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.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Thursday, November 23, 2006
HAPPY THANKSGIVING
Hi to all from Nigeria. I hope everyone had a very Happy and Safe Thanksgiving. We just got back from a wonderful dinner at one of the American Expat homes and it was just fabulous. It felt like we were with friends back in the States. There was Baked Chicken (no turkeys here) green beans southern style, corn, candied carrots, potatoe salad,cornbread stuffing, giblet gravy and cranberry sauce. She even had Iced Tea (only hot tea served here) we had to explain what Iced Tea was to the non American's at the dinner. By the way...ice is not a big thing here, if you ask for ice with your drink you get one cube. There was pumpkin pie, pecan pie and red velvet cake. Darren ate twice and was stuffed, but not enough to miss dessert. All in all we had a wonderful first Thanksgiving in Nigeria. It really felt like we were back home just not with our families, but with our new families while we're here.
Cheers,
Cheers,
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Home Sweet Home
We have finally moved into our new home in Nigeria. 4 Okoloma will be our new address for the next 4 or 5 years. We are settling in and have our staff here taking care of us. We had our first real dinner last night...pork chops, asparagus, corn and peas, it was so good. It was so nice to have normal food for a change and the best part, I didn't have to cook or clean up. I will be very spoiled after this.
We have our back patio being glazed in which means they are installing glass windows instead of netting and it should be complete today. Our pool has been drained, cleaned and is being filled with water. We keep finding small frogs in the pool, hopefully once the chemicals are in and we get a cover made for it that will solve the frog problem. Our garden is coming along great, our gardener Jacob is wonderful, he's here early and works so hard. He's such a pleasant man and always happy and has a smile on his face, he brightens my day each morning. I will take pictures of our house and staff and post them once our freight arrives with all our equipment. Darren did receive an email yesterday stating our freight will be here in two weeks, we'll see if that is true or not.
Here are some pictures I found on one of our Expat websites, they are of some local wildlife and some sites you may see, I hope you enjoy them.
We have our back patio being glazed in which means they are installing glass windows instead of netting and it should be complete today. Our pool has been drained, cleaned and is being filled with water. We keep finding small frogs in the pool, hopefully once the chemicals are in and we get a cover made for it that will solve the frog problem. Our garden is coming along great, our gardener Jacob is wonderful, he's here early and works so hard. He's such a pleasant man and always happy and has a smile on his face, he brightens my day each morning. I will take pictures of our house and staff and post them once our freight arrives with all our equipment. Darren did receive an email yesterday stating our freight will be here in two weeks, we'll see if that is true or not.
Here are some pictures I found on one of our Expat websites, they are of some local wildlife and some sites you may see, I hope you enjoy them.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Our "House" is Ready
The house is complete and they are moving the loaner furniture in today. If everything is set up and in working order I think we'll be able to move in tomorrow. It will be so nice to finally "unpack" so to speak and settle down in our own place, the kids will have room to run around and play. I think our windows will be installed in our new patio this weekend so that'll be really nice. I can't wait to be able to post pictures of everything once we get our own things. Once we move in we will probably be out of internet for a while, we'll need to have it set up and we're told that it's a slow process after requesting service for it to actually be set up.
We were told our "sea" freight is in Lagos, we just need our passports so we can get them sent here, they need to confirm that it is our freight before they release it. Although that could take months to get done. We may have to wait and worry about that after we get back from Christmas Holiday, which brings me to our trip home. We will be leaving on December 11th on British Airways and will arrive in Houston via London. I can't wait to get home and see family and friends, it will be so nice to be home for the Holidays. School starts up back here on January 8th and I think we'll be flying out of Houston on January 7th.
Take care and I'll write back as soon as I can.
We were told our "sea" freight is in Lagos, we just need our passports so we can get them sent here, they need to confirm that it is our freight before they release it. Although that could take months to get done. We may have to wait and worry about that after we get back from Christmas Holiday, which brings me to our trip home. We will be leaving on December 11th on British Airways and will arrive in Houston via London. I can't wait to get home and see family and friends, it will be so nice to be home for the Holidays. School starts up back here on January 8th and I think we'll be flying out of Houston on January 7th.
Take care and I'll write back as soon as I can.
Friday, November 03, 2006
4 Okoloma
Will be our new address soon, we are told the house will be ready by the end of next week. The kitchen cabinets, sink and counter tops are installed and they are really nice. The back patio has been framed so we will be able to install the glass windows and they only thing left to do really is painting all the ceiling and trimming around the windows, doors and security bars...yes every house has security bars on the windows a second security door that you can close and lock at all the doors.
This camp was built about 40 years ago, and the houses are just renovated every four years or so but the bars stay. We are in a third world country where there is unrest every time an election is near which is what is happening right now. The election is in April so things on the outside of camp are a bit uneasy. We aren't allowed off the camp until further notice, which is OK by me, it's very depressing out there. OK, that's enough of that, more to happier things.
Last night the children on the camp celebrated Halloween. I think this was the first year they actually tood the kids around to houses for treats. Since Halloween is the most popular in the States it was interesting to see how they were going to do it here. Well, it was really cute, they had us all meet at the Activity Center which was decorated really cool, and they had activities for age groups, the 3,4,5 & 6 year olds went into a room and had Halloween pictures to color. The 7, 8, 9 & 10 year olds had a game with donuts hanging from different 4 lengths of string and the kids were put into groups of 5 and one at a time each person from the group had to try and bite as much of their donut without touching it and when the whistle blew that had to go to the end of the line and the next person had to try. It was really cute and the ones with the chocolate covered donuts were covered in chocolate. I don't know what the older kids did since I don't have any in that age group.
Then we were off for some trick or treating.... each group of kids had different houses to go to, since this isn't a really big thing anywhere else, some people volunteered to be the treat houses. I went with Jade's group and Darren went with Lexi's. All the houses weren't on the same streets so we had a bit of walking to do, we had about 30 kids in our group, so imagine 30 kids rushing to one house all at the same time, most got one piece of candy each (not like back home) but they didn't know any better (except for Jade) Then the next house, after the first five kids, they were out of candy (what were they thinking???) The fourth house turned off the porch light which meant they decided not to participate, the next few houses were OK, each kid got a piece or two. All in all it was really fun for the kids and it was nice not to have a bag full of candy to eat.
The adult Halloween Party is tonight, I can't wait to see what they have in store for us. It better be good, it cost N3000 a piece. I'll let you know how it was on the next installment.
This camp was built about 40 years ago, and the houses are just renovated every four years or so but the bars stay. We are in a third world country where there is unrest every time an election is near which is what is happening right now. The election is in April so things on the outside of camp are a bit uneasy. We aren't allowed off the camp until further notice, which is OK by me, it's very depressing out there. OK, that's enough of that, more to happier things.
Last night the children on the camp celebrated Halloween. I think this was the first year they actually tood the kids around to houses for treats. Since Halloween is the most popular in the States it was interesting to see how they were going to do it here. Well, it was really cute, they had us all meet at the Activity Center which was decorated really cool, and they had activities for age groups, the 3,4,5 & 6 year olds went into a room and had Halloween pictures to color. The 7, 8, 9 & 10 year olds had a game with donuts hanging from different 4 lengths of string and the kids were put into groups of 5 and one at a time each person from the group had to try and bite as much of their donut without touching it and when the whistle blew that had to go to the end of the line and the next person had to try. It was really cute and the ones with the chocolate covered donuts were covered in chocolate. I don't know what the older kids did since I don't have any in that age group.
Then we were off for some trick or treating.... each group of kids had different houses to go to, since this isn't a really big thing anywhere else, some people volunteered to be the treat houses. I went with Jade's group and Darren went with Lexi's. All the houses weren't on the same streets so we had a bit of walking to do, we had about 30 kids in our group, so imagine 30 kids rushing to one house all at the same time, most got one piece of candy each (not like back home) but they didn't know any better (except for Jade) Then the next house, after the first five kids, they were out of candy (what were they thinking???) The fourth house turned off the porch light which meant they decided not to participate, the next few houses were OK, each kid got a piece or two. All in all it was really fun for the kids and it was nice not to have a bag full of candy to eat.
The adult Halloween Party is tonight, I can't wait to see what they have in store for us. It better be good, it cost N3000 a piece. I'll let you know how it was on the next installment.
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