Christmas Cookies

I felt well enough a few days after my surgery to invite Joel and Silas over to make some fun Santa cookies. We made these together last year, and I decided it might be fun to make it a holiday tradition. The boys did such a good job - they so carefully decorated their cookies, and they looked so much more professional this year! It was a fun time - and the reward was eating the green M & M's since we only needed the red ones for Santa's nose!

Silas carefully places marshmallows for Santa's beard.

Joel was very precise with his decorations.

They take a quick break to pose for a picture.

Voila! Finished product! Maybe next year Josh can join in the fun!

Catching up . . .

So I've been super lax on blog entries. I guess life got in the way for awhile, but I'm hoping to get back into more of a "habit" of documenting events.

November . . . was a busy month. Jason, Roxanne, and Annikah were with us from October 27 - November 27. Our house was sort of a home base for them in CR, but they spent time also with Justin and Annie in Iowa City - even spent a few overnights there; and also planned activities with Jorie and Mark's family. Annikah was able to have lots of time with her cousins, and we enjoyed several fun family times - including celebrating Thanksgiving together. A highlight was family bowling, which was a first for Joel, Silas, and Annikah. We all had fun, and after bowling, always say we should do that more often!

Our whole gang at the bowling alley

In early December we had a blizzard here - about a foot of snow arrived, and we coped with shoveling snow for several days.

On December 12 . . . we enjoyed attending a Christmas concert by Tribute, a local women's group. This has become an annual event for us - I think we've attended for four years in a row now. We gave tickets to Jorie and Mark for Jorie's birthday, and babysat all three boys so they could attend. We also gave tickets to Justin for his birthday, so he and Annie could go with us the next night. It put everyone in a festive mood and getting out in the snowy weather made it seem even more Christmasy.

On December 17 . . . I had my second corneal transplant surgery. The first one was just four years ago, on December 21, 2005. This will be the fifth surgery I have had on my left eye, all due to my rare disease - I.C.E. syndrome. All went well as far as my doctors are concerned, but in my opinion this one was more painful and is taking longer to heal since I had to have five sutures in my eye. Ugh! I know I am under the best of care at the University of Iowa opthalmology department, but am anxious for my eye to heal and look normal again.

Halloween and Indian Creek with the Grandkids

I'm terribly late in posting about the arrival back in the USA of Jason and his family! They had told us in late September of their decision to come back to the states for the upcoming birth of daughter number two in December, so we anxiously awaited their return! They arrived back in Chicago on October 16, and then ventured out to Cedar Rapids on October 27 to spend a month with us here. Our house has been alive and bustling as cousins and aunts and uncles love to come to spend time with our "Africa" family.

Jason, Roxanne, and Annikah are back! Anni loved dressing up as Tinkerbell on Halloween!

The five cousins had a blast on Halloween, dressing up in their costumes, and trick-or-treating together in our neighborhood. Though the temperature was COLD, they weren't phased as they saw their candy bags filling up. Everyone gathered back at our house to enjoy sandwiches from Jimmy John's and to just hang out and enjoy being together.

Bibi and Babu with Butterfly Claire, Scarecrow Joel, Tinman Silas, Tinkerbell Annikah, and Lion Joshua.

Yesterday Bibi and Babu (Swahili for Grandma and Grandpa) decided to take advantage of the warmer weather and take the three oldest grandkids out to Indian Creek Nature Center. The cousins had a blast running across the suspension bridge and trying all of the "challenges" along the nature path. Silas and Annikah are best buddies and really look out for each other. Silas helped guide Anni through the maze since she didn't like the feel of the scratchy weeds on her face. She comforted him when bumped his chin later in the day. They are so sweet together. All of the kids loved playing with the "nature" toys - pinecones, real log blocks, bones, and stone tic tac toe board.

On the suspension bridge.

Ready for the maze?

Silas guides Anni through the maze.

Hiding in the maze.

Examining the bones.

Playing in the pinecone box.

Buiding with REAL log blocks.

Higher and faster, Bibi!

Just enjoying cousin time on a warm fall day!

Visitors from Chemnitz

Jim and I have had the priviledge the past three days to host Bernard and Ulrike, a pastor and his wife from Chemnitz, Eastern Germany. In the past couple of years our church, Stonebridge Church, has joined together with Pastor Bernard's church to become "sister" churches. Our church had hoped to send a team to visit Chemnitz this fall to learn more about their congregation and to encourage them, but details didn't work out for that trip at this time. So Bernard, Ulrika and two other members from their church decided to travel to the U.S. to come to minister to us! Several men from our church have kept the team very busy this week, touring Cedar Rapids and meeting with our pastoral staff. But Jim and I have had opportunity to get acquainted and share with them during the late evenings and over quick morning breakfasts. They are a delightful couple - and very brave to have left their four children, ranging in age from 6 - 14, at home with friends for nearly two weeks. We communicated well - not so much because Jim recalled all of the German he learned in high school - but because they are fairly fluent in English!

Out of Africa, Part 9: Fiordani Beach Picnic

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

One of my absolute favorite activities in Zanzibar was feasting on the beach at dusk. Because the sun sets by 6:00 PM every day on the equator, darkness settles in early. The sight of brightly lit lanterns all along the beach illuminating the white chef outfits of the merchants was beautiful and romantic. There were tables and tables of food, each one piled with probably 15 kinds of fresh fish and shellfish. The chefs walked us around the table naming each type of fish. Then we chose what we wanted and watched as they grilled our choices. This had to be the most delicious fish I have ever tasted - it was just melt-in-your mouth fresh, and oh-so-good!

Here is the soda cart - the Fanta mango and pineapple were two of my favorites. Soda in bottles, sweetened with real sugar cane - it is so yummy! In the U.S. I always drink diet, but there is no such thing in Africa! On a rare occasion we did find Coke Lite; but the Stoney ginger soda and the Fanta flavors were too good to pass up.

Zanzibari pizza was another new experience. You can see it being prepared in this picture. It didn't really resemble our pizza, but it was good! The chefs top something like a tortilla with a cooked meat/onion mixture (I think); add some veggies and then crack an egg on top. This is then fried and topped with another "tortilla." It sounds strange, but you have to try it - delicious!

Here we are sharing some of the fish and "pizza."

And then there was the fresh sugar cane juice. It was so interesting to watch it being made. The sugar cane stalks were put through the press over and over, each time being folded in half once more. It was amazing how much juice was produced! Then delicious fresh lime juice was added, making a wonderfully tasty drink.

We enjoyed the juice so much that we went back for another!

And no picnic is nearly as much fun without the perfect companions! Annikah loved showing us all of her fav things in Zanzibar, and of course we loved sharing those times with her.

Apple Picking

We had fun last Sunday afternoon at the orchard with Annie, Justin, and Claire. Wilson's is a great place - HUGE with so many apple varieties. We were happy to know that Honeycrisp apples were available and plentiful, so we picked a couple of pecks. Annie and I had fun recalling a year ago when just she and I went - Annie was only two months away from Claire's birth, and it was such a humid day when we were there. The rolling hills made it hard for us to each carry our two baskets, and we stopped and laughed often! It was much easier this time with our hubbies helping out. And Claire definitely enjoyed herself, too!

Out of Africa, Part 8: On Safari

A note to my readers: I am ecstatic to finally be able to post this entry about our safari experience. I began working on this September 1, and had added to my draft numerous times. But alas, I have no computer savvy, and was experiencing many technical problems in the blogosphere. I don't know HOW many frustrating hours I spent on trying to complete that post, but finally in sheer exasperation, I deleted it entirely and then began again from scratch. Ugh! So I didn't mean to leave everyone hanging after the road trip (though that was one big Survivor challenge!) - I was only dealing with technical challenges. I hope I've been able to recreate and even improve upon what I started several weeks ago . . .

Friday, July 24 - Saturday, July 26

Jason drove us to Arusha early Friday morning to meet up with our safari company to begin our adventure scheduled for the next three days and two nights. We booked our safari way back in March and emailed back and forth numerous times with Dyness, whom we looked forward to meeting. We weren't sure if his name would be pronouced "Dennis" or "Dinness," but we definitely were anxious to put a name to a face. Often it had been a challenge to work out the details. He had asked for a 50% deposit, which we opted to put on a credit card. That was one ridiculously drawn out and strange process. We had to fill out a detailed "authorization form," and make a photocopy front and back of our credit card. We thought it would be more secure to fax the info, but after a couple of unsuccessful attempts at that, Dyness let us know that the office's fax machine was broken. I'm pretty sure it remains broken to this day after having been in Africa and seeing firsthand what happens to items once they no longer work! We were somewhat leary of emailing all of that info, but went ahead and did it. And again when our safari time got closer, we had to pay the final 50% payment and go through the entire process AGAIN! It took an entire month each time for the payment to go through to their office. So much for credit cards being fast and easy. ANYWAY, we were surprised to find out when we met that Dyness was a very pretty young woman, and her name is pronouced "Dighness!" Funny how both of us were thinking of Dyness as being a male. She had with her our driver, Antone, and after dropping Dyness off back at the office, stopping to pick up bottled water and boxed lunches, Antone soon had us on our way to Tarangire National Park to begin our animal viewing.

Within just a few minutes of driving through the park we viewed our first animals. It was definitely a thrill to see them wandering free in their natural habitat. The first animals we spotted were huge groups of zebra and wildebeest. Antone explained that we would often see the two groups of animals together, as wildebeests are too dumb to find water on their own, so they follow the zebras around.

Wildebeests certainly are not the most attractive animals! Something we noticed throughout the miles and miles of the Tarangire National Park were these gigantic ant hills - up to eight to ten feet tall, and they were everywhere! Here is a group of wildebeest hanging around one.

That first day we felt like we saw everything - I recorded 14 types of animals and birds, along with seeing some very interesting trees, including the huge baobob trees, acacia, ficus, and euphobia, which are a giant cactus-type tree. Our driver was at our beck and call - would stop whenever we asked for as long as we wanted to look. The top of the jeeps are either removable or lift up, so we were able to stand and look in every direction with our binoculars and take pictures with our cameras. We often stood also while driving, but the dust got to be too much at times, so mostly we just stood up when we had spotted something and wanted to stop for a better look.

It was such a peaceful sort of feeling to see the animals free to roam, eat, hunt, etc. as far as they chose; and to intermingle with other animals. One of my favorite things was seeing groups of zebra, giraffe, wildebeest and ostrich together (as in the picture below) - something you usually don't see in captivity.

The second day of our safari we drove to Lake Manyara National Park and saw many more of the animals already seen, but this day we spotted our first lions and hippos; and saw huge groups of baboon, very close to our jeep. We watched them for very long periods of time - so interesting and in many ways so much like humans!

We were provided with boxed lunches both days. The lunches usually included a hard boiled egg, chicken (very tough with little meat), some sort of meat pie, an apple, some chocolate or cookies, and a juice-box type container of mango juice, which was delicious. Antone would decide when it was time to stop for luch and knew where the picnic places were. One day as we ate, a huge group of children from a Tanzanian Christian school happened to be there on a field trip. They all crowded around us (I think they wanted our table), but were also very interested in these wazungu tourists. We found out that they learn English in school. Some of them were very good at speaking it and seemed excited to talk to us. So teacher that I am, I loved engaging them in conversation and asking them about their school, etc. I discovered that many of them were first graders - no wonder we related so well! I let many of them try my binoculars until it became a problem of too many kids grabbing them from each other (some things are global, I guess!)

We stayed in beautiful lodges both nights - the first night was the Tarangire Sopa Lodge, right in the park; and the second night was more of a local lodge located off the road between Tarangire enroute to Lake Manyara. At each one upon our arrival, the African workers employed there would meet us with a warm, wet washcloth to wipe off the dust from our faces and hands; and then we were offered fresh mango juice or watermelon juice. After we were refreshed we would check in and be shown to our room. We enjoyed wonderful food and drink and had very nice comfortable rooms with hot water showers and real toilets! Yeah!!

On day 3 Antone picked us up a little early to be on our way to Ngorongoro Crater for there was much to see there. But an early arrival was not meant to be.

Roxanne had told us that no visit to Africa involving highway driving would be complete without experiencing a car breakdown, and we were not to be disappointed. After only 20 minutes on the road, the radiator in our jeep went out, and we spent 2 1/2 hours on the side of the road waiting for a replacement jeep to come to our aid. We were fortunate that our jeep driver was responsible and it was his job to solve our problem. He merely needed to call the safari company to send a replacement. However, on your own if you experience car trouble in Africa, who knows how or when help would be provided. Mechanics and gas stations are very few and far between, and having to explain a problem in swahili

is a place I would not want to go! We drew quite a lot of attention from Africans while we waited and a couple of young guys hung around watching us the entire time we were there.

At Ngorongoro we saw much of the same types of animals that we had already viewed. Seeing the crater itself was magnificent - driving down into it and out again an adventure in itself. But the dust there was very bad, and Jim had a lot of trouble with his contacts. It is crazy, too, when you start to say - "Oh, it's just another group of zebras . . . no big deal!" Funny to make a comment like that when in our day to day lives that would be a very unusual thing, but on safari it's pretty commonplace!

Though tired and dusty at the end of our third day, we both agreed that we had experienced something very unique and most likely a once in a lifetime occurrence. I recorded 34 different animals that we saw, and many of them were beautiful birds that I didn't even know existed. Seeing the landscape where these animals thrive, seeing evidence of animals having been hunted and killed by other beasts, and watching them interact, and enjoying beautiful lodgings and delicious food served by friendly and loving African people was certainly a fascinating experience and a definite highlight of our trip to Africa.