Grandpa Goes East

In the middle of February, we had a special guest in our house. Grandpa (Jason’s dad—Blimp) came to see his grandson Sawyer. And the rest of us got to visit with him, too. This was Sawyer’s first time to meet Grandpa, and as you can see, they were both really happy to see each other.

Grandpa got to do lots of things for the first time on this, his first trip to Africa. Here he is riding a camel in the desert. He also got to drink Arabian coffee in a 250 year old coffee shop that’s part of a 600 year old market. And he got to ride three different boats in the river. Unfortunately, he was almost always holding the camera, so we don’t have much visual proof that he did all those things. Mohammed drove us to and from the airport, and around to some of the tourist sites. He took us on one of the boat rides, and even had his wife fry us some local fish. We were a little nervous about the fish, but it was surprisingly good!
For a special treat while Grandpa was here, the local authorities managed to have the water shut off for 54 hours. (That’s over two days for those of you who didn’t do so well in math.) We heard rumors that a huge water main got cut in some construction project. We knew of people without water in a three or four mile area. Until the water is off, you don’t realize just how often you “go to the well” so to speak. Even after it had been off for two days, we still caught ourselves reaching for the faucet to rinse something off. So we used our 5-gallon (20 Liter) backup container for the “necessary” and bought a case of bottled water for kitchen stuff. We took showers at a friend’s house the first night. The second night, we really needed to bathe the kids, so we warmed up some water on the stove and poured it over them in the washtub in the kitchen. Lee Anna loved taking a bath in the kitchen. Sawyer just wanted to walk away.
It was a little bit more slippery than the tub she's used to!
Sawyer wasn't any more interested in sitting still in a tub in the kitchen than he is in his regular bathtub. He spent most of his bath trying to climb out of the tub.
All in all, we had a great time showing Grandpa our home and our life in North Africa. Come back and see us soon, Grandpa!