Christmas in Nairobi

We continued our Nairobi Christmas tradition of visiting the Yaya Mall Santa. This time, Gigi and Babu wanted in on the photos, too.

On December 30, Jonathan arrived from his new job in China, and immediately cooked us all dinner. Monte Cristo sandwiches. It has been a LONG time since we spent any real time with Jonathan, and we were super happy to see him. All we needed was Kylie, who would arrive at the break of dawn the next day from Vermont.

Of course, we couldn't just let Kylie arrive at 4:30am and come to the house to get some rest and a shower. Oh, no. We had to all pile into two cars and meet her at the airport, then rendezvous at the gate of Nairobi National Park as it opened. Surely she would want to go on safari immediately upon arriving. Right?

The safari was terrific.

Ostriches in the early morning light

Dawn is breaking

We have never seen lions in all our visits to the Nairobi National Park. This day, we saw 2 groups of them! The first time, we were driving along, all of us discussing how we were really really going to find the lions, everyone keep looking, watch under the bushes, we can do this... and Silas shouts: "THERE IS A LION IN THE TREE! I'm SERIOUS" And I'm thinking, yeah, right. But there WAS a lion in the tree. Pretty soon, two more followed it up and there were three lions in the tree!

This was more than we could have hoped for, and we were really congratulating ourselves that we were not, indeed, torturing poor travel-worn Kylie.

This is a photo of Kylie's adorable ear with a giraffe.

Jimbo and Giraffe. 

Cora and Giraffe. 

We even managed to see one of the hippos in the park. Can you see it?

This jackal (and its two friends) were NOT scared of our car as it passed within feet of its resting spot.

It's been raining in Nairobi for ages, and at one point Nate was a hero and pulled this stuck safari van out of a muddy rut with his ILRI project 4x4. We were all very proud.

Then we saw ANOTHER lion! Wow. Do not underestimate Nairobi National Park in the early morning.

This female lion was vocalizing. You have to watch until the end of this video to hear it (plus some bonus Silas sounds):

No one wanted to cook for Christmas Eve, so we went out for sushi at Tokyo.

That evening, Jimbo read "The Night Before Christmas" as usual to the kids. This year in person.

 

Christmas morning was full of stocking gifts, French toast casserole made by Mom, and relaxing at home with our Christmas Crackers crowns on (I forgot to take out the crackers on Christmas Eve as usual).

For our main meal of the day, all the adults cooked together. It was lovely and fun and relaxed, and I never want to do a Christmas dinner any other way.

Jimbo and Judy were in charge of the roasts.

Chrismas Catan.

Christmas swimming.

Christmas baseball against House 2 neighbors. We have the advantage in that we are American and they are Brits and only know the rules of rounders. So of course we won.

The next day we visited the Giraffe Center.

And then it was time for Gigi & Babu to go home. Thanks for a fabulous visit, guys!

Up next: camping with Jonathan & Kylie