32

Last weekend we had 32 big reasons to celebrate Rhett so we loaded up our car (wait! I haven't told you about our car yet! I will soon I promise!) and prayed for divine protection as we set out on the CRAZY Kenyan roadways for a weekend away at Kembu Farm. Rhett was extremely excited about Kembu because I originally told him we were going to be spending his birthday weekend doing an "African homestay" with our house helper's aunt eating ugali and sukuma wiki and enjoying some language immersion. Needless to say "Farm stay on an English farm in the Kenyan countryside" were sweet words to his ears!



We arrived at Kembu just in time for lunch on our front porch. The food was delicious and the BEST part is that all of our meals were brought to our cottage so our kids could eat and run and we could have a long leisurely meal. Sweet.



This is where we took all of our meals . . . ahh . . . serenity.



We celebrated with a cake (made from a box mix because I just don't do from scratch if I can help it and it was delicious!!) and Claire could not have been more excited about her Daddy's birthday! So sweet.



After lunch we explored our cottage, Mutati. It exudes English charm but is decidedly African too.



Do you know how much I love bouganvilla? Well I guess if I love it so much I should probably learn how to spell it but anyway. I love it. It makes me extremely happy to see a big ole swag of it draping off a porch or building or better yet . . . an arbor.



We took a break from exploring to take a few pictures but the kids felt like doing "silly" pictures so that is what we got.



Then I tried for a family shot but I forgot my tripod so I had to prop my camera up on a cooler and an ashtray and hope for the best. This would be a great time to point out that all of us have had Kenyan haircuts by now and it shows. I finally had to get mine cut last week because it had been 5 months since my last visit to a beauty shop and I was starting to scream "MISSIONARY!" so it had to go. I'm now wondering what the lesser of the two evils is because now I have a very short, blunt, one length haircut that flips out and makes me look like Gidget. I had to cut approximately 2 additional inches off the front sections the morning after because they were so much longer than the rest. Ford hair is wet in this picture because otherwise it sticks straight up. Claire is several different lengths (and I don't mean layers). Rhett is the only one whose looks good we've all decided. I digress but I thought an explanation was in order since we are looking pretty rough.



Somehow, I got the nerve to try to get a picture of all three. Then I remembered why I have no pictures of the three of them together because this is the best I could do.



The rest all looked something like this . . .



I was feeling kind of frustrated until my precious 2 year old son brought me a hand full of some of my favorite blooms and I started smiling again.



The inside of the cottage mixed a funky African vibe with a very colonial British tone and I liked it!



How fun is this shower?



The doors of the bedroom opened on a private veranda that just begged for you to grab a book and a cup of tea and sit a while.



Can I tell you how much the kids loved this room with the canopy? They pretended that it was a tent and had a grand adventure that night!



This is becoming the longest post ever so I will pause and come back with our tour of the AMAZING farm soon!