Aunt Emily and Alex Visit

Hello, folks-

We enjoyed a visit from Annette’s sister Emily and our nephew Alex at the end of June. Alex hadn’t been overseas before, but we heard he held up great on the long plane ride to Africa. He spent his first night in Nairobi in the same bedroom as his three boy cousins, all under the age of 5. After that, he decided he’d be better off in another room; I guess this house is a little louder than others. It was the first time for both Emily and Alex to meet Christopher and Joy. Chris took a few minutes to warm up, but I think he was pleased to meet his aunt and cousin.

We spent their first weekend here on safari, when we went to Sweetwaters tented camp near Mt. Kenya. Emily and Alex seemed to enjoy the wildlife quite a bit – we saw lots of elephants, some hippos, and lots of giraffes, in addition to the usual suspects of zebras, gazelles, impala, etc. Alex did a fine job of driving us all over the reserve, sitting on my lap and handling the steering responsibilities.

During the week, they did some tourist activities, including the giraffe park and elephant orphanage. Alex stayed at school one day with Mark and Chris. We all went to Mark’s graduation from Melon class on the last day of school. Mark wore his gown and mortarboard well; there’s a photo on a different, broken computer that I’ll send along another time.

For Alex’s last weekend, we (the four boys, Clifford, and me) went camping at Lake Naivasha. We had a nice time, roasting some hot dogs and finding hippos on a boat ride. The boys went to sleep early since they were so excited about sleeping in the tent. Clifford did quite well, and I didn’t have to tie him up for the most part. He only tried to get away when we were on the boat ride, apparently with the idea of going for a swim with the hippos.

Mark, Christopher and Luke emulated everything Alex did during his visit, obviously looking up to him. I told Alex, “The boys think you walk on water.” Christopher overheard me saying that and aid, “Why you want to walk on water!? Your shoes will get all wet!”

I’m thinking I’ll make the ‘Kids Always Win,’ the title of a recent entry, a regular feature. A great man who will remain nameless but who I knew from a young age always said in sternest voice, when we were in trouble, “Do you think that’s funny?” I apparently say the same thing to my kids, because Chris recently misbehaved and I got irritated and said, in a stern voice, “Why did you spray water inside the house?” He immediately replied, “Because I thought it was funny but it was not.” It was only because he was staring at the floor with his lip out that he didn’t see me struggling not to burst out laughing while I left the room.

Hope you’re all well,
Mark & co.

Kids always win

Hello, again-

We’re often reminded that kids always win:

-- We try to teach the boys some Bible stories and talk about the Bible when we have a chance. It backfired on us recently when Annette found Chris and Mark in the yard launching rocks at each other. She yelled, “What are you doing? Quit it!” They yelled, “It’s okay, Mommy! We’re David and Goliath!”
-- Our city boys drove their little bikes into the kitchen the other day and parked them bumper-to-bumper in front of the fridge. They all looked up and told us, “We’re playing traffic jam!”
-- We try to teach the boys to always stick together. It works most of the time, but we got in the car a few days before the 8-hour drive to Mombasa and found the stereo/GPS/backup camera didn’t work. We figured out pretty quickly that the coins in the console were missing, so probably had been put in the CD player and shorted out the whole system. I interrogated the boys for a while and finally realized they had taken my point: each one refused to roll over on his brothers. So, we have a “lesson from Mommy and Daddy” learned, as demonstrated by $400 worth of new car stereo.
-- We got out of our tent on Sunday morning at Masai Mara. I thought the kids would be impressed with the fact that a variety of wildlife had, as promised by the camp staff and as evidenced by noise throughout the night and the odor, obviously been directly outside of our tent during the night. I said, “It smells like we had some big animals outside our tent last night.” Chris replied, “All I smell is animal poop.”
-- We’re always harassing the boys about washing their hands after using the toilet. Chris came out of the restroom at a hotel we stayed in and told us he had washed his hands. Mark, Jr., who is taller, had just come out of the same restroom and said he couldn’t reach the faucet. Annette asked where Chris washed his hands, to which he replied, “In the baby sink by the toilet.” Chris had encountered his first bidet.
-- We’ve gotten to like a new dish called “bounty rice,” which is made of all sorts of fresh vegetables and such. The boys, who love bouncy castles at fairs, insist on calling the dish “bouncy rice.” I’ve enjoyed watching the battle between them and Annette:
Boys: Mommy, can we have bouncy rice?
Annette: It’s bounty rice!
Boys: How high does it bounce?
Annette: It doesn’t bounce! It’s rice!
Boys: Okay. Will the bounty rice bounce off my plate?

Enjoy the photos,
Mark & co.

Catching up

Greetings, all-

The monthly update has turned into a quarterly update, apparently. This’ll probably turn into two parts.

Annette’s mom came out in February and got to meet Joy. We didn’t do much travel outside of Nairobi, as I was traveling for work quite a bit during her visit. She seems to have enjoyed the visit, though.

Joy was baptized on February 8. She didn’t cry when the water hit her, about which we were pleased until a helpful parishioner came to after Mass and said, “You know what they say, right? If they don’t cry, the devil’s still in them!” I was struck when the priest was sending the kids off for their kids’ Mass, but knowing our boys had to stay for the baptism said, “All children, except for the Zimmer boys, come forward for your blessing.” I think “The Zimmer boys” makes them sound like the neighborhood hoodlums, which sometimes isn’t too far off.

There’s a photo here of the kids in their gear for Annette’s annual Mardi Gras party. The big boys assigned themselves as keepers of the hot sauce, so spent the whole party at the end of the serving table pouring hot sauce on the food of whoever asked.

We took at trip to Mombasa, on the coast of Kenya, for Easter. Chris had never seen the ocean before, so it was neat to see him stick his toes in the “big swimming pool” and build a sand castle. I got Little Mark on a jet-ski with me; he spent the whole time asking if we could go back now, but when it was over and his brothers asked if it was scary, he puffed up his chest and said how much fun he had had. We did a trip in a glass-bottomed boat, and the boys did some swimming on a reef. Again, they were all scared until Mark, Jr. hopped in. Then they all followed. Who needs peer pressure when you have two brothers? The hotel also had five different pools, each with a theme – diving platforms, a swim-up bar, a slide, etc. All of boys were a little leery of the water, since we don’t get to swim as much as we used to in Singapore. But, after the second morning of uninterrupted pool time, they were all very brave. Luke, who doesn't fully know how to swim, got so brave that he’d jump in the pool without telling anyone. Joy wasn’t too interested in getting in the water, but did great with the travel.

This past weekend, we spent Annette’s birthday at Masai Mara. The boys and I had been there before with my cousins Shannon and Tamara, but Annette and Joy had not, due to Annette’s travel restriction before Joy arrived. We stayed in a nice camp and enjoyed some good game drives. My saint of a bride claims she enjoyed the day of her birthday, even though I managed to slide our car into a deep rut and we were stuck for a little under three hours. We started out the trip with a cooler of beer, but it got depleted pretty quickly after I gave some to the guys who pulled us out of that hole, and more to the Masai people who materialized from a grove of bushes only seconds after we got hung up on a separate ditch the day prior. All in all, it was a good trip. We saw a lion, which is rare, as well as many elephants, some Masai giraffes, and then lots of zebras, gazelles, warthogs, impalas, hyenas, and others. The dining tent was invaded by monkeys on our last morning; the boys thought it was a big adventure, though Annette and I spent the whole meal waving umbrellas at the critters for fear of a bite on the kids.

Chris came home from school a while ago and told us he’d been put in charge of the class for a bit while the teacher stepped out. He said he had to “watch his childrens” (the Kenyan way of talking about his classmates). I guess he had to stand on a chair and tell them all to be quiet. So, after I finished laughing hysterically at the idea of Chris being assigned to keep order, I made a joke about the #1 inmate being put in charge of the asylum. Annette jabbed me and said that was no way to build his confidence.

More to follow,
Mark

Happy New Year

February 2, 2009

Greetings, all-

Happy New Year. We’ve been a touch busy, with the newborn baby, Christmas, New Year’s and lots of flag football. Enough excuses, but attached are some photos and below is a short update.

Mark had a party shortly after his birthday on November 5. With some guidance, he decided to have his friends bring a gift for the Marine Corps’ Toys for Tots program, rather than keeping the toys for himself. Shortly before Christmas, he went to the Embassy and presented the gifts to one of the members of the Marine Security Guard Detachment. We were quite proud of him, and he seemed pleased to know that kids who don’t have many toys would benefit from his birthday.

We went to a Christmas craft fair a little before Christmas. The boys got to see Santa arrive on a big fire truck after having flown in over the fairgrounds. At the same fair, Chris hopped onto a bungee bounce, with no idea that some 4-year-olds are afraid of things like that. Annette, who was still pregnant with Joy at the time, told the attendant that she wanted to jump on the same contraption to facilitate the arrival of the baby. We now know what a terrified Kenyan looks like.

Little Mark and Chris were in the pageant at church on Christmas Eve. Luke didn’t want to be in the pageant but insisted on dressing like a shepherd like his brothers. There’s a photo attached. Mark and Chris went off to the back of the church in their costumes to process up the aisle. By the time they came back up, Chris had somehow lost his entire costume. Both did well, though.

Christmas was excellent. The kids all had a good time, and the kids are still at a stage where they pause for 20 minutes between gifts to play with the new toy. The night before, the boys had left cookies and also carrots for the reindeer. I hear the reindeer had a good time choking down a huge carrot in the middle of the night. Joy slept through most of Christmas, and her brothers were happy to open her gifts for her.

We took Joy on her first safari a couple of weeks ago. We went out to Lake Nakuru for the day. I think Mark, Jr. is used to travel – I was packing the car for the day trip when he marched up and said, “Daddy, how many days and how many nights?” I had the bright idea of opening all the windows for the all-day game drive. We spent the following Saturday in a family car clean-up, getting the quarter inch of dust off every surface.

Annette and I were having a regular Friday afternoon date a couple of weeks ago when the maid called and said Mark and Chris had locked themselves in our bedroom when they were supposed to have been napping. We think we would have panicked before our fourth child, but we discussed the situation, decided they had a bathroom inside the locked room and weren’t in danger, and finished our drinks at a casual pace. We got home and I had to climb onto the roof to get the key through the window. I was traveling last week and called home after having been gone a day or two. Chris got on the phone and said, “Daddy, I didn’t lock myself in the bathroom today!” I didn’t know why this was a big deal until Annette got on the line and explained Chris had indeed locked himself in the bathroom on the day prior. Glad to see he learned from locking himself in our bedroom.

The boys are big into flag football these days. I play in a game most Sunday afternoons when we’re not at the horse race. I got a football from the boys for Christmas, so we’re getting some game time in the yard. The boys have gotten into playing our own game afterwards, with socks hanging from their pants. Chris seems to run backwards all the time, and Luke sits on the ball a lot. Mark has a good arm.

We’re enjoying having another girl in the house. Annette had said a long time ago that if we ever had a girl, she wanted some socks that looked like Mary Jane shoes. Thanks to Google and amazon.com, I was able to figure out what that meant and ordered some. I got some points, and Annette is enjoying dressing Joy in pink. I’ve taught to boys to say that if a boy ever asks their sister for a date, they’ll “put him in a headlock and drop him like a sack of concrete.” Hasn’t been an issue so far, but I’m glad we had the three boys before the baby girl.

We had Chris’ first court date on Friday the 30th. It was an adventure, with Annette and me both being pretty sure that the lawyer said we didn’t need Chris there until he asked, thirty minutes before we saw the judge, “where is the child?" Thanks to Annette’s mom, who is visiting, we got Chris there just in time. It went well, and we’re one step closer to finishing this adoption.

Enjoy the photos,
Mark