) but a tiny bit uncertain if they tied the bags down…all the luggage did make it with us, but we hit a few bumps that made me really wonder if they would.

We were told it’d take about 30-45 minutes to get to the Guest House from the airport. But there was a tiny problem—no one was sure the name of the guest house. It seems the site on NEGST’s campus we were going to stay at was full for the week, and they had recommended another Guest House in the area. But that house was new, and no one knew where it was. We finally found it at 1 am. Tired, we fell into bed and were thankful we could sleep in until 9 am.

We were staying in Karen, a suburb of Nairobi. Karen not very populated–it’s an area of more expensive houses on large lots of land. Karen does have a small shopping center, and the next morning we went there to exchange our money.

They drive on the other side of the road there—one of many British influences we saw there. (Michelle, one of the women on our team, is from Ireland, and she comment how at home she felt, because of the Irish influences. This became a huge source of teasing. Another time I was working with the kids in VBS and trying to get them to form a line. They wouldn’t, until a teacher said “Get in queue”. Flashlights are torches, you drive on the tarmac…you get the idea.)

After that & lunch, we headed over to NEGST. James, Michelle and Colleen got to go to a planning meeting with officals at the school to help them work on their IT stratgey. The rest of us got a tour of the campus (we did more, but I’m going going to show you the tour now, the rest will have to wait until tomorrow).

Here’s a picture of the gate:

 NEGST stands for Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology. Locals pronounce it NE-Gest. Other (like those who helped start it) say it rhymns with Next.

This is the classroom building, where we did the teaching.

Where we ate lunch each day.

The Admin Building

Our team on the steps of the Admin. Building

(Top Row: Ruth, Tina, James, Kim…3rd Road: Michelle, Carol, Colleen…2nd row: Brantly, Ali, Ruth…1st row: Leona, Judy, Phil…front & center, our leader: Ed)

The library

Between the library and Admin building is the chapel, and I can’t find a picture of it right now. I’m sure I’ll find one tomorrow, we’ll see if it gets updated.

These buildings are built around a grassy square that we often gathered in.

(From L to R: Polly, Colleen, Ruth, Kim and Michelle)

Another view of the commens area, with the chapel on the left and the library behind the trees. This is Colleen & Polly relaxing in between classes.

But–this takes time and I’ve been up long enough. So that’s it until tomorrow!

In the last few months we’ve been working on getting Alex to sleep through the night–or to not come into our room and wake us up whenever he can’t sleep. We set up a reward cart with stars for each time he didn’t get out of bed. I let him pick his reward for when the chart was full.  This was started just after Will had gone to a birthday party at Chucky Cheese’s and Alex picked that as his reward.  He finally filled up the chart the day before we left for Kenya, so we promised we’d go when we got back. Once we got back, we thought it’d be nice to go during the week, in Philly, then wait until a Saturday afternoon in Indy. (Even though our in-laws didn’t want their kids to know Chucky Cheese existed in PA…we found out Alex had been talking the whole 2 weeks we were gone about how we’d pack up everything, go home and then go to Chucky Cheese. What memory!)

Here are some pictures from Alex’s first trip to Chucky Cheese:

 

We had a good time…it was nice to go to one that was almost empty. Not as noisy, no waiting for turns…Thursday afternoons are a good time to go!

I was told I needed to update so you’d know we made it home. I did update Facebook! (Another plug for the site, sorry!) We drove all day Friday and hit Indy at 5, just in time for rush hour traffic. Even with that & going through a drive thru for supper to eat at home, we were at home by 5:30, and it was SO nice to be back! We were not sure what our driveway would look like (they’d had a foot of snow while we were gone, and while it was melting in the 40 degree weather we were driving home in, it can only melt so fast). We were pleased to see a neighbor had plowed our driveway for us. Not only was that a blessing to be able to drive right up, but we appreciate them helping it make it look like we were home (and not make it obvious our house was empty for a week).

We got home and have gone to bed early the last few nights. I think we’re finally feeling caught up. The boys have loved rediscovering all their toys (especially the ones Alex got for his birthday right before we left). I’m trying to not get too worked up over the mess they’ve been making. We’ve seemed to have brought all the warm weather with us and are enjoying much warmer then normal temps. We enjoyed going to church today as well–it was SO nice to be back!

This week my goal is to get the house cleaned up and to work on putting more in-depth thoughts on our trip up on the blog. Thank you all for your interest and prayers again!

Thanks for your prayers! We got to Detroit an hour early (!! AN HOUR?!? When are flights an hour early?) and had plenty of time for customs and lunch. The bad weather in Philly is coming in tonight so we missed out on that as well! Very uneventulful flights, which is good. Just long with no sleep. So we’re really tired. We had told the boys we’d see them around bed time, so they were surprised when we walked in at dinner time. Will started to tear up. I asked him why he cried and he said “I don’t know, tears just came in my eyes!” Alex talked our ears off–fitting since he wouldn’t say much to us on the phone. The kids are getting ready for bed and then we’ll be going to bed as well. Did I mention we’re tired? If you look at our flight in Eastern time, we got to the airport noon on Sunday and were in airports or airplanes until about 3:00 pm on Monday. With maybe 2-3 hours of cat naps here and there. We’re planning on staying in Philly a few days, to give us some time to adjust & to see Alex do all the things Aunt T taught him!