30 and Lovin' Life

December 29^th, 2011 - Sleeping in is pretty much always out of the question due to the noise level in our house so I was up at the usual 7:30am. I hadn’t been up for long (checked email, got dressed…) before Emily H came in carrying a large tray of French toast, syrup, powdered sugar and tea. It wasn’t technically breakfast in bed as she intended, but eating French toast - that I didn’t have to make - on the floor while doing a crossword from an African newspaper with George is most definitely not a bad way to start the day.  I made no rush of the morning, but shortly after breakfast made my way to my absolute favorite place to relax, a hotel called Gately on the Nile. Lindsay came with me and we hung out for a few hours on our computers, drinking tea, munching on fries, chatting and just enjoying a beautiful morning. When I got home, I found this…

The girls, God bless ‘em, put together probably the most thoughtful gift I have ever received. On top of receiving a skirt that I had been eyeing in town and a few cards filled with incredibly sweet and encouraging words, they put together a box with 30 individually wrapped gifts, both practical and thoughtful in nature, including highlighters, post-its and paper clips (for all my administration duties), a fabulous party hat (complete with typos: Happy Brthday), chocolate, a mix CD, tea, a handful of IV cannulas (for practicing) and an envelope entitled “Reasons we love Stacy…” filled with 30 little pieces of paper. My favorites…You drive like a boss in Uganda, you’re hilariously inappropriate at times J, you don’t mind if we ugly cry in front of you, you use the word “Skookum” in everyday conversation, you’re the best mama Stacy ever...like I said, most thoughtful gift ever.

Yea, I.V.s!!

The plan for the evening was 9-hole mini golf and dinner with friends at a place called Two Friends and it was during the gift opening that I mentioned my plan to put together a sweet little golfing outfit for later, but that I was lacking a good hat. Emily H promptly offered to fashion a visor out of my amazing party hat…complete with ribbon, stickers spelling my name and googly eyes.

Conquering the final hole...notice the sweet outfit? Knee socks, visor...

The evening couldn’t have turned out better; mini golf was a gong show (no one kept score, there were some creative variations to the game, we met a random Australian couple who guessed it to be my 20^th) and dinner was full of laughter and conversation. All in all, everyone had a great time and that may have been the best gift of all. 

We got home fairly late, but the girls made me a cake as a late night snack, insisted on the whole candle and birthday song and we pigged out (no plates needed, just forks) while watching Easy A; frequent outbursts of “I’ve got a pocket, got a pocket full of sunshine…” have since become a common occurrence but you’d have to had to seen it to understand why.

To say that I’m grateful would be an understatement, for sure. True, I didn’t go bungee jumping or rafting like I intended (darn whiplash has been acting up and I didn’t want to risk further injury) but besides that fact that I would have been satisfied with less than French toast for breakfast, a quiet morning on the beautiful Nile River, amazing gifts and a great night with some incredible new friends, how many people can say they turned 30 in Africa?    

December 31^st, 2011 - The plan was fairly simple: Bonfire at our place, kids everywhere, crazy outfits and illegal fireworks bought from a random spice shop in town (accessed only by speaking a code word to the “skinny guy” behind the counter). Saturday afternoon we all piled into the car and made our way to main market…the clothes section. We spent hours rummaging through piles of “previously loved” clothing from current styles all the way to some pretty incredible gems from the 60’s and 70’s. We left with a huge bag of fantastically horrible dresses (along with a few legit treasures including some t-shirts for cutting and a comfy flannel cover-up) all costing between 1000-7000sh; I have become a true fan of clothes shopping in market. Once we got home, it was a rushed couple hours of chopping veggies for a huge batch of fresh salsa putting together our outfits, complete with dated hair styles and crazy makeup and we opened the night with an awesome dance party with our kids who the mamas (gotta love our mamas) dressed up in some pretty great costumes. The dance went on for some time and the dance floor got more and more crowded as people arrived and joined the party and besides the fact that the “police” showed up at our gate to inform us that illegal fireworks are only allowed at midnight (?) forcing us to put the kids to bed and relocate to Katie’s house, it was a hugely successful evening. Once we finished off the fireworks at Katie’s, we still had an hour to kill so we spent our time drinking champagne and playing 20 questions but midnight came quick and, though low key, it was a sweet end to a wonderful and crazy week here in Jinja.   

Dance party; Emily wearing a fantastic seafoam dress...

sorry the pictures aren't great...

Notice Bridget's gorgeous pant suit and Emily's get up in the background?

Paul gettin' down...

George and Jane...yes, that jacket and those shirts both came from market...

This would potentially be an appropriate time to reflect on the last year of my life, but I will spare those of you reading this from another novel of a post. Instead, I will just say that I am immensely grateful for my life, trials and all, my friends and my family and my Heavenly Father for being relentlessly faithful through it all. Happy New Year everyone!