HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Merry Christmas to all!!!

We are getting ready to leave for our Christmas Holiday, our home trip begins Monday, 11 December. We leave Port Harcourt, Nigeria for the airport at 10:00 AM and will fly to Lagos which is about a 50 minute flight. We will stay at the Lagos Sheraton for a few hours before our flight on British Airways. We will fly to London and stay a few hours at the airport before going on to Houston. It will take us about 2 days to get home...a 6 hour flight to London then a 10 hour flight to Houston, talk about jet lag. Here in Nigeria we are 7 hours ahead so it will take us a day or so to get used to the time change. We are very excited to see all of our friends and family and of course our greybabies, we miss them so much.

We have our Annual Christmas Eve Party again this year, it is the 9th year for our party and so far we have 36 confirmed guests, it will be a very festive, happy time for all of us.

It will be so nice to go shopping for Christmas and groceries, we have 2 small stores on the camp that have what you need most of the time, but it's nothing like shopping back home. Vegetable shopping is always an adventure, they have booths set up outside in the back of one of the stores here on camp and when the sellers see you coming they start calling you over all at the same time...Madame Madame, please see what I have for you today!!! They also remember you, so if you told them last time you were there that you will buy from them the next time they tell you, Madame you said you would buy from me this time. They all have pretty much the same items although some do have more variety than others. I usually take our cook Glory with me and let her deal with them, she knows who has the best and handles them great. Actually, we only go there when we need things between shopping, Glory and Alice (our Nanny) go on Wednesday's to the "Market" on the outside of the camp where they can purchase vegetables much cheaper. Once we're allowed to go off camp (when the elections are over) I will probably go with them. We also have a lady that comes around who sells Prawns and Fish and let me tell you the size of the Prawns are remarkable, they are so big and so good and the Red Snapper was mouth watering. Glory is an excellent cook and she's been spoiling us with all the great dishes she's been cooking. Last night we had Shrimp Fried Rice that was to die for, we even invited one of our friends over who is alone here (his family went back home) and he couldn't get over how wonderful the food was.

Well, I guess that's it for now, I will write again to let you know how our "Party" went. Until then:

Have a Safe and Happy Holiday.

Dina, Darren, Jade & Lexi

SPLISH SPLASH

We enjoyed our first weekend in our pool. Saturday Jade and Lexi were invited to a Birthday Party but couldn't wait to get back home so we could test out our pool. We were so hot at the party it was really nice to come home and jump into our pool. It's not very deep, Jade can stand up and the water reaches right under her neck. It's amazing what she's learned here already. The kids have swimming lessons on Wednesday during school, it's only about 40 minutes or so and they missed a few lessons due to rain and the pool was closed one day, so I think they've had only two lessons since we've been here. Jade who was always afraid of water in her face can now swim under water, jump in, cannon ball, and do front and back somersaults under the water. I'm amazed every time I watch her in the pool, and she is so excited with herself. Some friends who are moving to Holland have given us some innertubes and gave Lexi a "Floatie" vest which keeps her afloat so she can swim without having to hang on the side of the pool and doesn't worry about going under and drowning so she's having a blast also. She's not as brave a Jade yet, she's learning how to blow bubbles in lessons and I'm sure she'll be swimming under water soon herself.

Yesterday they bugged me to go swimming starting at 8:00 AM, I held them off until 10:00 AM. I wanted the sun to warm up the pool a little bit. When we got out there, Jade jumped right in then Lexi went in. Jade said there was a bug in the pool so I thought it was a normal kind of bug, asked where it was and she said over there on the pool ladder. I went over looking for it and didn't see anything, got in the pool and looked at the ladder and OMG, I jumped out the pool and had them get to the other side, I got Lexi's flip flop and tried to move it, but it had it's claws wrapped really tight on the ladder. I gave it one hard swipe and it let go and started swimming on the bottom of the pool, I screamed to the kids to get out the pool cause the "Monster" was loose and ran to get the pool net. I caught the thing and flung it in the brush behind the trees. I found a couple of pictures of the "Thing" on the internet, Jade told me it was a "Water Scorpion" because one of the kids brought one to school to show everyone.
See pictures of our "CREATURE" below.

"Creature from our Pool"

Here are some pictures to go along with the "Splish Splash" post: