1st Birthday Celebration!

On January 12th, we celebrated Isaiah's 1st Year Birthday! Since we were unable to get back into Canada for the time being, we invited some friends & family to come drive across the border to Buffalo. Our gathering was held at the infamous Cheesecake Factory. He nearly hyperventilated when we got a taste of their mashed potatoes! The boy loves food...

It was a great gathering and we were so happy to see friends & family that we hadn't seen in 2 months. After dinner, we headed back to the Marriott where we were staying and opened some gifts. Sebastian and Isaiah had their first sleepover that night and were supplied by matching PJs by Grandma.

Bubba in Buffalo

So yes, I haven't made a blog post in a few weeks. I have heard many comments that this seems like an eternity. Several of you thought that we had been eaten by the fire ants in the rainforest. Truth is, Isaiah is being mauled by Canadian aunts. Anyways, for those of you who don't know, we are back in Canada. It wasn't easy to get here but long story short... he has a Temporary Resident Visa.... yeah!

To get home from Rwanda, Isaiah and Johanna had to purchase new tickets to Buffalo from London Heathrow. They made it but it was a tough flight. I caught a plane to Toronto, went home for a few hours and was joined by my sister, 'Aunt Kerri', to drive down to Buffalo. After a night of reunification and Kerri meeting her nephew for the first time, I was left alone to my own devices with Isaiah in frigid Buffalo. Luckily the warm coffee and pancakes at IHOP made it bearable. Here a few pics while in Buffalo.

I have more stories and pictures from Rwanda and hope to get them up soon.

Chimps and Monkeys

As we have been in the middle of the Nyungwe Rainforest with no access to the Internet, our blogging has been sparse. On Sunday, we packed up the whole crew: Johanna, myself, Isaiah and both sets of grandparents and headed to the southwest of Rwanda. After a seven hour drive consisting of endless ups and downs, curves and potholes, we found ourselves in Cyangugu at the Peace Guesthouse overlooking Lake Kivu and Congo.

The next day we were up at 4:30am to go track Chimpanzees in the rainforest... everything was great until we realized that one of our back tires had encountered a sharktooth-like stone and rendered our van useless for the entire morning. We happened to be stuck in hills covered in endless amounts of tea, right beside a tea factory. It was quite beautiful. After watching the sunrise, watching the cows come to greet us and the tea factory workers and the local villagers crowd around us, we decided to head out on a hike through the tea plantations. This is one of the most beautiful sights I have seen... green hills filled with tea, contrasted by the waters of Lake Kivu and the blue haze of the mountain in Congo on the other side.

After our morning of waiting for the tire to be fixed, we then headed out for a trek into the forest to find the Black & White Colobus Monkey. At first we only saw a few in sight, but then suddenly about 40 other Colobus Monkeys leaped off the ground into the trees in front of us. It was spectacular. That basically was our day as we then headed back to Cyangugu.

At 4:00am the next day, we tried the chimps again. Everyone was feeling good except Johanna had a migraine and I was coming down with something in my stomach. We waited for the chimps morning call before we could enter the rainforest and look for them. We heard quite a long loud sound of chimp noises and we all got excited to go look. It was tough hiking through the forest. We had to go up and down this hill and hack away at thick undergrowth to get to them. We spotted several on our trip and at one point Johanna and I found ourselves looking at a large chimp in the trees while our legs and bellies started to feel like fire. We were standing in a pile of some kind of super biting ants. Man, did they hurt... we had to both strip down in the forest and pick out our pants to make sure they were gone.

Everyone enjoyed the trip even though it was a long drive to get there, the countryside is so beautiful. Enjoy some of the pictures we took along the way.

Christmas and the weekend

Another picture blog...

Christmas day walk with Isaiah... he loves being strapped to us. He fell asleep.


Isaiah all dressed up for Christmas dinner at the Serena with Grandma Klassen :)

Isaiah with mommy at Christmas dinner.... right before he fell asleep there.

He was back awake after his dinner sleep, opening presents on Christmas night...

Isaiah asleep in Grandma Quinn's arms at Heaven restaurant.


Isaiah in Grandpa Quinn's arms at the Novotel.

On Boxing Day, we brought our parents to the orphanage where Isaiah was from. The Sisters and his former caregivers were happy to see him. As always, visits there are emotional.

Merry Christmas!

Here he is on Christmas morning :) Merry Christmas to you all!

Grandparents Arrive and We Celebrate

The Grandparents arrived on Monday afternoon with much emotion! Johanna and I were happy for some reinforcements and they were happy to meet Isaiah. As you can see from the picture below, the grandmother's are all over the little guy and are happy to give him lots of love.

A few days before Christmas, we got our first family photo with Nakumat Santa :) He's the real deal.

It is so nice that both sets of Grandparents are here to celebrate Christmas with us. For Christmas Eve, we went to a Candlelight Service and sang carols. After that, it was off to Flamingo restaurant with a huge gang for some Chinese food... followed by nice baked goodies and drinks over at Jen & Serge's place. The bake goodies were yummy, the home was full and the candles were ablaze... you could almost close your eyes and think there was snow outside but the sweat off my brow reminded me otherwise.

Our weekend in pictures

We had quite the busy weekend. No time to blog, but here is a summary in pictures.

Here I am, holding Isaiah in the back of a Toyota. (It seems that all they have here are Toyotas and Mercedes-Benzs). We were on our way to a Rwandan Dowry ceremony.


Here is Johanna and Isaiah returning back to the Dowry during the music and dance portion of the ceremony. This is right after Isaiah peed all over Daddy's lap... khakis do not hide the wet marks very well.

On Sunday, we had the pleasure of going to the CLA church for the Kid's Christmas Concert. Though it doesn't feel like Christmas here, it was great to hear Christmas Carols to put us in the mood. After church, we walked back out into 30 degree weather though and had some sorbet :)

Here is our little 'bubba' all ready for church. Isn't he a cutie?

After church and sorbet, it was back to our guesthouse where we enjoyed the weather by the pool. Hope you are having fun digging out of the snow!