Crescent Island and a Birthday to Remember (in a Misadventurous Sort of Way)

During our adventures at Hell's Gate, we camped at a nearby campground at Lake Naivasha.  It was our first time camping in Kenya!  We had sleeping bags for everyone and no tent, but thankfully our friends the Webbers had a tent we could borrow.

The campsite was right next to the lake.  An electric fence was closed each night to keep the hippos out, but all the wildlife could be seen and heard clearly.  There is an abundance of bird life at Lake Naivasha, and we couldn't begin to count the number of fish eagles flying around and calling their distinctive cry.  Herons, ibises, pelicans, hamerkops, egrets, cormorants, and bee-eaters rounded out the visual symphony.

The moment we got out of the car and saw the first fish eagle, I began kicking myself for leaving my zoom lens at home.  I didn't expect to need it, but I could've gotten some fabulous shots of the birds if I'd been prepared.  So I only have distant photos.  But oh well.  It means we'll just have to go back again someday!

a fish eagle

the boys watching a fish eagle with their binoculars

A week of vacation meant there was plenty of time to play games.  Kai is such a dedicated game-player that he's willing to play anything, even Scrabble with a wordsmith!  I was proud of him.

We took a boat ride to Crescent Island on our last day at the campground.  It was another perfect day and we enjoyed watching birds as we crossed Lake Naivasha.

This trip to Crescent Island was redemptive.  We've technically been there before, when we lived at Tenwek and the boys were little.  We'd heard more than one person tell us how wonderful it is to walk around the island and see wildlife up close.  Well, we attempted and utterly failed.  We literally got out of the car and within five minutes had more than one meltdown on our hands from tired, hungry kids.  We thought about pushing through, but it was the kind of experience when a parent just knows it's not worth the effort.  We had seen a herd of sheep in the parking lot, and that was it.  We turned around and left.

So this was our chance to redeem that failed excursion from years ago!  We now have kids who can stay awake all day and wait to get a snack until a convenient time!  Oh the glories of elementary-age kids!

Before, Crescent Island had a tiny land bridge connecting it to the mainland which is how we drove there.  Now, that land bridge is under water so it's truly an island and the only way to get there is by boat.  It added to the fun, though, and I'm glad we were forced to take a boat ride.

The wonderful thing about Crescent Island is that you can do a walking safari.  There are no predators on the island (except, apparently, a rock python who makes an occasional appearance) so it's safe to simply walk around.  It was a magical experience!

We saw impala, Thompson's gazelle, zebra, wildebeest, waterbuck, and giraffes.

We stopped for a snack break, and as we sat inside a small shelter to enjoy the shade, a giraffe started walking in our direction.  According to the guide, there are only six giraffes on Crescent Island, all of which are female.  And the giraffe family happened to be walking and grazing really close to us!  We quickly finished our snack and ventured closer still.  This was the highlight of our walking safari.

Five of them walked right past us, gracefully and nonchalantly.  We tried to find the sixth, and eventually found it bringing up the rear.  Can you see her in this photo?

We were so close!

a waterbuck skull

herd of waterbuck

After walking across the island we met the boat driver again and headed back to the campground.   We saw birds upon birds upon birds, and some hippos too.

That afternoon we moved to a resort down the road for a couple more nights, and everything was great until the next morning when Eli woke up sick.  And I mean sick.  The boys and I logged a lot of hours together swimming in the pool, playing games, and eating donuts at chai time, while Eli stayed in bed.

Long story short, he stayed in bed for the next three days with no improvement, I became really anxious about it by Day 3, I ran to the pharmacy for some antibiotics, and finally Eli began turning the corner.  I was having flashbacks to when I had typhoid and I was in no mood to repeat that kind of experience!  Thankfully the meds did what they're supposed to do and Eli began the slow recovery to get back on his feet.  We don't know what he had - some kind of bacterial infection - but he was the only one who had symptoms at all.

Sickness is no fun for anyone, and it's especially not fun when you're traveling, and on vacation, and when it's your wife's birthday!  Anyone who knows me knows that I love a good birthday celebration, and mine was at the end of our vacation week and we had plans to celebrate in Nairobi on our way home, but all of those plans fell apart when Eli got sick.  By the time my birthday came around, it was Day 3 of Eli's sickness.  He was super apologetic about the whole thing, but I simply didn't care much about my birthday at that point - the only thing I wanted was for him to get better asap!

In lieu of the other plans we'd made, I took the boys hiking at Karura Forest while Eli stayed behind at the guest house and stayed in bed most of the day.  We had fun and saw a bunch of antelope in the forest and even some monkeys.  It felt good to be outside again.  (Honestly, that was a highlight of the whole week for me - just being outside so much, which isn't normal given how much time I'm inside homeschooling and doing admin work.)

I took the boys to Subway for lunch (yes, we have Subway in Nairobi!) and then enjoyed a quiet afternoon while Eli kept sleeping.  That night he was finally able to get out of bed for a bit, and he totally surprised me with the best birthday gift ever: a giant box of Reese's!  I squealed.  Actually squealed!  I couldn't believe he'd found a way to get those babies across the ocean.  That box is heavy, meaning someone carted that extra weight in their suitcase just for me, and I was so excited and so blessed.  Reese's are a love language of mine - they always hit the right spot!

So it wasn't the birthday I'd hoped for, but it was still grand because I got time outside with my boys and because my husband turned a corner that night.  I was fairly exhausted by the time we made it home to Chogoria - I'd been the only functioning parent while traveling for the past several days - but we made it home safe and sound, and we brought a bunch of memories home with us.

A Boy Turns 10 (in Two Parts)

Our baby is ten!

Part One

We had a special celebration this year given that his birthday fell on Mother's Day, so Caleb and I enjoyed a "double holiday."  I woke up to breakfast in bed and some fun cards from the boys, then we got busy baking a cake right away.  Eli made sure I had a couple uninterrupted hours in the hammock, which allowed me to read a novel and take a nap, but the rest of the day was all about the birthday boy!

At some point, I'm not exactly sure when, Caleb crossed over the point when we no longer get him toys for his birthday.  He wants books, T-shirts, movies, and other "older kid" kind of stuff.  It's weird to think that I haven't bought him a new animal toy in a while!  But it's also fun to be on the lookout for new books for him.  Caleb is a bookworm and we love it.

He thought about his cake a couple months ago.  He wanted a cake with King Kong and Godzilla on it.  I reminded him he had lots of time left to think about it (and, ahem, I hoped he would truly think about it more and change his mind!), but he was firm.  He wanted King Kong and Godzilla on his cake!

I wasn't entirely sure how to do that.  And quite frankly, I chose not to think about it until the eleventh hour.  But inspiration struck at the last minute and this is what I came up with:

Not too shabby!  I couldn't figure out how to incorporate candles into the scene, but Caleb had decided he didn't want candles in the end, so I didn't have to think overlong about it.  He also specifically requested that he didn't want anyone singing Happy Birthday to him, nor did he want to open presents in front of anyone, so his party was a rather quiet affair.  But goodness, he loved his cake!

What's that saying about imitation being the highest level of compliment?  I don't remember it exactly, but I was deeply honored when Caleb decided he wanted to decorate his own mini cake with Godzilla like the big cake!  (We had too much batter with the cake mix we used.  It was a Kenyan brand and didn't match my 9x13 pan quite right, so we made an extra mini cake with the extra batter.)

Part Two

Caleb's birthday was a success!  But his actual birthday was only half the celebration.  We had decided that turning 10 is a pretty big deal and we wanted to do something fun and new to mark the occasion.  So we chose to use an upcoming week off to visit a national park we hadn't been to before and count it as part of Caleb's birthday celebration.  So, a couple weeks after his birthday, we ventured to Hell's Gate National Park and spent a couple days exploring.

Hell's Gate has been on our bucket list for years.  We lived closer to it when we were at Tenwek, but never bothered going at that time because our kids were too little to do any of the activities the park offers (and which make visiting the park totally worth it).  But now that all three boys are able to go biking, and maybe even try rock climbing, we knew it was finally time to check out Hell's Gate National Park!

And it was amazing!  The first day we just drove around and eventually found our way to Obsidian Caves.  The word "cave" is a bit generous since it's just a cleft in the rockface, but it's an obsidian-filled rockface and it was neat to see and feel the smooth, shiny black rock all over the place.

In addition to the obsidian everywhere, Eli found a ton of porcupine quills!  They were a bit incognito because they were mixed in with a bunch of dried grass stalks, but sure enough, there were a whole bunch of black-and-white porcupine quills scattered on the ground.  Clearly something ate a porcupine here (or tried to) and the only thing remaining are the quills.  It probably happened a long time ago, but how cool that we discovered it???  (You have to look very closely to see the quills in this picture, but there's a bunch of them there!  Incognito...)

The caves offered a distant view of Lake Naivasha and the weather was cool and cloudy and perfect for exploring.  The boys climbed and scrambled all over for a long time and begged to stay longer, but it was getting dark and we had to get back to the campsite. (Yes! We camped in Kenya for the first time!)

The next day we went biking.  It was our first family bike ride!  It has been quite a journey to teach our kids to ride bikes, which I won't go into here, but suffice it to say that going on a family bike ride was a major milestone for us!  And these kids went far - over 4 miles, which is super far given that they've only gone in circles around our little compound before.  It was a big ask, but it paid off because the experience of biking with wildlife was incredible!!!

Hell's Gate doesn't have many predators (if any), so it's one of the only parks you can go biking through.  We just followed the main road for awhile, then turned around and came back to the park gate.  It was a perfect day - I'm talking 75 and sunny and all the fresh air in the world to enjoy.  

The scenery couldn't be beat.  Cliffs and plains with plenty of wildlife amidst it all.  We saw baboons, warthogs, zebra, eland, Grant's gazelle, hartebeest, a secretary bird, a giraffe, and cape buffalo.  It felt like a dream!

On the way back to the park gate, we stopped at Fischer's Tower to try our hand at rock climbing.  Caleb was too tuckered out from the bike ride to take a turn, and Eli's foot was cut and he didn't want to squeeze a sore foot into the climbing shoes, so only Kai, Asa, and Mama ended up tackling Fischer's Tower.

Asa made a valiant effort but became skittish soon into the climb and needed to come down.  I was proud of him for having a go, and for his courage in trying something like this!  Plus, how adorable is a little guy in that climbing gear???

Kai, who had never rock climbed before, was a total champ!  I wish I would've timed him because it was shocking how quickly and confidently he skirted up the rockface.  He was fearless, full of energy and bravery.  We were so proud!  I was even more proud after taking a turn myself.  I went up the same route Kai did, and even me with longer arms and legs had trouble finding and reaching some of the hand holds.  I don't know how he did it!

Kai descended as courageously and confidently as he went up.  He trusted the rope and followed the guide's instructions well.  I was so impressed because leaning back when you're up that high and feel nothing but air underneath you is nerve-wracking.  I was more nervous than Kai was!  That kid might have more climbing adventures in his future.

Meanwhile, Caleb stayed occupied with a hyrax friend down below.  This guy suddenly appeared after Caleb threw his apple core on the ground, then another hyrax showed up, and it was exactly what our animal-obsessed kid needed to get his energy back after the long bike ride.  Any kind of wildlife, even a rodent like this, has the power to energize and excite Caleb!

Speaking of getting excited over any and all wildlife, we saw our very first dung beetle at Hell's Gate too!  And it was rolling a ball of dung!  So cool.

It was a birthday for the books!  Caleb felt extra loved and that was the whole goal.

Our oldest is a kind-hearted young man and he regularly blesses our family with his kindness and compassion.  He's an emotional kid - sometimes more than we'd like - but the amazing thing about that is the hordes of love that pours out of him.  Caleb is the first to offer a hug or kind word when he recognizes that someone needs encouragement, and he's still the snuggler he's always been and it fills us up to get a good Caleb snuggle.

He's an obedient kid who follows directions without complaint.  He plays really well with his brothers but also self-entertains like the best of them.  He keeps growing in courage and bravery and we're proud of everything he overcomes as a kid who struggles with social anxiety and some sensory stuff.  Truly, his courage and bravery are monumental given what he's had to face in that regard.  He's braver than me, that's for sure, and I'm so proud to call him mine.

Caleb loves the Lord wholeheartedly, which is the greatest desire we have for all of our sons, and he's an incredible example of what it looks like to know God and remember His Word and want to learn more about Him.  I pray I can be like him.

Happiest of Birthdays to our Caleb!