Grandma's Luncheon and Program

We had a delicious lunch, with lots of family. Her favorite color is blue so we rounded up all the blue dishes we could find.
Van our faithful big brother was the MC of the program. We had lots of laughs as we watched the preformances.
Here's the clan, all the children but one, he was in our thoughts and always in our prayers.

Lots but not all of the grandkids were there. It was a wonderful day!

Cowboy breakfast

While we were having our tea party the men were having a cowboy breakfast. Hosted by Uncle Mark.
Van brought down a couple of horses for all to enjoy. He always looks like a postcard.
This little cutie loved the pony.

Grandma's Tea Party

We had a "Tea" Party for Grandma and all the girls. She taught us the proper etiquette of how to hold our pinkie finger and how we are not supposed to tip our heads back when we drink.

Summer 2010

What a wonderful, eventful summer. Sadly, the pictures I took early in the summer got deleted. Thank you Cody for your pictures of Grandma's 80th birthday party. And of course I posted them backwards! This photo was supposed to be last after our yoga season.
We started the morning with Mindy our amazing yoga instructor. She made it look so easy.
I promise it's not!

Graduation!!

Jana is officially a High School Graduate! It was a lovely evening with lots of long speeches. The key note speaker was the ambassador of Namibia. But the best speaker hands down was by the Valedictorian! She did a great job, and I'm not just saying that because lots of people told us that she was the best speaker.

One of the speakers used a lot of body language and moved the podium just a bit and knocked the flowers over.

I had been watching this banana tree in my garden for months with this huge bunch of bananas. It got so heavy that the gardener finally had to prop it up. I kept meaning to take a picture of it. I'm glad that I don't have to be the one to decide when to take them down because I thought they were ready weeks ago.

I came home after being out and the gardener had cut them down. Boy, were they delicious! We had banana smoothies, banana bread, bananas all by them self. I froze some because they were ripening so fast.

From a worm to a fairy

We had the pleasure of watching Gwen's class preform a riveting musical call "Wormzzz" and you guessed it, it was all about worms. Gwen played the part of a worm. They sang songs called- Valentine 5 times my heart, Hermaphrodite Rap, and my personal favorite Wriggly Worm Samba. It was hysterical and very informative.

Gwen has started a new book series that is all about Fairies called Rainbow Magic and she just loves them. So she was very excited that the school was having dress up as your favorite book character day, her friend told her that she would be a fairy to and that they would be so pretty.

So the morning of dress up day Gwen announced that she didn't want to be a fairy any more, she was afraid the boys at school would make fun of her for being pretty. So she insisted on wearing her Sally costume from the Nightmare Before Christmas. (I didn't have the heart to tell her it wasn't a book) Can you guess who Jay is?

The weather here has plummeted to about 78 degrees and it is gorgeous! It's very funny when I go out in the morning for my jog at about 5:30 all the guards are wearing coats!

Do you ride elephants to school?

Our children are asked some very interesting questions when they tell people that we live in Africa. One girl asked if they rode elephants to school. The answer is no, but they did have a great time riding some while on holiday.

It takes 3 years to train an elephant. They let them roam free and apparently, a herd of elephants came and took back one of the elephants. I've always heard that the bound of the elephant family is very strong.

I hope that Maren was watching for crocs behind her!

I can't think of any living thing that isn't so adorable in the baby stage.