Days 4 and 5 Activities

Saturday our special holiday activity, we went to see "Entangled" in the theatres, and had pizza at the mall afterwards, very fun.

Sunday, we made Christmas cards. The Christmas fun is continuing!

Day 2 and 3 activities

Well, since the girls were asleep last night when we got home, we didn't get to bake cookies. So, today we did two things. We baked cookies, and we watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Two traditions that are a must for the season!

Nairobi... The Good, the Bad, and the UGLY??

We moved up to Nairobi on Saturday, and it was the smoothest move I think we have ever had! Friday we spent the whole day packing, and thanks to the help of our friends, were able to completely close the house by Friday night and go spend the night with friends. We woke up early Saturday morning and left for Nairobi and arrived at 1pm, amazingly. The trip was really easy. This move was covered in blessings because so many things could have gone wrong.

We LOVE our house, and love Nairobi so far. We live in a gated community, with paved streets and even side walks. Our house is two story. Downstairs is a nice living room, with very comfortable couches and a big screen TV; dining room; big kitchen, bathroom, and Bill's office. The yard is small, but behind the house we have a seperate guest house with it's own bath, kitchen, and living room, and we also have a laundry room out back.

Upstairs are three bedrooms. The girls each have their own room for the first time, which they are loving. We are doing school in the Master bedroom. It's big enough that we have a table and chairs in there and a bookshelf for the books and there is still plenty of room.

The kids and I have been exploring the neighborhood, and we have discovered a school just across the street from us. In the afternoons, we walk down to it, and play on the playground. The kids have met lots of friends from the neighborhood there. I'm glad the kids have started making friends already.

Okay, so that is the "Good". The "Bad" is the traffic here in Nairobi. It took us 3 hours to drive to the mall tonight in horrible traffic, and 2 hours to get home! That's 5 hours in traffic to spend an hour at the mall. We probably won't be going to that mall again for awhile...

The "UGLY"... on our way to the mall, I was holding Bill's phone in my hand because I was checking the GPS, and some guy reached into the car, ripped it out of my hand and took off running! That scared me, and we lost a very nice, expensive phone. No more driving with the windows down!!

Okay, I have "vented"... we are really enjoying it here, and we liked going to church on Sunday at LifeSpring Church not far from our house. I love the fact that everyone here speaks English, even the kids. It has made it very easy for the girls to make friends here.

We have started our traditional Christmas activity advent. Day 1, we put up the tree, see pictures above. Even Jonathan got in on it. Day 2, we were supposed to make cookies but we got home so late that the kids were asleep. SOO... we'll continue the Christmas activities tomorrow.

Happy Christmas Season!!

Last night in our house

Well, it's our last night in our house in Moshono, Tanzania. Although we have been busy packing for weeks, I still feel unprepared. Tomorrow, we are staying in a hostel, and then *hope* to leave early Saturday morning, if we have everything done by then. If not, we will put off going until we finish moving everything out of the house. I am just ready to go to Niarobi, and start getting settled again.
Our vehicle was finished today, and has a new engine. Yeah! It's nice to have our own car back. We will be taking it to Kenya with us.
Having decided what we're doing with Romeo yet...

A Move

Well, we are most likely going to be moving up to Nairobi in about a month!! WHAT? Well, our partnership with Haven of Peace didn't pan out for us to get a visa through them. We really want to set up our own NGO here in Tanzania. But, we really don't have time to get that done before our permit expires on Dec 8th. So, we need to leave the country until we can get our NGO set up in Tanzania. Bill will be making trips every month to check on Moshono Christian Church, and work on our registration.
In the meantime, we'll be settling into a new routine and a new life up in Nairobi, for possibly up to a year!! Bill is in Nairobi right now looking at houses and thinks he has found something we'll like. He'll be getting a work permit with Larry Neimeyer for the time we're in Kenya.
I can't believe we are going to be packing up again, after moving into this house 3 months ago! I'm still trying to make myself believe that we're moving out of the country. I guess that's why I wrote this post.
Nairobi is nice, and has lots of cool things (malls, movie theatres, ice skating rink, bowling alley!)... but I will really miss my friends here in Arusha. We also have to decide what to store/what to move/what to get rid of. Lots of work to do in a few weeks time.
Here we go on another adventure!!

Timothy the Turtle

Well, Timothy has offically eaten all of the sproutling vegtables out of my garden... you can't really blame him, it's what turtles do. So, we're going to put up a chicken-wire fence around the garden to keep him out and then start over from scratch.

Timothy thinks he's a part of the family now, and regularly comes into the house. I keep putting him back outside, but he comes in usually once a day at least. This is a picture of him on our front porch, with Romeo our cat. Romeo's not sure what to think of him. The orange stuff is carrots, I was trying to get Timothy to eat. He isn't interested in eating anything except lettuce, and of course my sprouts in the garden.

Happy Birthday Bill

We made Billy breakfast in bed for his birthday!