Christmas in Chogoria

We had a relatively quiet Christmas this year, which was just what we needed.  Eli's been working tirelessly lately and really needed a break.  Thankfully he had the entire holiday weekend off, so we enjoyed a nice, slow-paced Christmas at home.

It started on Christmas Eve with a Christmas campfire!  It was the first fire we had in a long time since the rainy season always puts campfires on hold.  But the rains have ceased, we bought hot dogs on our last trip to Nairobi, and a large pile of firewood was ready and waiting.  Eli built us a blazing fire!

I love every campfire we do.  It feels so American and offers a touch of home.  And the boys love it because, well, what boy doesn't love fire and hot dogs?

And what boy doesn't love using a machete?

We also had a special treat: scotcheroos!  A friend was recently in Chogoria and brought us chocolate chips and butterscotch chips.  (Can I just say that anyone who brings such precious goods all the way to Chogoria is a true friend indeed - a friend for life!).  I had the other ingredients on hand and we were all set for Christmas scotcheroos.

We continued our Christmas tradition of getting the boys new jammies for Christmas Eve.  Once again, it took some forethought and plenty of planning to get these here.  I ordered them on Amazon and had them shipped to a stranger's house where a colleague (who was a friend of said stranger) would be passing through before returning to Kenya and graciously offered to haul them back across the ocean for us.  Which worked out well, except that we had to drive 8 hours across the country to get them!  Thankfully we had already made plans to visit Tenwek at Thanksgiving anyway, which is where we picked up these Christmas jammies and then hauled them back to Chogoria with the boys being none the wiser.

And they loved their new duds!  Pretty great, aren't they?  Perfect jammies for dinosaur-loving and dragon-loving boys :)

Christmas morning started bright and early with three wiggle worms jumping in our bed and shouting "Merry Christmas!"  Somehow Eli and I dragged ourselves out of bed, and somehow the boys waited until I got the cinnamon roll dough rising before even opening their stockings.  Then it was pure Christmas chaos... I mean, Christmas joy :)

I love how excited these boys get about any and all gifts.  The tiniest gift gets celebrated just as much as the biggest gift.  Case in point: they each got a package of Goldfish crackers in their stockings (which is definitely a special treat) and upon pulling it out Kai exclaimed, "Goldfish crackers!  I can't believe it!  I must be dreaming!"  There were similar reactions throughout the morning.

Then it was time for cinnamon rolls, reading new books, and taking Christmas naps.  Just as every Christmas should be :)

The fun continued in the evening with nyama choma!  Eli helped slaughter the goat this year - not just the slaughtering, but the butchering as well, which was a first for him.  There were not a lot of people around, and the folks who normally do this were among those away, so it fell to a couple newbies like Eli to slaughter and butcher the goat.  But they succeeded in their task and we had a lot of meat to eat!  It was a small gathering because so few people were here, but it was wonderful to be together.  We absolutely love our Chogoria community!

And I love these ladies all the more for dressing up on Christmas!  So classy.  And then there's me in my typical T-shirt attire.  It never occurred to me that Christmas could be a day worth dressing up for, but with so few opportunities to dress up these days, I probably should have joined them.  Maybe next time I will :)

We're grateful for yet another wonderful Christmas in Chogoria!

It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas

Last week we finally got the house looking like Christmas!  We have relatively few and simple decorations but they always feel more important than anything we do in the States because without them it's nearly impossible to make it feel like Christmas here.  There's no cold weather (let alone snow), no decorations around town, no Christmas music playing in stores, no lights adorning any houses.  Kenyans don't typically celebrate Christmas until Christmas Day itself, and the idea of decorating for the holiday is truly a foreign idea.

So it's all the more important and special that we do what we can to make our home feel like Christmas!

We returned to our "Christmas tree spot" just outside our compound, found a big branch from a cedar tree, and watched Eli chop it down so we could haul it back to the house.

We were gifted with an extra treasure too: Eli found a bird's nest in the tree for the boys to bring home.

Eli got the tree branch trimmed and put in a bucket of water, then it was time to pull out the ornaments!  This is my favorite part of preparing for Christmas.  We love to look at each ornament and remember what memory it holds.  We get a new ornament each year that represents somewhere we traveled that year.  This year we found a beautiful elephant ornament at Samburu where we went on safari and saw all the elephants drinking and playing at the river.

I love telling the boys stories behind ornaments we got before they were born.  They have a hard time imagining that we had a life before they were born - sometimes I have a hard time remembering that too!

Not too bad, right?  It doesn't compare to a real Christmas tree but it works great and we love it.  And we get a whiff of cedar whenever we walk by, which adds to the joy.

This year the boys wanted to add snow to the tree.  We always have fake snow on hand because Grandma Horn keeps us well supplied.  The boys can always remember the snow in Minnesota and Michigan because we make fake snow in Kenya every year.  They went a little overboard with it, throwing it all over the tree and creating a huge mess in the end, but it certainly adds extra charm!

We also pulled out our Kenyan Advent calendar.  I found this last year and just love it.  It has figures made out of banana leaves and has safari animals instead of livestock to surround the baby Jesus.

Lastly, I added a couple new decorations this year.  I had brought over this wooden "Merry Christmas" tabletop piece with the intentions of painting it last year, but never got around to it.  This year I was determined to make time for it, so one night I put on a Christmas movie and just painted away while Eli was on the phone with the hospital for a long time.  It was rather relaxing.

And these candle holders are a new acquisition.  I found them at a shop in Nairobi and couldn't resist them.  Well, I actually resisted them the first time I saw them, but the second time I couldn't.  They're just too fun and the red and white colors feel perfect for Christmas.  Asa likes the rhino best - no surprise there!

So it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas around here!  Add to all this the Christmas books we've been reading, the Christmas movies we've been watching, and the Christmas cookies we're eating, and we're thoroughly enjoying the season!

Thanksgiving

Although Thanksgiving Day didn't feel like Thanksgiving around here (because Kenya doesn't celebrate the holiday and because we're the only Americans in our community right now), we were able to celebrate in our own way and stretched the celebration to last a bit longer than usual.

At the beginning of the week we started a new tradition: a thankful tree!  This tree decoration was given to us by our church in Michigan, Journey Ministries, when we first left for Kenya in 2016.  They had filled the tree with prayers and Scripture passages written on leaves.  It was a huge encouragement to us and it sat on the mantel in our apartment at Tenwek for two years.  It got packed up when we moved to Chogoria but never brought out since we have very little shelf space in our house.  But inspiration struck as I thought about how to celebrate Thanksgiving this year.  We pulled the tree out, cut out new leaves, and spent time writing what we are thankful for this year.

And there was so much to be thankful for!  I loved seeing what the boys wrote, everything from worship music to Mom & Dad to toys to Kenya to Smaug (the dragon from The Hobbit).  I love this new tradition and I look forward to continuing it in years to come.

On the actual holiday, Eli worked all day and we barely saw him.  But I was prepared with lots of snuggle time and reading Thanksgiving books together with the boys, and I busted out a craft idea.  It involved paint and bare feet and lots of giggles as we hopped to the bathroom to wash off painted feet before covering the floor with said paint, and it was a success!

I vowed to make something special to eat despite having no Thanksgiving food available.  Cinnamon rolls were the food of choice since I had some leftover cream cheese frosting in the fridge - a super special treat given how rare it is to get cream cheese here!

I can vouch that they were delicious!

The next day we got in the car and took off for Tenwek, where we knew there'd be other Americans and turkey engulfed on Saturday.  It took us two days to get there - it's an 8-hour drive on Kenya's roads, which is simply not doable with our kids current ages still - but we made it in time for a turkey lunch with a few good friends.  And it was wonderful!  There were even decorations on the table!  And coveted cranberry sauce from America!

So we had a lovely Thanksgiving celebration even though it looked quite different this year.  It had the potential to be strange and lonely, but it was anything but.  It was different and life-giving.  It required a flexible attitude and some creativity (and a willingness to cross the country), but it was great and we are so thankful for how our Thanksgiving turned out this year!

Catching Up: Halloween

Celebrating Halloween was a bit different this year in that we had no one else to celebrate with, not because of Covid, but because we're the only Americans here right now.  Kenyans don't celebrate Halloween, so it was just our family trying to mark the occasion.  The boys really wanted to celebrate and had been talking about it for weeks.  So we did the best we could to make it a fun and special day.

First off: donuts!  I usually make raised donuts, but these cinnamon sugar donuts were baked and soooo delicious.  And they were way easier to make.  We will definitely be doing these again sometime!

Next up: pumpkin carving.  I had to plan ahead to get orange pumpkins because we can only get green pumpkins here.  We picked these up in Nairobi awhile ago and saved them for Halloween day.  The small size kept the mess to a minimum, plus they all fit onto our kitchen counter that way.

On a side note, we had Chogoria's resident black cat around all day.  He's actually been around constantly since the last Americans left (who were the only ones to give him much attention).  Now that they're gone, he's latched onto us.  He's a really nice cat and has always been around the compound, and we kinda keep an eye on him now.  Everyone calls him Usiku, which is the Swahili word for "night" and it felt appropriate to have him milling around on Halloween!

Finally, the most important part of the day: costumes!  We gotta get real creative over here, so this is what we came up with.  Two dragons and a werewolf.

a night fury 

(from How to Train Your Dragon)

a nadder head 

(also from How to Train Your Dragon)

a werewolf

I came up with a couple relay races on the spot, just to give a festive tone to the afternoon.  They thought it was great.  I mean, who doesn't love a relay race?

And then we got really really creative and did trick-or-treating in the house.  We had four doors that we could use as "houses" and the boys shuffled back and forth between them, where Eli and I were waiting with candy.  And by golly, they loved it!  Eli and I wore various superhero masks as the boys came trick-or-treating and they thought it was hilarious that we had on a different mask each time.  I love these ages when they are so easily satisfied with such simple fun!

And we finished the night with a viewing of the Wild Kratts Halloween episode.  It was a great day overall and we definitely made some memories!