January

Its already Jan. Thats just crazy.
Tomorrow is the first day of school for all the kids since November. It marks the start of a brand new term. We handed out some of the school books and supplies we had prepared last week after church today and the rest of the kids will get theirs tomorrow...
In other news, Allison made me a paper chain to countdown to my birthday. I was super excited about it because she had one for Katie and Ryanne coming back in Nov. and Chris had one counting down his departure. She said we each had to have a paper chain to countdown to something, so mine was my birthday...sweet:)

Swimming

Yesterday we took Freda's kids to the pool at the Kitale Club...We usually take them every thursday but because Christmas and New Years both fell on thursdays we had to wait. The kids are getting braver every time we go. They used to be afraid and would barely go into the water, now most of them jump right in, except for Elia.

Morgan


Elia actually went into the water this week


Moses and Morgan





Tiny Dottie


Time for chips and soda
Moses was confused by the carrots that were mixed in with his fries...


We love Richard, I think I caught him off guard with this picture...

New Years Rockin Eve...

For New Years we had intended to go out to dinner and have a big night out...But plans changed and we ended up staying in and having delicious macaroni and cheese and watching Harry Potter 2 until midnight when we rang the new year in by banging pots and pans...This is a tradition that Allison takes part in every year, but I've never even heard of it, so it was my first time...

Self-timer action





Tom Riddle

How many rulers does it take...

Allison and I spent this morning in town with Geoffrey buying all the textbooks and workbooks that the Oasis kids will need when they start school on monday. There will be 51 kids in primary and 1 in Secondary (high school)...
Allison had prepared lists of what each kid would need and how much it would cost so when we went to go purchase it all we had to do was show them the list and they compiled it from there...It made things sooo easy when it could have been complete chaos...
After loading the books into the taxi we headed home and set to organizing everything...Workbooks, textbooks, and school supplies like pens, pencils, erasers...
We were so excited to get to organize everything for the kids in preparation for school...So a bunch of school supplies, another quick trip to town by Andrew, and a couple hours later we had everything organized...

You'll never guess how much these boxes actually hold...



The mountian of textbooks...



Workbooks



Anybody need a pen?


Elvis better study hard




Look at Allison's organization skills in action...


The finished product...






Call us nerds, but we love organizing, so it was fun...plus we love the kids...Thank you so much to those people who donated, these school books were bought because you gave!

It's been super quiet around here as you can tell by the lack of posts in the last week or so...With the craziness of Christmas and the holidays, it seems like everyone is out of town or lying low until school starts next week...

I've enjoyed it because I never really let myself relax and I'm almost finished with my last Harry Potter book (yes, Im obsessed), but I've moments of cabin fever, if thats possible on our huge compoud, and run to town for bread...

Like I said school starts next monday, so yesterday, today, and tomorrow will be spent getting all the supplies for the kids who will be going back to school. Yesterday we went to Transmatt and bought all the pens, pencils, rulers, and sharpeners. Today we'll be getting books and some of the supplies for the boarders...

After we had purchased everything at Transmatt we met some the house boys who didn't go home for Christmas at the Alakara for lunch fo Chicken and chips...

Pato


All the boys


Paul and Moses


All that chicken made Paul sleepy

Christmas in Kenya

Our house at Christmas...



I freaking love my lit up Mary...found it at Transmatt


Our manger


Stockings were hung by the fire with care...






Tonya decorated Emmanuel for Christmas


Dinner table


No matter where you have Christmas Dinner, be it Kenya or America, theres always a mess afterwards


Dinner was followed by a photo shoot....Complete with the cheesy "family photo" Although, I cant say its an accurate family photo because Chris isn't in it, but you get the idea




The whole group...

Christmas Eve

So last night we had Christmas Eve Dinner with 13 people. Andrew and I ran to the market to get everything we needed, and no surprise it was insane...Insane is actually an understatement...We got mauled in the Khetia's Supermarket...You would have thought the world was ending it was so packed with frantic people.

I have bruises from being hit with shopping carts and at one point I had to abandon some intended items on our shopping list because I literally couldnt move through the crush of people. Ive never seen anything like it...I wish I had taken pictures...

After, we rushed home to start dinner because we were already an hour behind. As we rushed into the house I heard Christmas music and the house was beautifully decorated with all kinds of Christmas stuff. Allison was sitting on the couch just smiling. She had spent the afternoon drawing and decorating the house for Christmas...I just looked at her and started crying. It was the first time it actually felt something like Christmas...I seriously couldn't have asked for anything else...Ill post pics soon of how awesome the house looked like, she might actually have some up on her page already...It made my day...
To be honest I was kind of sad I wasn't home with my sisters and it was starting to hit me I'd never missed a Christmas, so to walk into the house the way Allison had decorated it, I couldn't have asked for more. It was great.

Dinner was a lot of fun and ended with an American/Ukrainian photo shoot...More to come