simply grateful

We love living in Africa.  One of the many things we enjoy here is the opportunity to go on safari.  In September we joined some friends and took a little vacation to the South Luangwa Game Reserve.  We had a great time with them and also had a great safari.  We thought we would share a few pics from our time.  (Click on a picture to enlarge) Less than an hour after we arrived we saw some elephants coming down to the water hole in the front of the house.  We later found out they came about this time daily to get a drink and take a mud bath.  We were only about 40 feet away from them, but up an incline so we felt pretty safe. Elijah pretending he is petting a small elephant.   Our kids favorite part of the vacation was the swimming pool at the house we rented.  They loved their afternoon dips in the pool. We split responsibilities for dinners with our friends so we enjoyed some nice home-cooked meals ...

We wrote a blog post on our anniversary, but failed to put any pictures… well, except the picture of the toilet paper on the first blog.  Since we are catching up the blog, we thought we should put up a few pics from our anniversary date.    One more from that day 10 years ago!  

This year I turned 40 and Heather decided to give me a kudu hunt for my birthday (which is way more awesome than what I got her when she turned, uh, 39…).  Although my birthday was in March I wasn't able to go hunting until June.  Unfortunately, I never did get a shot off in June so I went back for a second try in August.  Thankfully, I saw this one and was able to harvest it.  None of the kudu went to waste.  The skins are at the taxidermy, our freezer is full of meat, and many of the workers around the farm I was hunting on also had a nice dinner that evening.  While I was there I also harvested a warthog… because you just haven't lived until you try some of Heather's warthog BBQ!