Finally Christmas!

Well, I thought about waiting till July before posting my Christmas post, but then figured the beginning of Feb. wasn’t THAT late to post a christmas note….right?

🙂

As most of you all know already from our Christmas letter/picture, we took a two day trip south to Omo to be with family for Christmas!

We had a WONDERFUL time!!

I hadn’t been outside Addis yet, so the trip itself was SO exciting and new! Though once you see pics, you’ll wonder HOW in the world I could say it was fun, and i’m sure if I had to do it regularly it would get old…FAST, but it was all such an adventure!!

We spent our first night of the trip in a Catholic Mission hosted by an Irish priest named Father Paddy. There was a group of about three or four Irish men that hung out there and we had dinner with. Listening to them talk and joke sounded like something right out of a movie!! 🙂

The place itself was a complete dump, and I had to do some serious reevaluating of myself and just not thinking about other things before I could fall asleep that night!

Just to give you a little taste…Marshal found a scorpion in our shower…enough said!

The second day brought us farther away from the big cities and more into the bush, and I LOVED it!! This is about the time they stopped asking us for money but instead asked for Hiland (water). It was REALLY interesting to see, it was like there was a line on the ground and all on this side asked for money, and the other, water, it was very eye opening to the needs of the people there!

We arrived at Omo right around dinner time, and to get to our families’ (the Swart’s) house you have to leave your car on one side of the river and cross in a boat. The boys were SUPER excited to go for a boat ride!!! 🙂

The rest of the trip you’ll get to see in pics here in a minute, but it was so relaxing, fun, and amazing to see a different part of the world!!

the two weeks in a nutshell…

swimming

motorcycles

building windmills

swimming

crafts

boat rides

Christmas

swimming

reading

mangos