To friends old and new, far and near, may 2015 be a year of hope, joy, and love for you and all those who you care about.

Everyone deserves a hot chocolate after this!

Claire learning how to push her very own seal

Who would have guessed? Ice skating in Nairobi!

Out for our Sunday drive.

One of the best parts of turkey leftovers? Making stock.

Reading their Christmas books. Slow mornings are the best!

Santa has made it to Nairobi! Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

I'm not sure what the top one is, but it sounds promising! Maybe it's what Claire does every time she's in the water...

Great Christmas gift: a friend showed up in the rain to read Christmas books to the girls!

Singing Christmas carols at Rehema Children's Home with 60 kids and a handful of visitors.

Making cookies for Santa!

Preschool Christmas Pageant

We’ve mentioned it before, but we’ll say it again: Claire has an amazing preschool teacher. An amazing team of people run it, really. The classroom aide and her music teacher (who is also her friend Luke’s mom) put in tons of work as well. The last day of school is a half-day, and they organized an entire program for the parents to come and watch. The kiddos really put on a show! They sang 6-7 songs, acted in a play, and then held a party afterwards. If you’ve ever tried to get a four year old to diligently pursue anything (for several weeks), you know what a feat this is; when you add both morning and afternoon classes together to make for around 20 such four year olds, this was definitely a Christmas miracle!

Part of the show included a retelling of the Christmas story, and kids could pick their parts. There was a whole army of angels and a sizable flock of sheep to welcome those 3 wise men to the birth of baby Jesus! It was super cute.

Sheep and wise men.

Claire's friend Luke as a sheep.

Claire showed her usual spunk and enthusiasm and did great. She has been practicing non-stop at home for the past several weeks. We were so proud of her! Ainsley kept saying, “Sissy is singing good, Sissy is dancing good!” Besides a good showing of parents, the elementary school principal, several other teachers, and the superintendent came to watch.

Ainsley enjoying a snack as she watches the show.

We hope these pictures and videos make you smile as much as they did us. What a beautiful Christmas treat!

Singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."

Take a bow!

Soup Party

It has been our tradition for the past several years to host a Christmas Eve soup and bread party. We would make a big pot of French Market Soup (thanks, GiGi!), serve crusty bread, maybe a salad and definitely some fruit and cheese. The idea was a cozy, low-key way to get together with some of our favorite people, and to keep an open invitation to anyone who needed a place to go at Christmastime. I have so many good memories of past Christmas Eves that I revisit.

I couldn’t bear the thought of giving up this tradition this year, especially as we have been really mindful about preserving important family traditions while trying to adapt and create new memories as well. There is something so fundamentally nourishing and comforting about soup that everyone seems to recognize and appreciate. As a family, getting through this first semester has been a struggle, a feat, in many ways, and we didn’t want anything fancy to kick of the Christmas season, just a comforting way to mark the achievement.


Transition challenges and surprise baby news (19 weeks now!) aside, we kept hearing echoes of how others are also feeling worn down and exhausted as the semester comes to a close. So many unforeseen events have thrown several families off-track in the past few months. So, in the face of this, and even though it would’ve been way easier to not put forth this kind of effort, we thought, “what better thing to do than to gather together and enjoy each other’s company in quiet celebration of Christmas?”

The kids has their own special table.

So, preparations began. We talked to our neighbors who share the duplex because they are friends and I wanted their buy-in before anything happened, since once I get going, I like to think big. They were interested and gave the go-ahead, since it would be much easier to share the burden of prepping and space. Originally, my idea was to invite the entire staff and their families. That equals roughly 100 people (plus families). Did I mention we live in a 2 bedroom, one-bath duplex? So…I scaled back and decided to invite everyone on campus because we have met so many incredible families right here who have been such a system of support to us. Again, math got in the way. We added up all the people who live on the campus and ended up around 150: still a staggering number. So…we thought that it would be a low-key way to invite our closest neighbors and get to know the people who live immediately around us better. Lower campus (which is what where we live is called) houses 75 people. Clearly, though, during Christmas break people would have other plans and so we felt that we’d go for it and be happy if a handful of those families/individuals could make it, especially after a long and exhausting semester. We walked door to door with invitations, Claire made a speech at each house and promised the prospect of coloring and we were off. The RSVPs trickled in and then the floodgates opened. Originally, every single family was coming, plus all their relatives visiting from out of town.


Hmmm. Ok. Apparently, this was something many people were craving. Probably, it was the cuteness of the two small invitation-bearers and the promise of being able to color with them. Now we had to use math to figure out how many times we should multiply each recipe! Normally a do-it-myself kind of person, I reached back out to the people who had offered help and, by the end, it was a wonderful community effort.

Our neighbors organized chairs and tables to be brought down from the school and set up. Thankfully, “winter” weather here is in the high 70s and sitting outside was perfect. We made 3 types of soup (Butternut Squash, Chili, and Italian Bean & Pasta), and had 3 others bring a big pot (Creamy Potato w/ Bacon, Chicken Noodle, Vegetable Beef). There were homemade rolls, cornbread, oatmeal bread and sourdough. The desserts were amazing: traditional chocolate whoopee pies, pumpkin whoopee pies, Kirk’s famous chocolate chip cookies, several Christmas goodies, Peanut butter balls, and on, and on. We feasted and hung out and the kids played all over. Several families had children back from college and those alumni sat together comparing experiences, and enjoying the reunion. People sat and talked with their neighbors and enjoyed each other’s company long past the end time. We made coffee and tea and people went back for more.

In the end, there was plenty of food. I never made a final head count, but all tables were filled at one point and the atmosphere was completely relaxed. It was a communal sigh of relief. Several people left from the party to go straight to the airport to catch a flight back to North America. There were plenty of hands to help clean up. We wished everyone a Merry Christmas, tucked two tired and filthy girls into their new bunk bed and collapsed, exhausted and happy, to the couch. It was just the kind of nourishment we needed

We love nature walks!

Visiting the fish on the middle school campus.

Making noise in our Christmas clothes outside daddy's classroom.

Soup night for 75 this Saturday. The cooking has begun!

Sleeping on Chrysanthemum, her new doll. Thanks Grammie and Gramps!

Christmas cookies that we made at some friends' house.

Giant stick bug by our washing machine!

Ballet Recital

Here are some quick pics and a couple of videos of Claire's ballet recital!

Here's a video of Claire and the other students dancing...

...and here's one of the parents joining in.

Excited about boxes for Christmas from nana and papa! Less excited about the little red ants that hitchhiked after customs inspected them.

Before her first recital...

What should you do with kfc leftovers? Make yeasted waffles for chicken and waffles of course!

FAQs Part 4

These are more questions from some of Katie’s friends…

1. Her friend Shawn wants to know what the consequence is for hunting for ivory:

I just finished a great article about poaching that might give you a good idea of what that scene is like. Poaching is a HUGE problem. We bought the girls a soccer ball and proceeds went to anti-poaching agencies (the ball is printed with the slogan “alive and kicking”!). Compared to what the poachers can provide in bribes, the game wardens are paid a pittance, so it a testimony to their integrity that they are still on the job!


2. John wants to know if everyone runs to work since Kenya produces many great runners?

Haha. No, but people walk EVERYWHERE. Even across the highway. Cars are a luxury many cannot afford and walking is a natural alternative. I was just thinking about how in America everything is about arch support and proper cushioning, but here people walk a lot farther in flip-flops or other shoes that lack the “proper” support.


From Carolyn:
3. I'm curious about school supplies and clothing. Do they have separate classes grouped by age or by ability?

Kenyan schools are much more “British” in many ways (being a British colony, that makes sense). The students all wear uniforms, you can tell which school children go to by the color clothing they are wearing. The learning is much more rote memorization (we are constantly impressed by Kenyans’ ability to memorize things!) and reciting things back to a teacher as a group (unlike the focus in America on class debates and discussions, open-ended questions, and problem-solving skills). While this seems maybe “boring” from an American perspective, it can be practical when only the teacher has a book or classes are so overcrowded that not everyone can have a chance to speak.

They pay for school, as well. Technically the lower grades are supposed to be free, but there are always “fees” of some sort, for uniforms or supplies. The names for classes are different too: class 1- class 8 is like 1st through 8th grade and is for everyone. After class 8, you take a test in each subject to see if you have enough points to be placed in a secondary (high) school, (Form 1- Form 4). The higher your scores, the better the school you go to, the highest scores go to international schools, where the government may pay for some of the tuition (it depends on your family’s circumstances). However, if you do not have high scores, or enough money you may be done at class 8. After Form 4, you take a test again to see if you qualify for university, if you do less well, you go to college (more like Community College, or trade schools), if you do poorly, you start looking for a job. Essentially your chances for education boil down to two major tests, so imagine the stress if you are sick that day or don’t test well.

That is all we know so far about the Kenyan national schools, I am hoping someday to be able to tour some of the nearby schools to see for myself. However, Kirk’s school is a private school and it uses American curriculum so that transferring to American schools or going to American universities/colleges is a possibility for students whose families live here. Rosslyn runs very much like an upscale school in the States, has extremely impressive scores on all types of standardized tests, and offers a pretty wide range of extra-curricular activities as well. The major difference is that they experience power outages every day or so. The outages only last about a minute until the generator kicks on, and the students are completely unimpressed by them.  However, our girls love it when the power goes out, and are convinced that if they yell “Lights!” enough times, the lights come back on.


4. Who supplies the schools with what is needed, and do they have any technology? Or is it like chalkboard or…? Do they have pencil and paper or textbooks?

As for how Rosslyn is supplied, most of the things that the school needs come on a twice-yearly container from the US.  We get everything from seats for the auditorium, to textbooks, to furniture for classrooms and staff houses.  Apparently a lot of the times there is extra room in the container, and we can buy stuff online and have it sent to the container (as long as we don’t need it within the next 3-5 months).

For school supplies, there are lists [link] of what each student has to supply each year.  Some things are the same, but the paper is a different size (A4 instead of Letter), and the binders are two-ring instead of three-ring.

As for technology, one of the reasons that Kirk was hired was to help train teachers to use tech tools effectively.  There are SMART boards in almost every Elementary classroom and many of the Middle School classrooms. Kirk’s classroom is a computer lab that has about 25 new computers.

REAL cheese, fresh strawberries, bubbly water. Don't even ask how much this little craving cost...just know it was totally worth it. yum.

Happy December! We get to open our "chocolate doors" on the advent calendar all the way from Trader Joes in California. Today was a "chugga chugga choo-choo."

O Christmas tree...

Here is our big 2 year old playing with her "gaboon" as we set up for the party!

Pretending were at a cafe on a date. Really we're just at the hospital early for Audrey's appointment.

Ainsley in a basket, waiting for Claire to finish ballet!