The Thor Blog!

Whoa…where have we been?!?

sengandjennifer — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:50:29 +0000

I bet you’re probably asking if we fell of the face of the earth. No we haven’t! A TON of things have changed since our last post in Oct08. A half year later we’re back in the US enjoying time with our new baby boy, David. Our adventures overseas are on hold for the time being. More pictures will be added soon and hopefully this blog will be more consistent now that we’re back in the land of the fast and consistent internet. In the meantime, enjoy the picture of our new baby!

Safari Day 2 (Morning Game Drive)

sengandjennifer — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:08:20 +0000

After a good night’s rest to recovery from all of the jostling in the vehicle we woke up around 7:30 for breakfast and a late morning game drive. We were debating about going on an early morning game drive, which would have been spectacular to see the sunrise…but was quickly brought back to reality after realizing how tired we were from the previous day’s journey. The Day 1 Afternoon Safari ended on a high note with a lion cub sighting…actually 4 lion cubs playing around while 2 lionesses were relaxing.

During this drive, we had SEVERAL high notes. We came across a pair of lion’s playing around on the road. The driver parked the car on the side of the road and the lion just walked right up! I poked my head out of the side window and he was literally only a couple of feet away! He decided to just plop down in the shadow of the vehicle. We took pictures from above. AWESOME!

We then made our way to the border between Tanzania and Kenya. I crossed over to the Tanzania side, although I don’t technically have any passport stamps to show for it…but it really did happen.

Next, we went a little further to the Mara River. We saw a pod of hippos resting on the opposite bank. They are huge…and a bit lazy.

While we were taking pictures of the hippos. A little monkey befriended us. He was even willing to take a picture shaking hands with me…sort of. The camera just couldn’t quite catch it in time. This is one of the moments that I wish we had a DSLR to take pictures faster.

As we were leaving the Mara River, a buzz came over the radio. Another vehicle had just seen a group of cheetahs nearby. We quickly rushed over and had to wait behind a line-up of other vehicles. We didn’t know what the fuss was about…and then we saw a little head pop out of the bush! What an amazing site!

As our vehicle circled around, we saw that there was more than one cheetah cub. There were 4 cheetah cubs enjoying a morning snack with an adult cheetah.

The giraffes in the park were also clammoring for attention. Several of them decided to cross our path on the way back to the lodge. What a way to end our morning drive!

Safari Day 1

sengandjennifer — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:18:45 +0000

Jen joined me after a conference in Kenya for a much needed vacation. We left Nairobi on Saturday September 6th for a 5 day safari in Masai Mara and Lake Nakuru National Park. (We were debating between Mombasa which is located on the coast of Kenya or Masai Mara which is known for awesome game drives, especially this time of year when migration happens. We ended up choosing Masai Mara, which I am very glad that that was the decision because of the experience that we ended up having.) It wsa a 5 hour drive from a suburb outside of Nairobi to our first leg of the vacation at Mara Sopa Lodge…tucked a few kilometers into the entrance of the park.

View of Mara Sopa Lodge from the main dirt road

Altitude Sign of Mara Sopa Lodge

Newletter Page Updated!

sengandjennifer — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:19:41 +0000

We have just added 2 more newsletters to the Newsletter Page. August and the newly released September issue. Have a fun read and enjoy as there is a BIG announcement in the September 2008 issue!!!

New ultrasound picture!

sengandjennifer — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:49:42 +0000

Last month you were introduced to the ultrasound of our baby boy for the first time. His face wasn’t too recognizeable. This month, we have a new ultrasound available. And this time there is a better defined face. Jen is already asking people who he resembles…especially his nose. What is your vote on who he resembles???

Another trip to Kenya

sengandjennifer — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:42:38 +0000

I’ll be flying to Nairobi for a conference from September 1st-5th…this will be my third conference in the Kenyan capital. It’ll be a Vision Conference on how to integrate churches more into our programs…or something to that nature. The exciting aspect will be that Jen is going to fly up on the 5th and we’re planning on going safariing (is that a word?!?)! 4 nights and 5 days of animal gazing during the migration from Masai Mara to Tanzania’s Serengeti Plains. Apparently there will be millions of wildebeasts and zebras. A great way to introduce the still in womb baby to the calls of the wild! We’ll be sure to upload pictures after we get back on the 10th.

Newsletter Page Updated

sengandjennifer — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:01:59 +0000

The newsletter page has been updated to include all of our sent newsletters. It even has the one that will be sent out on 8-8-08.

By the way…

sengandjennifer — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 08:58:31 +0000

JEN IS PREGNANT!!! We’ve been slowly trickling the news out to folks. We let our family and friends know during our trip back to the US in June, but we’re pretty sure that we missed some folks with the news. So we’re hoping that this blog will let some of those missed folks know.

The baby is due on December 22nd, so that means Jen is about halfway through the pregnancy. The pooch is starting to show a little bit more and I can start to feel him kick when I put my hand on Jen’s stomach. That’s right…I used the word “him”, cause it’s a boy! We just found out a couple of weeks ago.

Below are a couple of the 3D ultrasounds that were taken…nothing depicting that the baby is a boy (we want to keep this a “G” rated blog).

It’s been a long time…

sengandjennifer — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 08:48:36 +0000

Wow…it’s been over a month since the last blog entry! We still owe y’all some pictures from our trip back to the US in June, so we’ll get those up eventually. I am hoping to blog more often since we now have access to internet at home!

We’re back in Kigali!

sengandjennifer — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:11:22 +0000

We haven’t had a chance to write this until now…but we are back in Kigali! We arrived on Tuesday night (June 24th). Look for pictures and more blogs about our recent trip to the US!