Christmas in Nairobi

I hope that you all had a lovely holiday season, and that 2010 is off to a great start. I'm very thankful for the great ways that God blessed me in 2009, and look forward to seeing what He has in store in the year ahead. Most of all, I'm thankful for all of you, and pray that 2010 brings many blessings.

For me, the holidays were pretty low key. After so much traveling this past fall, all I wanted for Christmas was to stay in one place! I got my wish, and spent a lovely couple weeks enjoying Nairobi. I got to relax, read some good books, and visit some of those little spots around my neighborhood that I had not gotten around to seeing yet, like the lovely arboretum that's about a 15 minute walk away.

It's always hard to be away from home during Christmas, but it was great for our Vanilla Park crew to be able to host some of the other 'Christmas orphans' from work for a nice Christmas eve sleepover and Christmas morning brunch. It was also great to discover how cheap it is to use Skype to call the cell phones of friends and family in the US ($0.02/minute!) Enjoy a few pics below:

Pic - Lindsay and I don Christmas colors

Pic - Our little Christmas tree (courtesy of Lindsay's parents) surrounded by Secret Santa gifts and covered with 'spray snow.' I was the lucky recipient of that hoola hoop, by the way! The Christmas eve gift exchange was followed by a viewing of 'Elf.'

Pic - Our 'spread', which included quiche, cinnamon buns, pancakes, fruit salad, sausage, and mimosas! It was followed by a Christmas nap and a viewing of 'Love Actually.'