Diary of a Doctor's Wife: Random Kenya Pics That Just Never Made a Real Post

Yes my daughter will stop what she is doing mid getting ready for bed and run in to show me the tiny snail she found in her bedroom. This girl loves creepy crawlies.

She also loves flowers in her hair and eating Guavas. Luckily there was lots of both to satisfy her!

You know, just watching my brother play games on the ipad...before we dropped it on the sidewalk because we were walking and playing on the way home from lunch and broke it.

Papaya tree

This is our living room and I can't for the life of me tell you why I took this picture except maybe to say...wow that place could use some decorating.

Just hanging out with Michael.

And she's in the canal.

Trying to get in to see Scobby. Girl we lived in double gated compounds...they aren't letting you in.

Watching the guys play chess...and then following them down the hill.

Nathaniel chase me around and then throwing me in the air a good twenty five times before you go please.

And now I'm going to climb into the tree.

And then run from Silas.

And then hide in the guard house.

Then Silas will build me a swing out of a rope and a tree. It might not feel great on your bum, but he has a plan for that.

How about a piece of cardboard. That doesn't help. Ok I'll tie on a foam mat with some old worn out tires. Silas was so great with the kids. I always enjoyed when he was on guard duty, especially since are you getting an idea from this sequence that Cheetah was always on the room. I think all these activities occurred in the space of an hour. The girl was wearing me out!

OH Yeah Scobby finally gets to come out.

So these were our breakfast choices every morning, oatmeal, cornflakes, toast, bananas, wheat-mix. By the end of two months I was so sick of oatmeal.

This jam cracked me up. They have jelly and butter and regular ketchup there, but they also have these cheaper versions that are extremely popular....died red sugar jelly, huge tubs of margarine, and Peptang which taste like if Ketchup and Sweet and Sour sauce had a baby. They were not my favorite but food in Kenyan was pretty expensive so for two months this is what we ate.

Cheetah constantly stripping. I'm sure it's because she saw that blue and white stripped dress on the line. She loves that dress so much that if she by chance sees it (maybe soaking wet on a line or at the bottom of a pile of dirty laundry) that is the dress she MUST WEAR!

Hanging out with the little boy down the road and A. Waiting for mom so they can go see the Weaver Birds.

These weird little birds had these super long tails that were so heavy they'd often be hanging almost upside down on the wires.

Time for some chalk.

This little girl is such a can do kid. She was constantly dumping out my trash cans to make herself a stool so she could unlock doors, peak out windows, or get to things on higher shelves. Here she's looking out her bedroom window to spy on the cows that lived in the big empty lot behind the compound. One day while I was standing there I thought, "Man that guys shirt and pants are the exact same color of dark brown." Then I realized it wasn't pants I was seeing. Apparently on laundry day our neighbor liked to wash every stitch of clothing he had and then give himself a bath, naked in the yard.

Because Kenyans like to sweet bent completely at the waist. This is the type of broom every Kenyan I met used and they bend completely at the waist to sweet the floor. We had an American style broom at our place but Nancy always brought her own to use.

These electric fence surrounded the compound. I know a lot of people worried about our safety but in general I felt pretty secure. We lived in a double gated, double guarded compound. The whole thing was surrounded by an electric fence. Every door and window in our house had bars on it. We had a panic button in every room of the house. I also happen to know that it worked because one night while we were waiting for our Indian food to arrive we got a knock at the door. There were three men in helmets with billy clubs asking if everything was ok. Apparently one of our kids had tripped the alarm.

For some reasons every Orange I had grown in Kenya was green. They have imported ones that are orange in the grocery store but we always bought these green ones that were slight more acidic because they were cheaper.

Dr. J studying and momma in a blurry kid taken picture. Other mom's does it ever make you sad that there are so few pictures of you that you are left keeping the horrible ones because there is no other choice :)

The thing you should know about these tree pictures is that Peach is actually a very cautious person...ie, she's a scarredy cat like her mom. She can't help it. It just comes to us naturally. Anyway when we first got to Kenya the girl was pretty hands off about the whole tree thing, but by the end of two months she could spend hours up in this tree. It seriously was a perfect three for climbing and she loved it. Also yes Gigi is in pajamas. Those last few weeks the older kids started to get a little rebellious. I felt bad for them. They had very few older kids to play with. Their outside time was limited to a really small area. We couldn't just drive off whenever we wanted. They missed their friends, their home, their favorite foods, their wii, their computer, their internet, pandora, hulu, netflix, the news. They were starting to get a little stir crazy and we could tell. Captain E was super mouthy. I seriously was considering military school. Luckily the longer we are home the more he mellows out, and Gigi refused to get out pj's like the last five days we were in Eldoret. She still wanted to run the compound. She just wanted to do it in her pajamas and also sleep until ten.