Oma's Chronicle on Mombasa

Read this first and the pictures will make more sense!

Wow!! Where do I start to tell you about the great vacation that we had, so I guess I need to start at the beginning. We left Nairobi at 7:45 Sunday morning, Ryan and Dawn were in the front seat and Oma sat behind Dawn and then Sethers in the middle and Levi behind Ryan. Caleb had his own car seat way in the back behind Levi. And off we went!! Caleb had his own little nest in the back with his treasure box, blanket and bunny. He sits there so quiet you don't even know he's along. Seth is still too small to sit forwards so he faced me and that was good because I can see him all the time. Levi was great, jabbers some but else plays with his toys. We stopped at noon for french fries and chicken at a restaurant gas station and to use the toilet. Oops, I forgot we stopped two times before that for a bathroom break behind the bushes. What fun, you kids know because you have done it. Anyway we got to the restaurant and used the toilet there which is a porcelain hole in the ground which you squat above and pee on your legs it so great!! The boys of course could go by a bush and they were done. The roads are really good about 75% of the way but the last 20 miles is terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible. They are doing construction and the road is barely wide enough for the big semis and other cars. So people go crazy, passing on the left off the shoulder, there were times I just shut my eyes and didn't dare look. Ryan was a good driver; it’s the other people who were crazy. We seen tanker trucks rolled over on their sides and lots of big trucks stopped halfway up a hill because they didn't have enough power to go further up. So around 2 p.m. we hit the really, really, really bumpy part, Caleb had been sleeping maybe 20 minutes and then when the bumps came he woke up and shouted at Ryan "Dad, stop it, Dad stop it!! He had big big tears rolling down his cheeks. But he settled down after a bit, on the way home Seth was sleeping in the bumpy part and I had to hold his head with my hand so it won't roll all over.

We got to Mombassa around three and went shopping for a few groceries and vegetables. and then had to take a ferry across to our cottage. The kids liked that. It held trucks, bikes, cars and lots of people. The space from one side to the other was maybe two blocks. We got lots of looks at our truck and our white faces and blond hair and even the gray Oma in the back seat.

We arrived at our house at 5 p.m. and were very pleasantly surprised at how it looked. The people who had been there before called it "rustic" which can mean a whole lot of different things. I will explain it to you. It was a building that had three houses/apartment/cottages, whatever, I will call it our house. When you walk in on your right wall was three bedrooms. Seth slept in one in the pack-play and Levi and Caleb each had a twin bed to themselves, Dawn and Ryan had a double bed and Oma slept on the front porch. It my opinion I had the best spot. OK so then starting from the back door again you had the kitchen and bath, then dinning room and living room all one big room. The front porch went the whole length of the house. Martha - the caretaker - had made a bedroom out of sheets over the windows and a sheet cut off my bedroom from the rest of the porch, I loved it. The first morning was the greatest, I could hear the ocean waves hitting the shore, and you know how I love that. The sunrise over the ocean was so beautiful and so were the sunsets. About the house inside, I guess you could say rustic - it was very `clean, with cement floors sort of painted in spots. There were mosquito’s nets above the beds, but we didn't need to use them, I found one mosquitoes the whole time I was there. In the dining room was a picnic table for our table, and some chairs and a bigger couch and a love seat in the living room. It was interesting that most of the windows between rooms and had been taken out, so you could step over half a wall and be in the next bedroom. They had curtains on but the noise factor was always a problem. Dawn and I like it because we could go in one bedroom and peek at Seth in his bed. They also had fans, which was nice. They did hear me snore but I heard Ryan snore too. I slept so good there, of course after running after three boys and doing dishes till they came out of my ears kept me going.

We really enjoyed the tides of the ocean, it came in at 6 p.m. and out at midnight and then came in again 6 a.m. that’s why could hear it in the morning when I woke up. We were so close to the water, you could see the ocean from our house out of every room. Anyway, by 10:30 a.m. it was starting to go back out and from one to five was so much fun. You could walk and walk out and find all kinds of good things. The first day Caleb started collecting crabs. They were very small with a quarter size body and lots of legs. He had a yellow bucket which he carried everywhere and colleted things. On Wednesday I found a hermit crab on the sidewalk and dared to pick it up and show Ryan. It had little claws, and I didn't know if it was poison or not but I carried it anyway. Well, after that Caleb started collection hermit crabs. By Friday he had at least 12-14 crabs in this bucket. He put sand in and water and they lived very happily. Some had checker tops and some were white and others all different colors. There were poison shells that looked like a ball with porcupine shells on them, a sea urchin - if you stepped on them you would be in big trouble. Around 4:30 Caleb and Levi would go swimming in the little pools of water in the ocean.

We didn't get any help doing dishes but we did have someone do laundry for us which was very necessary because lots of time the boys went thru three or four sets of clothes a day. There is a fisherman who fishes early in the morning and comes to the house with fresh fish. We told Martha we wanted shrimp, they call them prawns. So on Tuesday he came with about 100 fresh shrimp fresh from the ocean. He cleaned them and deveined them for us for about $10. They were yummy we made shrimp scampi, and barbequed them on the charcoal fire.

On Tuesday, Ryan, dawn, Caleb and Levi went to a nice hotel were you could pay to swim for the day and have lunch there. They took their snorkeling stuff along to see how the boys did in the pool with their snorkeling stuff. They both tried but Levi’s was too big for him and they enjoyed swimming more. I had a nice quiet day with just Seth.

They wanted to go to this island, which was about two hours away where you snorkel and ride a dhow but they decided the boys were too little and it would be better to do it in a few years.

Friday night we started packing up and left there yesterday morning at 8:30 and didn't get home until 5:45 last night. It was a very long day. Dawn gave Levi and Seth benadryl in the morning and they slept some and were a bit calmer. In the afternoon they got another dose and they slept again. But Seth was so tired of the car the last hour was a long time. Today we are all tired and stayed home from church to recuperate from our vacation.

Sayings from the boys _ Levi said to me last night "Are you going to stay here, you can't” Why can't I stay here, I said, " because you need to go home and live with Babu. He said, " you are a Oma, not a mother like my mom is." I said, but I’m your mom's mommy, he said no, your not. End of story.

Caleb - I blow kisses to Jesus all the time, I have Jesus in my heart and my head He's in my head so your thinking about him and he's in my heart which shows you love Him.

Seth - he is starting to worm crawl on his belly. If you entice him with something a couple feet ahead of him he will crawl to it. When you put him to bed on his back, and look he's sitting up playing with the side of the pack n play. His favorite word is Hi, and he uses it a lot. He also says “Boo, dis, dat, and mommy and daddy. We are working on Oma. But no luck.