He'll take a few classes as electives (at undergraduate rates) during his senior year and then just need one additional year to finish up his master's degree. We're very proud of him!
Sunday the 20th I drove out to Sebring to worship with the folks at Spring Lake UMC and to attend their leadership meeting. They were so very gracious.
On Tuesday I drove to Seffner for my friend Carolyn's mom's funeral. Her mom Jackie was our church secretary for several years while I was in high school and she and her husband Tom were good friends with my parents.
The fields behind the old church parsonage lot are being turned into a subdivision now. It was so weird to see everything so empty.
I spent part of that day in the conference office in Lakeland and on the way home I stopped by Harvest UMC in Lakewood Ranch to deliver one last official welcome gift to the new senior pastor there, Rev. Nicholas Lee.
And on Wednesday I spent a lot of time in Cape Coral. I got to have lunch with a lay leader considering a ministry track and officiate at a charge conference for someone else pursuing candidacy in the church.
Parker and I were in Orlando for a craniofacial appointment for Davis last Friday. We stopped by Disney on the way home and Amy and CJ met us there in Epcot. We started in the Living Seas pavilion riding Nemo and then visiting the rescue manatees and the fish tanks.
Then we rode Living with the Land boat ride.
Davis wanted to visit the China pavilion and we watched the movie and shopped for snacks.
We went into the Mexico Pavilion and rode the Three Cabelleros too!
We finished up our day with Mission to Space and then Spaceship Earth. So good to get to hang out with our friends and at Disney.
Our last full day in Nairobi was a touristy one because our flight home didn't leave until midnight. So we enjoyed some time at the Giraffe Center where we got to feed them and pet them! They are so beautiful and so graceful!
Then we went to visit the Karen Blixen estate which is now a museum. Karen was a Danish woman who lived here for years and wrote about her experiences in the book Out of Africa. The movie was actually filmed on the estate which now belongs to the government. Interestingly enough a lot of the original estate has been sold off to create a neighborhood of very upscale homes and estates - named Karen.
She tried to grow coffee here and this was her drying machine so she could ship the beans back to Europe.
Our last big outing of the day was to a mall where we had a fabulous lunch at ArtCafee. I got a Dawa tea (literally medicine tea, with tons of ginger, lemon and honey). Super powerful and good.
This was us on the plane getting ready to take off for home.
At our layover in the Amsterdam airport we bought the boys chocolate. Davis was super excited that we brought him home a giant Toblerone.
We woke up in the safari preserve for July 10th, our 26th wedding anniversary. We went out on a 6:00am safari drive with the group. For a while everything was very peaceful and still.
Then we started to see some birds.
And eventually some of the bigger animals started heading south towards the water in herds. Staring off with a dazzle (herd) of zebras.
Then we spotted some antelope. Including a baby one that got separated from its parents and tried to hide on the ground for a bit.
Later we came back and had breakfast at the hotel (visited by Zazu again!) before getting showers, changing clothes and heading back towards Nairobi.
We saw a young boy herding camels along the road.
We stopped to visit these signs marking the spot where we officially crossed the equator south.
We stopped at this fun and amazing restaurant along the road called the Trout Tree Restaurant. It is exactly like it sounds - a giant trout farm with a restaurant in a fig tree! Super delicious fresh trout.
We made it back to the same hotel we stayed at for our first night. Everyone split off for dinner which was nice for the two of us to eat together for our anniversary. Daryl had also brought me an anniversary card from the US with him.
