Parents-in-law, shopping, games, monkey

What a week it has been.

Oh and in case you notice what time I'm posting this, yes it is 5 am here in Kenya and my children are not even up yet! Elisha got stuck sleeping under a mosquito net and I had to go fix it and just can't get back to sleep. (ive actually been up since 4, ugh)

ANYWAYS.

My in-laws are here and we are so blessed. Eli and Claire have really enjoyed it so far too! Yesterday Bud went out with his dad to make the food for the cows and go look at land to possibly buy for cows. While in the states, at one of our house parties, we had someone donate towards this!

While they did that, I took Denise (my mama-in-law) and the two Mattaw house mama's with me to town. Before we left this last time, since we wouldn't be here for Christmas, we assured our Kenyan children that we'd come back and have Christmas for them. So yesterday morning we shopped for them all. We went to "the mall" to find outfits and flip flops for them all. It was NOT your typical mall but you find stuff in bulk and for cheap, just what we needed. Of course no prices are set so you have to bargain, being one of the main reasons I brought the mama's with me. I even messed up at one point and said we'd take them for 100 shillings more than I could of got them for. But it was still a way better deal since we bought many. It was less than $10 per child for them to get a new outfit and flip flops.

Oh and there is a difference in clothes for the children. The mama's informed me there is new fashion dresses and old fashion. I had grabbed a dress to look at and they said, "no put that one back, it is old fashion". Pretty funny how no matter what the culture, developed country or undeveloped, they still are "in with the new and out with the old". So between two shops we got 29 new outfits. And it took less than an hour to do. That's my kind of shoppin!

I love to see new people soak in everything here for the first time. Even better when it's family. When we were shopping I thought Denise was about to loose it. She was putting everything together about what we were doing. She shared how she was just thinking of our little girls and how happy they will be to have brand new pretty dresses. Her getting to hear all the rough stories of where our children have come from for the past several years and now to get to shop for and give them these new pretty dresses just about messed her up!

She said David (my dad-in-law) is having one of the best times of his life. (I'm pretty sure Bud is too!)

We then took everything back to our house and I invited the women from the team here to come and help put everything together. One of the families on the team brought backpacks for all the children. They were donated by their church. So we sorted everyone's presents into piles, stuffed them all in backpacks, then wrote on the bags their names with t-shirt paint. Looking forward to the party today!

Here are some pictures from the last couple days...

Denise, Violet, Claire

I LOVE how they are all laughing in this pic. The team brought jump ropes and they had a blast

Mackensie and Raegan are loving it here and said they don't want to leave and don't have enough time left with the kids. I'd let 'em stay if their parents would let them! Amazing girls.

And of course "Baba Bud" joined in for a bit. The girls all squealed and got a good laugh

Kristy showing the kids the pictures she was taking

Our children always end up getting the sunglasses off the visitors. We even gave them sunglasses last year but they'd rather wear the visitors'. (sharon pictured above)

The girls LOVE Georgie and are often playing with him. Anyone surprised?? I didn't think so.

The team pretty much finished the school building and now have been working on a chicken coop the past couple days. No that is not a house, or a school, or an apartment, it is indeed a house, but a house for chickens! I'm pretty sure the better they are housed the more eggs laid and fatter they get right? I sure hope so!

After we left Mattaw a few days ago, we ran by the hospital to get our (kenyan) son Ian. He hadn't been feeling good and needed to go to the Dr. Turns out he has typhoid AND needed glasses, or should I say "specs". That's what they call glasses here. While waiting for him, we notice a monkey just chillin out on the water tower. Hello Africa!

Our front porch currently filled with backpacks. (please ignore that dying plant over there, we just got back from being gone awhile right?! its not that im a bad plant caretaker....)

And Elisha finally got to make a shirt. He was out there last week when all the kids were making shirts and he SO badly wanted to paint one. They had forgotten the extra small shirts so he had to wait. Almost everyday since then he has asked about painting his shirt. When he saw we were making backpacks with t-shirt paint, he about freaked and brought me a few shirts from his closet to paint. Thankfully they had brought over the extra small shirts and he made this piece of art above! We were thinking it'd sell for millions in some modern art museum in New York. Good fundraiser? Ha.