road trippin'

We made it back! 3 days of travel in Africa with watoto is NOT for the faint of heart…let me tell you. But in addition to at times being ridiculously tiring it was also a fabulous adventure! Our time in Kenya was great. Our freeloading butts even manged to get invites to not one but TWO Thanksgiving dinners! Pretty amazing since we were resigned to yet another year without stuffing our faces with turkey and the fixin’s. The food was great but we enjoyed the cool weather and fabulous friends the most. The girls reveled in the family time together. Jason and I even got 24 hours to ourselves in the city (more later). Yep, it was good times. We sat by fires, read books. We hiked and explored. We went to malls and enjoyed cheesy Christmas decorations. I even wore jeans…no LOVED wearing jeans and sweaters! And being able to get food we have missed was life altering (hey, we like to eat!) and we all gained a few pounds but no worries we are sure to sweat it off soon. I will post more about our time there soon (mostly pics because I will not allow blogger guilt to ruin the high from being away I am feeling:)
getting our Western on

We had a relatively non eventful trip back (except for almost hitting a few wandering goats, seeing an impala and having a random knife left in the car fly off the dash and cut my leg open at a sudden stop (seriously how ridiculous is my life?). As we arrived in Dar Anni screamed “Asante Sana Mungu!” (Thank you God) which seems about perfect to me. Jason brought a device that allowed us to listen to music on the almost 20 hours we spent in the car over 2 days coming back. The soundtrack was a mix of Tom Petty and JayZ, Tori Amos and Jars of Clay, Johnny Cash and U2. Just us. I mostly spent my time in the back “entertaining” (read here bribing) Anni and Evy but I did manage to steal away a couple hours both days to join Jason in the front and was just in awe of this place. The dust, the small villages we passed along the way, the people. This place is amazing and if you have never visited Africa you are missing a huge corner of God’s creation that is brilliant. Really. Brilliant and chaotic and different and dusty and real and raw and just wonderful.
see…..


sorta felt like heaven spilling over…

we stayed the night in a local hotel recommended by some friends and upon checking in we realized it had a playground: HOLLA!! Plus, rogue monkeys wandering around and Anni went “monkey hunting”! Yep, she was in heaven!



The rooms were a bit small (no TINY) but when we walked in Anni yelled “WOW, it is so nice!” She is easy to please I tell you plus being completely exhausted meant we all went to bed at 8pm. then the next day…


fire safety at the gas station

translation: we thank God for everything

got mangos?

almost there…hit DAR traffic..blick! but then the boat and tumefika salama!!!