Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

The family enjoyed a few days off thanks to a combined--but unintentional--US-Kenya government effort giving us the 24-26th of December off. In addition to using that extra time to spend with family and friends, we also spent it with pretty much non-stop rain and house plagued with so many issues we began to think it was haunted.  But more on that later.

The past week has seen a flurry of Christmas cookie making and parties at co-workers homes. Our first party was on the 22nd and it was fantastic. Our friends have an excellent house for entertaining and it was one of the few days without rain, so we got to enjoy some great food and conversation in the perfect setting. There were a ton of kids running around--a staple of parties these days--and our hosts provided a bouncy castle, swings, and toys galore to keep both children and parents content. Even Santa Claus showed up, making at least one party goer very happy.

But eventual, the party broke up around 7pm when all the kids under three collectively broke down and the first wave of party goers left.

As mentioned earlier, the holiday season was tempered by near non-stop rain and house problems. The rain has been very strange, as December is supposed to be the warm, dry season, here and we aren't supposed to get any serious rains until March. However, the past week as been as rainy as any of the rainy seasons we have encountered living here. The irony of all the rain is that we ended up not having running water in our house for days, due in part to the storms breaking pipes and disabling the primary pump system on our housing compound.  A few hours without water is a minor inconvenience; but several days without water when you have a small baby and have been doing a flurry of Christmas cookie making and cooking borders on catastrophe. But, everything eventually was fixed and life resumed.

Christmas Day was a big day because it was Aliza's first Christmas. Like most kids her age, she doesn't understand gifts or what to do with them and focuses on the wrapping as the primary source of pleasure.  Her grandparents were extremely generous to her for her first Christmas, which is nice in and of itself, but more so because Santa's gifts got hung up in customs and didn't arrive in time.  But she was happy just the same:

That night, we had a big dinner at our friends' house a few doors down, enjoying all the Christmas dinner staples and some welcome Christmas cheer.

On the 26th, the last of our three days off, we celebrated Boxing Day, an old english tradition that seems to have lost popularity over the years but still is a government holiday in most Commonwealth countries. The purpose of boxing day is to provide gifts to your employees to say thanks for their service. Given that this assignment allows us to employ people to help us around the house, we definitely wanted to take the time to say thank you and what better way to do it than host a party for our staff on the official day of thanks.

We invited (almost) everyone that works for us or has worked for us over the past year-and-a-half: Eric, Peter, Lukas, Phoebe, and Grace. Peter and Grace were unable to attended, but everyone else did, including Emmie the dog.

We had a nice spread of American junk food and the movie Home Alone playing in the background. We had Crackers and a small white elephant gift exchange, too, which everyone enjoyed.

We are truly thankful that we have been able to find such great people to work with since we've been here. They have been a tremendous help to us--especially as our family has grown--and we are glad to have them as part of our lives.

After the new year it will be only six months before we return home; six months that likely is to go quickly. As we move forward it was nice to have the past week to reflect on all that we have accomplished since moving here and all that lies ahead for when we return. All of it is wonderful.