Sorry for the delay!

What it looks like when you mirror is stolen.
The van of our teammates after thier crash - the van was totalled, no one was severley injured, just glass scratches!
Yes, this is a regular sized pencil, no this is not a regualr size bug!
Jaden's 6th birthday with some of her presents, I made the hat!
Matthew and I at a tea farm by where we live.
Jaden in South Kiningop - beautiful!
Katriels 3rd birthday, with brownies!
Picture at Wilson Airport where Matthew's Dad used to "hang out"
What can I say? She fits right in here!
The building where Matthew's dad worked.

Hanging out with Flat Mason

The airport at Malindi - One door in, one out.

And you though things were bigger in Texas! Look at the size of this spider.

10 years of wedded bliss!

Sunrise on the Indian Ocean. Beautiful!

Flat Mason had an incident with the Monkeys...

The beach in Malindi

Having pancakes and Vermont Maple Syrup with language school teachers

Matthew at the Kentmere Club, they were out of Zebra :(

Jaden & Katriel in Sunday School

Jaden's first tooth is gone!

We have had inquiries of what our house looks like, so here is a pictorial tour.

This is the room between our bedroom and the bathroom. There is a small closet to the right of this picture. We use this room mostly to store dirty laundry (under the table) and Lisa’s school stuff on the table. There are also things to remind them of Reno, picture books from family and things hung on the walls.

This is our bathroom. There is no water to the shower. The sink works though!

Our bedroom. The bed is huge! The girls are coloring on it. Notice the painted cement floors. You can also see on the far right the cell phone plug in near the ceiling. Plug-ins are random in number and placement (there are none in any bathrooms, one-two each bedroom and six in the dining room?)

This is looking from the room that the first picture was taken in to the bedroom. See the outlet at the top with the transformer on the table. Weird placement! The door directly ahead goes out to the porch.

A view from the door mentioned above. This is the closet that is built into the room. There are eight switches on the wall. Four work.

If you were to walk straight out the door, this is the view. Flower plants, and beyond that to the left you can see a little shine, this is the dam. In the middle behind the trees is a golf course.

You can see the dam a little better, this is looking slight left from our door.

Better picture of the flower fields. They prune the plants and send the flowers when they are still buds and not bloomed yet.

Ah, this would not be complete without an outdoor WC (water closet), Loo, Choo, Bathroom, squatty potty. You choose the name, but this is an outside toilet.

On the porch outside our room lives wasps. Different that I have ever seen in the US. They are black and large with brown wings. You can see it building a nest like paper wasps.

Here is Katriel helping out with the laundry. If it is nice out (like the day the picture was taken) it is done outside on this porch. If it is cold, it is done (always by hand) in the bathtub. It usually takes 2-3 days for it to dry it is so damp here,

Looking back with our room on my left, the flower fields on the right, ahead is the girls room.

This is the girls room, notice the fancy way we put our curtains open, you roll them and tuck them into the bars on the windows. It works! There are no nails or other ways to affix things to the cement walls, so they are fairly plain. When we move into a house of our own, I hope to overcome this.

Girls closet. There is a picture from one of our friends, Aspen, that Jaden received before we left Reno. Also there is a card from Aunt Devone that Jaden has held onto on her door. The Angels from Chris are there as well and the jacket from Marian is on the door. Cool to see your things in Kenya huh?!? Oh, and notice the nightlight. This took about two weeks to find and was $10.00. If only there was a dollar tree here.

Leaving both rooms, you go down a long hall to a landing. This is the front of the house.

To the right of the couch above, there is a door, this is immediately out that door. Another porch, with a gate 15 feet in the air? We try not to use it. You can see the car port and the car we are using. It is a Suzuki Scudo. On the far left is a corrugated metal shack in which a night guard would sleep (we don’t have one for our inside gate.)

I am now standing by the couch looking to the top of the stairs, the door in the back is Suzanne’s room. Notice my attempt at decorating! There is also a Nairobi map. Look at the floor too. They really are beautiful.

Going down the stairs. Again, the cement work is beautiful through out the house. There is a heart on the step.

Almost downstairs. To the left is the front door. Straight ahead is a half-bath. Door on the right is the sitting room in which I have set up a TV (no reception) that we can watch movies on Friday night. The window on the right with the bars goes to the dining room

Sitting room. We entertain guests here as well. Yes, we have guest over. The flamingo on the bookshelf was a gift from one of our Kenyan friends.

Kitchen. Very nice! I like it a lot. Roomy. The oven/stove is a lot smaller than US. There is a tank between it and the wall for propane and the oven and one burner are electric. Great view out the windows too.

Refrigerator. Half and half actually, the freezer is about the same size as a US, which makes the fridge about 2x2 feet. It is in the pantry.

Another view of the pantry, most items, eggs, veggies, fruit are consumed within a day or two and not refrigerated. Notice the bag of Tootsie pops. Thanks women’s bible study! We brought these with us. The Tupperware supplied by the women’s ministry is invaluable. Since there is little covered storage, having airtight containers is invaluable!

Where we make tea and the water filter.

Dining area.

August update

We had open house on Saturday, August 25th; here are some pictures from Jaden’s kindergarten experience.

The Elementary School Library

Jaden and her teacher, Mrs. Burr

The wildlife has continued to be fun in Kenya. Here are some pictures from the animal orphanage. Baby Elephant (which we were able to touch).

Wart Hogs (which we did not attempt to touchJ

Here is a super-sized slug on the edge of the pavement by our house. You can see the proportion with the girls hands, it was huge!

Down town Nairobi storks live in the trees. When they land on a branch, they are so huge that the branch moves a few feet, it is quite a sight!

We have had a great time with the chameleons! They are so much fun. I found a dead one and that was pretty exciting, but right after that, Matthew found one in the hedges. Here is Jaden with it on her shoulder.

One day one of the helpers at the language school caught three while we were picking up Jaden from school. We came home and Katriel ran out. “There are lizards in the bathroom!” This wouldn’t have surprised me, as there are always bugs and interesting stuff in the bathrooms. We opened the door and found the three chameleons. We played with them for about an hour, here are some of the highlights.



There is a place called City Park where there are monkeys (and no other white people). If you think that ducks and geese are pests, you have not seen anything yet! While we were walking holding a bag with our lunch, one jumped from a tree slicing the plastic bag and stole an apple! Then as we sat to eat, they swarmed us. Matthew and John (one of our Kenyan friends) protected Lisa and the girls as they sat on the bench. Jaden was more than happy to attempt to feed the monkeys.

Then as we were eating, they started to climb up Matthew sitting on his shoulder. They liked to sit up there and “share” his orange with him. When it was time to go and they were done with the orange, Matthew waited for the monkey to get down and he didn’t, so he just started to walk. We walked almost to the exit of the park which was quite a distance (as you can imagine, the Kenyans thought this was hysterical—a white person walking about with a monkey) and finally the monkey, on his own terms came down. It was great fun!

I just thought you would enjoy a few scenery pictures. Here is our school room with our roommate Suzanne.

This is a picture of Limuru, the closest medium sized town (large for here) to us. Notice the hardware store, this is no Lowes!

If you think traffic gets bad where you are, it is much more fun when you share the road with all kinds of things, pedestrians, donkeys and this lovely human carried trailer. Notice the writing on it, apparently it is a Toyota and one should never give up! Of course, safety first in Kenya and it does have reflector lights and a spare tire.

This picture is mostly for Lisa’s dad, but any contractor would appreciate the beauty of this picture. Look at the great scaffolding that is around the building. It is branches tied together with twine. Again, in Kenya, safety first!