c’s favorite thing

Cristiana still has ber weekly riding lessons out at the Karen Riding School. “Aunt Bev” is her teacher, and they are having a wonderful time together. Cristiana has one-on-one lessons with Bev, and is able to focus like we’ve never seen her do. Bev says that she has a natural way with a pony.

One day her regular pony, Moyale, was booked with someone else, even though Cristiana always rides her. She rode a different pony, named Whisper Gold. Bev said he is a grumpy pony who doesn’t like to listen. Well, he listened wonderfully to Cristiana. He does not like to trot, she got him to trot with no problem. He does not like to obey, and Bev doesn’t take the lead off the reins. She did with Cristiana, and Cristiana totally controlled the pony. Amazing!

Here Cristiana is dismouting from Moyale . . .



Here are the stables. It looks dirty, but that because it had just rained and it was kind of muddy. It is a well run place, though.





One line of ponies, there are four lines total . . .

katie

Katie sitting on the bed . . . check out that HAIR, it sits up like that naturally! Honest, we do NOTHING to make it stand up. Poor thing, she’ll have to deal with that all of her life. She get’s it from me.




Katie having her first bath as she can sit up by herself. Ignore the part of my hand there, I am not touching her. She is sitting completely by herself. She wants to badly to sit up, all the time.




Katie having her first Cheerios. She really didn’t have a clue as to what she was supposed to do. It was funny! She did well after the first one. She has that same “look” on her face when we give her something new . . . a “what in the world is THAT?” kind of look.

up a tree

Cristiana has figured out how to climb a tree . . . and a big one at that! It was funny to watch her the first time, trying to figure out how to get up. If you looked through these photos quickly, it would be like watching a mini movie. I hope you get the gist of it by looking at the series. She tried going up the one side, couldn’t figure it out, went around the other side, and then back again to the front. And, was successful!



















And, our beautiful daughter . . . who is getting so big!

the girls

Just some random shots of the girls from the last week . . .








Here they are on the bed on a Sunday morning before getting ready for church. Cristiana was playing the “Mama” and trying to feed her a bottle, which is really just her teething ring.

playing airplanes

Cristiana set up the school chairs in an airplane setting. She said she was going to be the pilot, but then The Pilot came in and she quickly delegated that position to the best pilot in the world. (Sorry, Granddad, Daddy will always be our favorite pilot! :-)

melty beads

Cristiana has gotten very good at making her own patterns with the Melty Beads. (Thanks again, Uncle Keith and Aunt Jen for them! It’s been a hit!)

Here is a pattern on the star pattern block that she made all by herself. It was so beautiful and even that I wanted to take a pic. She gave it to “Auntie Marcia” as a present.

exponential

Okay, so one night Rod was gone and I was trying to make dinner. Katie was in the walker, in the kitchen. Cristiana and I ate pancakes, in the kitchen, as they came off the iron skillet. All I could think of was how adding another ankle biter to the picture made my life grow at an expontential rate. :-) But, the definition never really said what I wanted it to say . . .

exponential
ek-spoh-nen-shuhl

• Math of or involving numbers raised to an exponent
• Informal very rapid
• Relating to a mathematical expression containing one or more exponents. Something is said to increase or decrease exponentially if its rate of change must be expressed using exponents. A graph of such a rate would appear not as a straight line, but as a curve that continually becomes steeper or shallower.

katie’s feet

When we still had the crib at the highest possible spot, Katie would lay in bed after waking up and try to kick the mobile. It was really cute. Sometimes she even got the mobile to go a bit and make the music.

safari to nakuru

We went to the Nakuru Game Park with Virg Gottfried, Randy and Gwen Gottfried, and their kids, Jordan and Danielle. What fun we had. It’s always nice to get out of the city and see God’s incredible Creation.

Rod and Katie hanging out on the front porch . . .



Danielle, Cristiana, and Katie playing on the bed, under a BLUE mosquito net . . .









One of the many game drives . . .



Lunch at the Nakuru Lodge, the kids played a few games of pool.



After a game drive, we came back to the house to find that the baboons had visited our kitchen. :-) They ransacked the place: had eggs all over the floor and counter, riffled through a bunch of fruit, took a pineapple, eat a bunch of passion fruit, and got the bag of crushed dried scotch bonnet peppers but did not like them and left them on the front porch . . .







“Ahhhhh,” says Randy, “Sweet slumber,” even in the midst of all the racket from the kids . . .



Another game drive. This one was early in the morning. Nothing like getting up and going out in your pajamas. And, for Katie, to be able to just sleep away the morning. What fun!!









Just having fun with the camera as we are leaving the game park. I found that sitting in the back with the girls made life a LOT easier. We took the head rest off of the front seat, pushed it forward, and we had lots of room in the back. And, I didn’t get car sick because I could see out really well. (I know, no makeup, but it was just one of those weekends . . . !)