Company Picnic

Every year Ryan's company sponsors a huge United Way campaign encouraging each employee to donate. To thank the employees for doing so they have a family picnic. This was the first year we took Abby to it. It was fun! They had some cranes set up and the kids got to take turns using a remote control to move them. Before they could they had to put on their safety gear - the railroad is big on safety :).

She also made good use of the dance floor - our little dancing queen. Love her :).

Our Big Girl

Abby is 18 months old! She is amazing and wonderful and I am so grateful to be her mom. How did I get so lucky?
Abby and I went to the botanical garden to have a picnic with some friends this afternoon. It was so nice out and Abby had fun running around on the grass.

Isn't she so beautiful!

While We Were Away

While we were in Kenya Abby stayed with Ryan's parents. They were so excited to have so much Abby time. They gave her a new toy every single day. They took her to parks, the aquarium, water park, splash pad, etc. They had a lot of fun, except when Abby got sick (she had a cough and fever :(. They got her an antibiotic.) I wanted emails about 50 times a day and around 200 pictures a day so I wouldn't feel like I was missing out. But Abby took pretty much all their energy so I got about 1 email a day and only 2 or 3 pictures the whole time. Beggars can't be choosers, but it was hard, I just missed her. We tried skyping at the beginning but that was too hard on Abby so we did a few phone calls so I could hear her voice, but mostly it was just emailing. But she had a good time and we were grateful to know that our little girl was being well taken care of by people who love her very much!

Coming Home from Kenya

We had a layover in London. It was a few hours but not long enough to leave the airport and actually see anything. So we made it to our terminal and then had a couple hours to kill. I'm not naturally a very anxious person. In fact, my fear and anxiety level is probably a little too low to healthy. I'm not a huge risk taker, not a dare devil, I don't seek and adrenaline rush (in short, I was never cut out to participate in winter Olympic sports.) But I often scared my parents and still scare Ryan by my lack of caution. Because of this my reaction to being in an airport this day was surprising too me. I constantly looked for closest exits, my heart raced if Ryan was out of my sight (like when one of us needed to use the restroom), I was much more aware of the people around me than I have ever been.
The flight from Kenya to London was about 8.5 hours. We had flown out at 11 pm I believe. The attack had happened right around 12 I believe. So by the time we were walking around the terminal it had been over 20 hours from the start of the attack. We went into a store that sold newspapers. There were about 6 different newspapers. The attack was the front story of several and in pretty much all of them. And then we started seeing our picture in them, seeing the picture of Morgan and Ann. We never expected to be pictured in international newspapers. Again, very surreal.
And then we sat down and the story kept coming up on the news and again we'd see our pictures. And we were still wearing the same clothes that we had been running in. It was just a very strange feeling. The horror of it still hadn't fully set in, but we were definitely jittery - we startled very easy which is not great in such a crowded place were loud noises happen continuously.

Our next flight took us to Washington DC. Our layover here was much longer - about 8 hours. Some of our best friends live in the DC area and were kind enough to pick us up and give us a tour. Both Ryan and I have been to DC before but it was our first time there together, so we were excited. It had been a year or so since we'd last seen our friends (Robert and Shauna Bastian) so we were pretty excited to get to spend some time with them!

When we got in their van we just caught up with them a little, told them a little about our trip. We asked them if they'd heard about the attack. They told us about the attack that had just happened there. Then we told them about how we'd been at the mall. I can't really explain why, but it was kind of hard to tell them. It was hard to tell anyone. Over the past several hours we had talked about the attack a lot. We'd dreamt about it. We'd rehearsed it and tried to make sense of it and compared our memories of it. But telling people that didn't know already, people that cared about us, it was just hard. We had talked about whether we even wanted to tell them. Part of us didn't want to, part of us just wanted to enjoy our time with them and pretend like our life was just what we had always imagined them to be (which doesn't include terrorist attacks.) But we did tell them - and we showed them the newspaper we had bought that we were in. And that was that.

We really enjoyed our time at The National Mall - we still felt anxious and much more cautious than normal, but it was fun. We didn't have a ton of time, and being Sunday we limited our activities more than we normally would, but it was nice. And it was really nice to be out of an airport or airplane.

 The first thing we did was go to The Old Post Office Tower - the view is great from there!

We spent the rest of the time just walking around and visiting the memorials.

Back at the airport we decided to call my parents. I knew my parents would want me to call regardless - my mom likes to know when we are home safe. And I knew that she would be even more anxious because of the attack. What I didn't know was that she already knew that we had been at the mall, and so did many people by this point. Ann had sent an email to her family and several of her friends (including my parents) explaining a little of what happened and saying we were safe. It also included our pictures. My mom of course told all my sisters and sent them the email. A few of my sisters are very active on facebook and so posted about it and tagged us in it. And that is how the word spread. The story was out, people knew. My mom sounded fairly calm when I talked to her but my sisters have told me that after receiving the email and up until I called she was very stressed and nervous, so it was good I called. I also got a call from my best friend so I talked to her as well. We also bought 2 more newspapers with our picture.

By the time we got back to Texas it was late - around 10 or 11. Ryan's dad picked us up from the airport. He told us they had been watching all the news coverage about the attack and were so glad we hadn't been there. So we told him we had. He was so distracted by that that he forgot to turn when he was supposed to. And then pretty much the first thing he said when we walked in the door at his house was tell Ryan's mom we'd been there. She was upset. Upset that we'd been there and upset we hadn't told her sooner. I can kind of understand their perspective but the truth is we didn't tell them until we got back out of kindness. We knew that they would just be worried until they actually saw us - so why not wait until they could see we were unharmed to find out how close we had come to being killed. Anyway, we talked about it all for a little while, then went to bed. I so wanted to go into Abby's room and hold her and love her. But she is not the kind of sleeper that you do that to, so I had to content myself with looking at her on our monitor. We didn't sleep great, but we slept.

We got up the next morning as soon as we heard Abby stir. It was so great to hold her. I had missed her SO much. It was the first time I'd been away from her for more than a few hours since that last day in the hospital. It had been such an amazing trip and I'm so glad we had that opportunity, but it was so great to be back with our little girl!

We talked a lot more with Ryan's parents about our experience at the mall. We got to talk a little about the rest of our trip too. One of the really hard things about our trip ending that way was that those few hours of awful so overshadowed our week of amazing. And the amazing was so much nicer to talk about.

Ryan had planned on going into work but couldn't bring himself to do it. We just weren't ready yet. So he typed up a short email explaining what had happened so people could understand why he wasn't going to be in. He sent if to a few people. We spent a few hours at Ryan's parent's then came home. It was nice to be in our own house again - just us, Abby, and Penny.

The next day our interviews started happening and I came to understand anxiety and have so much more compassion for those who suffer with it. It is awful!!!!!! But it is passed now and I pretty much only look back on our time in Kenya with fond memories and happy feelings. Life is beautiful - I'm so grateful for it!

Kenya - Day 9 (The Last Day)

We had done pretty much all of the touristy stuff we wanted to in Nairobi our first day so we didn't have anything planned for our last day. Our plane didn't leave until 11:00 pm so we had a whole day to fill. The day before Sister Knecht had asked us what we'd be doing and when we told her we didn't have any plans she suggested we go to this outdoor market to buy Abby an African dress. That sounded fun, so that was our only plan at all.
Morgan and Ann had a few things they needed to get so we first stopped at the Nakumat (their version of WalMart). They didn't have the crackers or bread they wanted there so we next stopped at the Westgate Mall to get these things. Five to ten minutes after we got there, as Morgan and Ann were selecting their bread at the bakery and Ryan and I were looking at a candy kiosk, terrorists attacked the mall. We were separated from Morgan and Ann as we ran from the attackers and hid in a warehouse. We hid for about an hour in the warehouse until we were told to run for it. We spent another hour and half or so hiding in a park across from the mall. Then thanks to a Good Samaritan who gave us a ride we made it back to their apartment and waited for them there. It was so great to see them! Relief!
We shared stories for a little bit (we were in the apartment of one of the other missionary couples) then went back to Morgan and Ann's and rested for a little bit. While there we found that pictures of their escape as well as ours had already been plastered all over the internet. It had only been a few hours. We didn't want our families to worry. The time difference was such that everyone in the US was asleep, but we figured once people started waking up they would find out about the attack. We didn't want to tell them we were caught in it because we figured that it would be hard on them to wait until we were home safe, that they would just be worried. But we wanted them to know that we were safe so they wouldn't have to wonder after learning about the attack on the news. So we sent them an email just letting them know that an attack had occurred in Nairobi but that we were safe.
We went out to dinner with Morgan and Ann, two other missionary couples, and a young Kenyan man that is a member of the church. After dinner we got all our stuff together and this young man took us to the air port. It was hard to leave Morgan and Ann, it was hard to leave Kenya. But at the same time, we wanted out.
Sitting in the airport the news was on, and the only thing showing on any channel was the attack. And then we saw our picture up there. It was surreal. So we told the people around us that just saw our picture flashed that we had been there. We were still wearing the same clothes and everything so it was pretty obvious. Then we told them about our experience.
It was interesting talking about it that day. It really seemed more like telling someone else's story rather than our own. I didn't feel super emotional. I think all of us were still in shock. When we went to the restaurant Morgan kept showing everyone the picture he'd printed out of his and Ann's escape and telling people about it just like you would tell any interesting/fun story. The emotion came later for me - first I was just tired and shocked.
And that was pretty much our last day in Kenya. We had 7 of the very best days of our entire lives, days that changed us for the better, days we will never forget. But for a while those days full of amazing were overshadowed by one day of terrible tragedy. It is still sad for me that this is the case.

(Confession - I like to keep my blogposts dated to about the time that the events I am describing occurred, but I am not on top of things to actually write them close to the time always - I do a lot of back dating. It is now actually June of 2014 - the attack happened September 21, so it's been a while. The good thing about this is that I can tell about how the attack has affected us over all. After we got home we told a few people about what happened. Also, facebook spread the word fast (before we even got home.) The word ended up getting out so broadly that news reporters started hunting us down - showing up on our doorstep, calling us, sending us facebook messages. It was crazy - and super stressful. Neither Ryan nor I like the spotlight and have never aspired to be on TV. When we were first asked to do the news reports we said no, we really didn't want to. But then we thought that maybe doing so we could help the people of Kenya (who we had grown to love so much) and we asked the FBI agents who came to debrief us if they thought it was safe, and they did. So we agreed. The first was just for a little local network. I HATED it, I was so uncomfortable the whole time, and I hated talking about it. I thought that was going to be it - but the next morning we were getting hounded by Good Morning America. That is when the anxiety really started for me. I have never been an anxious person, but that experience gave me understanding and compassion for those who deal with it regularly. I never realized that anxiety isn't just emotional discomfort, but physical as well. That you can feel it all over your entire body - it was like my skin had an electric current running all over it. I wanted to just brush it away but couldn't. It was awful. We thought about it all the time, talked about it all the time, dreamt about it. We collected newspapers with our pictures, recorded news reports with us in them, did a Kenya presentation at our church and a retirement center, etc. We followed the reports about the attack in general. We received a packet of info from the FBI letting us know what resources where available to help us and also a website we could visit to find out where things stood with those who had been arrested and those who they suspected. Once the interviews were over, and people prayed for us, things got better. I would say only the first week or two was really bad. Now it is still something we think about and something we talk about. It is interesting what kind of things will trigger memories of it. (An example is a Studio C skit - you can see it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIGEwAuWpB8&feature=kp - it's funny but it triggered memories for both of us.) But it doesn't dominate our thoughts and I don't feel like any of the initial negative affects of it are still here. I think now only the positive effects have lingered. We are more compassionate, more understanding, more grateful. We have had the opportunity to share our story, had the opportunity to share our love for Kenya and the people there, the chance to let people know that we would still go back and recommend other people go. I think we're more aware and more safe. It provided more evidence of my Heavenly Father's hand in my life - more proof of His love for me, more evidence of the protection provided me by the covenants I have made with Him. Truly, I can't say that I would have ever asked to be caught in a terrorist attack, but I don't wish it away either. Being there at that time has blessed my life, so I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for everything about our Kenya trip!)

After we got back Ryan and I both wrote down what we remembered about the attack to share with people. Ryan's is much shorter so I will share it below. Mine is long, if you are interested you can access it here.

Ryan's Summary

Amanda, my wife, and I had an incredible time on our safaris in Kenya. They were some of the best experiences of my life. Unfortunately, on the last day of our trip we were at the Westgate mall in Nairobi when the terrorists attacked. Here's my experience in a nut shell:

Amanda and I were staying in Nairobi with some elderly friends of Amanda who are serving as humanitarian missionaries throughout Kenya. We decided to go out to purchase an African dress for our little girl Abby (Abby was in Texas with my parents). On our way our friends decided to stop at the Westgate mall to buy some bread from a coffee shop and bakery called the ArtCaffe. They were standing at the counter to buy the bread while Amanda and I were across the hall looking at a candy kiosk when we heard a loud BOOM sound. It sounded like a floor had collapsed, but it was in fact a series of grenades going off. Shortly after the explosions we heard rapid shots being fired. At this point I realized what was going on and we ducked behind the candy kiosk. In this location we were about 50 yards from the main entrance of the mall where the terrorists came in.

The noises stopped for a moment so we joined a stampede of people heading for the nearest exit. Shots started again so Amanda ducked behind another counter and I jumped on top of her. When it quieted we got up and took off running again. We ended up running outside to a truck loading dock. People coming from another exit converged at the same location and chaos reigned. We heard more shots being fired and took cover in a storage room for a supermarket in the mall called the Nakumatt (this is the store where the terrorists are holding the hostages). We hid behind pallets of various items such as flour, rice, and plastic cups for the next 30-40 minutes.

Eventually someone yelled for everyone to get out of there. After waiting a few moments to make sure the people running out before us were not being shot at, we started running down the truck ramp to the main street. I heard shots from inside the mall as we ran and saw a vehicle with back windshield blown out from the initial attack. We came around the corner and Amanda fell behind a little as she noticed an old lady having trouble getting along. Someone helped the old lady and we kept running. At this point we saw people taking our pictures. The photo is below. We have seen it on CNN, Yahoo News, and the online version of USA Today. It has also been printed in newspapers in New York, Washington DC, and London.

We ran across the street to a park. We did not feel safe in the park because we had heard reports that the terrorists were both inside and outside the mall. We hid in the bushes of the park for the next hour. From here we had a view of the mall and looked for our friends. We were very concerned about them because they are in their mid-70s and were in a much more vulnerable location than us. We also had no way to contact them because we did not have a cell phone and did not know their phone number.

We eventually went out to a road behind the park and I hailed down a car that I thought was a taxi. It turned out to be a young Kenyan guy who agreed to give us a ride back to our friend's apartment. We eventually met up with our friends at the apartment. They had taken cover behind a table in the ArtCaffe for about 45 minutes before getting out. We found a picture of them on BBC news.

It is surreal to think I experienced and survived a terrorist attack. While it was going on my heart was racing, but my mind was surprising clear and active. We did a lot of praying during the ordeal. Now that it is over I am disturbed by what happened and get jumpy when I hear a loud or unexpected noise, but mostly feel grateful to God that we and our friends were able to get out of there safely.

Kenya - Day 8

After breakfast we headed out for our last game drive. We went to Lake Nakuru National Park. It is known for its birds, especially flamingos. Recently the lake was super low - it's been blamed on global warming :). But then a month or so before we got there it rained so much that it flooded and the flamingos left because it was too deep for them. Even the week (or maybe 2 before) we got there our guides had been there and had seen almost no flamingos, so we were super disappointed.
You can drive in a big circle around the lake, but the first direction we tried didn't work out, the road was flooded, so we had to turn around. But we saw lots of amazing animals and beautiful scenery. It was so interesting to Ryan and me how incredibly different the 3 parks were. Masai Mara is exactly what you picture Africa to be - the rolling savannah with acacia trees. Samburu was a total desert, except along the river which looked like you would picture the Nile, with the palm trees lining it. Then Lake Nakuru has more of a tropical feel with all its greenery. We were glad we had the chance to experience such diversity.

I don't believe this building is normally surrounded by water :)

Cape Buffalo herd

Male and female waterbuck

Olive baboons. We saw olive baboons every where - in Nairobi, Masai Mara, Samburu, and Lake Nakuru. I enjoyed them every time we saw them, but I loved them best at Lake Nakuru. There were more of them, and seeing them in all the green was just fun. And isn't that little baby just ridiculously cute hanging on its mama! Monkeys are my favorite animals (along with dolphins) so...

Female and baby Grant's gazelle

Marabou storks - not so pretty

Yellow billed storks - I think they are very pretty, as you can tell by how many pictures I have of them

Yellow billed storks in front, Thomsan's gazelle in back

Egyptian geese

Thomson's gazelle with an Egyptian goose

Male impala with his harem

I can't remember if I wrote about them before or not, but an impala herd is either one male with his harem or all males. And the harem leader is not nice to the females - if they don't do what he wants he will beat up on them. Rude!

The other van from our group - there was lots of water :)

Great egret

Plains zebra

It was so beautiful there!

Olive baboon

Two male lions!

When we were in Masai Mara I made a mentalist of animals I really wanted to see - and not just animals, specific situation that I wanted to see these animals in:

All three giraffe species (check)

Wildebeest crossing (check)

Leopard (check)

Cheetah (check)

Rhinos (check)

A hippo walking by itself, not laying down on the shore or in the river (check)

A female lion with some cubs (check - we didn't get a very good view, but we did see them)

And last but not least...

A mature male lion with a huge main stand up, look around, and walk (check!) God is so good! The only animal I really would have liked to see but didn't is the Grevy's zebra - apparently they are rarely seen because they only come down into the valleys to get water, and only occasionally. But seriously, I felt so blessed!

And we did see flamingos! We were so excited!

Male waterbuck

Cape buffalo

I couldn't get enough of the baboons - I seriously could have watched them all day!

We had been thrilled when we had seen that group of flamingos - and then we came here! (See the pelicans in the back?)

Some cape buffalo in the back

I know we didn't see nearly as many flamingos as there are normally there, but we loved seeing what we did!

White rhino family - you can barely see the back of the baby between the two parents

Makalia Falls - you can't see it quite as much in this picture - but it honestly looked like a chocolate milk fall and pool, it was crazy.

It was so nice to get out for a few minutes, stretch our legs, and look around

Our AMAZING guides that we LOVE - Isaac (he was our driver), Kyalo (he owns the company), Richard (he drove the other van so we spent the least amount of time with him but he was so incredibly friendly and inviting that you love him instantly), and Simon (the guide in our van). This picture is funny to me because both Isaac and Kyalo look so serious, which is crazy because I bet this was the only moment that I didn't see Kyalo smiling. He smiled ALL the TIME! Kenyans are so smiley and happy and kind and loving - and you have to love them in return.

Female waterbuck

Secretary bird

Rothschild's giraffe - they are the rarest ones, at least in Kenya

You can see the distinguishing characteristics pretty well in this pic - there are no markings below the knees, the spots are fairly geometrical (at least compared to the Masai giraffes), and the center of them is dark

On a cliff overlooking the lake - the last place we stopped on our last game drive

East African rock hyrax

I LOVED the Kenyan children - they would always run to the side of the rode as we went through villages and wave and smile and I loved them. This was the farewell we received as we left Lake Nakuru. You couldn't get a better send off than that! Don't you just want to go to see them for yourself!

After the park we stopped at a restaurant at a mall. Nakuru was the only other real city we went to (other than Nairobi). Being at the mall was kind of weird. We were used to seeing pretty much exclusively black Africans outside of the parks - but at the mall people were predominantly white. I enjoyed eating at the restaurant though because I got to eat some more authentic Kenyan food.

The ride back to Nairobi was a little sad for me. I knew once we got back that these people that I had just spent a week getting to know and falling in love with (our guides and the missionaries we toured with) would go their own ways when we got back and I'd likely never see them again. I enjoyed everything about all of them. They were so fun and I don't think we could have enjoyed our experience any more. We got back to Nairobi pretty late so we just talked to Morgan and Ann for a little bit, then went to bed.