The Family

Remember these guys? Well, here they are 9 months later! Moshi and Rugs (Rugby), all 75 pounds (each) of wiggly good-tempered adolescence. They scare the you-know-what out of anyone that comes in, which is what they are supposed to do, but really are quite sweet and good-tempered, which is great with all the kids that are around. They have these big deep barks, too, letting everyone in earshot know they're on duty. They also beat the poo out of a friendly neighbor dog that somehow ended up in our compound. We love them.

This summer many of the kids' friends were on home leave and they were forced to actually play with each other. I know, I know, the horror of it all. They learned some great habits and lessons about getting along with your siblings and spending time alone and enjoying it. Around the beginning part of July, however, a great family arrived for a month to do some medical work here. They ended up staying just up the road from us and Nate and Meredith hit it off with our kids. Noah and Nathan became instant soulmates, the way Noah does (Nathan reminded me very much of Noah's good friend Isaac) and Ava loved having an older girl to play with. Nathan spent most days here at the house and Ava up at Meredith's. They are a great family, and Noah is demanding that we promise him a trip to Nova Scotia SOON to visit him again. They are leaving this week and the house will feel empty without him here.

This past week the weather finally got warmer and we started hitting the pools again. Yesterday was a great day, with Meredith and Ava, Cameron, Noah, Nathan, Jacob and Aden (2 new boys from New York that will join them at school) and Charlie and Annie (from Arkansas, whos dad works for the Nature Conservency and who are here for a month) all running into each other at the pool yesterday and spending almost 5 hours playing together, while the moms chatted, American-style. It was heavenly!
The "event" of the summer is Ava on her bike sans training wheels. From what I can see, those training wheels were only slowing her down. She mastered it instantly and was off and running (well, pedaling) as fast as she could. We have terrible troubles with flat tires from thorns, but every chance they get they are zooming around the yard.

We have had, as I mentioned, several earthquakes in the 5-6 range on the Richter scale. Definitely big enough to give you a creepy feeling as you watch your living room sway! There is an active volcano about 75 miles from here called Ol Donyo Lengai (Maasai for "mountain of God") and when we arrived last February, it was spewing big rocks out. We are hopefully heading over there next week for a few days of camping with Max and Gina, and hoping to see some action. You can climb to the top, starting at midnight and arriving around sunrise (honestly, what is with that? I am sure sunrise looks just fine from down below and exactly how do you climb in the middle of the night?!) and we're hoping to be able to get all the kids up the hike. We'll see--if not, Cameron'll go for sure and I'll stay back (sleeping) with Noah and Ava. No baby carriers any more--it's all about real hiking now!