My mind has grown

By Everett Fairbourne 

I have been doing some art.  In other words, Everett has got art on his mind.  It hit me after one day at school at  the last lesson of class, and that lesson was art and I drew a yeti eating ice cream. and I loved drawing it, when I came home I knew I had to draw that again. I drew it and showed it to my mom and the I tried to draw bigfoot, but then I realized, why don't I draw them both trying to hurt each other? One has a tree in his hands to hit him with it, that one is Bigfoot.  The other one is throwing two penguins at bigfoot, and that one is the Yeti.  

That's not all the art. I have been playing, "making my own Lego". When I say that I mean I ripped them apart and re-built them in a different image. And I don't use the instructions to build my ships.  

I also have been writing a loooooooong story. It's called, "Different Look". It's going to be a movie in 2031.

Getting Use to Kenya

By Kesley Pope
Kenya has been soo fun and also crazy. It was so hard leaving Utah and my friends and family but I know I won't regret the decision coming to Africa.
     My flights were from, Utah to Detroit from Detroit to Amsterdam from Amsterdam to Nairobi from Nairobi to Mombasa. It was so boring. From Utah to Detroit I could not stop crying I was so sad to say goodbye to my friends and family! I got my self together and said this trip is going to be so cool. I slept every single long flight which was so nice.
     Once i got to Mombasa I got off my plane and it was so humid, I felt wet! I asked myself, "how am I suppose to get used to this?"  So I get my bags and I see Natalie and Jason waiting for me.  It's about midnight! It gave me such a relief. When we were driving home I thought I was going to die driving with Jason! There are not a lot of rules with driving here which I am still not used to! But I just couldn't get off my mind, I was just so excited to see Porter, Alta and Everett. We get to the apartment I walk in and i give all the kids a hug! Natalie says "Get to bed you have church tomorrow!" I was like are you serious?! I'm gunna be so tired!

     My first day at church was NOT what I expected. I expected a normal church but, no. This church has about 40 people in our branch.  It's super hot and they don't really know what they're doing! It's really different but I actually really enjoy this church, it's really interesting! The one thing that is a little odd is that women are so open with breast feeding there children here. If there child is crying then your gunna see something that's a little different then what people do in America.
 
  Everything is just happening so fast! Its only my 2nd day and it's my 1st day of school! I was super nervous not going to lie! I get to school Natalie takes a "First day of school picture!" I go and get my classes all organized and right as i walk in all the girls, there's about 9, say "Hey American come sit next to us!" The girls there are all super interesting here and there all soooo nice! They ask me " Do you have Facebook?" I was like, wow you guys are so last year;).  Anyway they are such smart girls and make me wanna do so good this term. It will be a big challenge, I can already tell! Just because Mapleton Junior High is just what I'm so used to and making a change from going to the American system to the British is so hard but that won't get in my way.
     My first weekend here was a blast!! We woke up around 9 and went to the beach! My first time!! I was so excited! Right as we get there we got out the paddle boards! It was amazing! Right after the day at the beach me, Alta, and Porter went to the pool to tan... Not a good idea! We got the coconut oil going on! Oh I did not think the sun over here was so strong. Adding that I haven't seen the sun for about 3 months. From the long day in the sun I  came back home and I realized how sunburned I was! I could not move for 3 days it was horrible! Its been about a week and a half now and I'm still peeling! Then of course the Fairbourne's decide to go paint balling with some friends! I knew it was going to be so painful adding that I was soo sun burnt! It did end up being really fun though! My next weekend wasn't to great,  I was so sick from Wednesday-Saturday.  We were not for sure what it was but it was miserable! 
    Africa has been so great so far! Ive realized Africa is not meant for woozy and I'm looking forward to everything that's coming my way! 

     
     

10 Reasons Why Lilli Should Come To Kenya

By Alta Fairbourne
I think there is no doubt about it Lilli Holmberg should come to Kenya (I'm talking to you Lisa and Troy).

1.   Lilli is the sister I never had.

2.   Lilli hasn't been out of Utah for a while.

3.   There is a room in our house not getting used.

4.   I miss Lilli she misses me.

5.   It would be good for her to learn a new culture.

6.   Lilli needs to see Esther's new baby.

7.   It would great for her to come to our school, Braeburn she would learn a lot.

8.    Lilli would come back ten times more responsible.

9.    Lilli loves Kenya.

10.   She will get to always go to the beach.

Petronilla

Petronilla helps Porter with his Kiswahili homework

By Alta Fairbourne 

I think I have talked about everything there is to talk about except one thing, my moms assistant Petronilla. She is the person who is kind of like a nanny who cleans our apartment. She is super funny when she doesn't understand things. She has been with us for five months and she stays in our apartment in the servant quarters. After about a month of her staying with us she bought a t.v and she never stops watching her soap operas. She gets super scared to be alone so she all ways locks the doors. On Saturdays and Sundays she leaves to her house in Ukunda and when she comes back she all ways has a new hair-do. But now, her dad is sending her back to Culinary Arts school in Nairobi she is leaving us. We will really miss her.

I Went on a Mini Mission

By Porter Fairbourne

So in Kenya there aren't very many missionaries because it really hard to get a work permit,
so there is hardly any missionaries. So the missionaries from our church announced that they will allow anybody that has the Aaronic Priesthood can go and a missionary split.  So me and my dad went the next week. We visited people in our church and gave a message and answered their questions.  It was a great experience and I cant wait to go again so I can put my awesome missionary skills to action.
 The people we visited were really poor most of them had no electricity and had only one room that was filled with beds. This one family that we tried to visit first,  their dad wasn't  there.  The only people there were the two little girls their mom died some time back. Another family had big holes in there roof and rain would come in. But all of them have a love for God.

Tennis

By Porter Fairbourne

Porter wore this hole through his shoes in 3 months of playing tennis

I am training three times a week for one hour.  My coach's name is Coach Solomon.  When I got here my mom could cream me in tennis. Now I am beating her 6 to 1.  I have had lots of fun playing tennis and there is an upcoming tennis tournament and coach is getting all his best players together and we are playing each other to get ready for the tennis tournament.  My serve has increased in speed and power and accuracy since I have been here.  I am ready to compete in this tournament I am very confident because I have already one a tournament once.

Happy New Year

By Alta Fairbourne
I am the most organized person in the family; this is why I set up our New Years. We will start on New Years Eve.  I told Everett that New Years would suck if we didn't do anything so we got started. We blew up 6 balloons with six different notes in them saying a game to play. Every hour we popped the balloon and played the game. We popped the first balloon at exactly seven( after dinner ); mom popped it. It was iPad break, yay! We all needed to digest the bean and cheese burritos. Apart from the beans (they were too salty) everything else was perfect. It surprised me because my mom never has messed up on burritos, ever. As a hour went by of doing what we do all day we popped the next balloon. We were going to play "scum", one of my favorite card games. We dealed out the cards and I realized I had the best cards and that's why I ended up winning that round. That's means I am president and I get two of the scums (the last place players) best cards, two aces. Well let's just say the next round I wasn't  doing so well I dropped all way down to scum and my mom was President. It was time to pop the next balloon.  It was playing "draw and pass" when you write a word down then pass the note pad over.  That person draws the word you wrote.  Then pass then and that  person guesses what the picture is and writes it. Then pass, then draw, then write, then draw then write so on. Then you see how close the last word was to the first word.  Usually they are really funny.  After an hour of playing that game we popped another balloon it was "Fairbourne's Got Talent". We all did our talents.  Everett did a successful magic trick followed up by Porter dancing to "Im Sexy and I Know It", then my sucky performance.  I was singing, "Jar of Hearts" I was so off tune it was giving my self a headache so I quit in the middle of it knowing I would loose anyway.  Porter and Everett tied.  So they arm wrestled for it. Porter won barely Everett was stronger than I thought he was. The time was up so we didn't get to pop the last balloon. We pored sparkling grape juice and every one hated it but my mom and I we counted down to New Years and popped these confetti cannons and watched fireworks from the porch. It was very quite and we were the only ones celebrating except for some people down by the pool who were very quite. We had a awesome New Year even though I miss all my cousins back home. I remember when we got together on New Years and I remember Hannah, Lilli, Ellie, Megan, Brynn and I made a little block hut in the corner of one of the bedrooms and we were making really embarrassing videos on Hannah's ipod and I was wearing onezies and I cut of the feet and it made it so I couldn't wear it because it kept falling off because the Zipper came off with it, so ya

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Ya, christmas

by Everett Fairbourne

Ah, the best time of the year, the time where the family gathers up and celebrates our Christ the Lord's birth, and we open our presents from our family.  It is the time to rejoice and have fun. In other words, Christmas. I was so excited for Christmas and I was so happy that we bought our presents from Dubai. There is just one thing that makes me want to kill Porter or to kiss him. He did a mean trick on me that I loved. He noticed there was one toy that I really wanted at one mall but it wasn't at the other one. When we went to go shopping, we went to the one that didn't and I didn't find it until the end of the trip.  By that time I spent all my money and couldn't buy it, I was so sad.  I felt like my trip was ruined.  Then, on Christmas morning,  I opened Porter's present from him to me, it was the toy I wanted, the Adventure Time Finn wrestling doll! the one!  I loved it,  but by coincidence Alta  happened to give me Adventure Time Finn and Jake action figures and a comic book.  Me and Alta were the only ones to make mom and dad a present. After opening the presents we went and watched a movie, "Frozen", it was more of an musical type like "Tangled".  Then we went swimming with Palo and Andre. It was kind of a bad Christmas with not all the family and no snow and...no...Rock, but it was also a good Christmas.  All I need is my mom,  my dad, Alta, and Porter.
                                              The End

Our Kenyan Christmas

By Alta Fairbourne
I got to say, I do miss Christmas back home, with the skiing and the snow and all, but Christmas here in Kenya was pretty great. It all started on Christmas eve when we stayed home.  We decorated Christmas cookies and we FaceTimed all of my wonderful cousins back home. It was awesome, I love to have the chance to talk to my cousins even if I was only saying hi. As far as I know, I stayed up very long until it was time to go to bed that tomorrow would be Christmas. I was excited but not as excited as I usually am on Christmas Eve.  It wasn't the same this year; it probably was the snow. Early that morning we realized Santa came and . . .  he gave us a box of fruity pebbles and of course a stocking full of candy. Once we looked through our stockings we opened the presents we gave each other. I ended up getting everything I wanted for Christmas. After that, as always, we had our big fancy Christmas breakfast. This year not as much, just French toast, eggs and hash browns. The rest of the day was really fun. Around noon we went to Frozen, I really enjoyed it. It was a great movie. After that Hunter's family came over, the Sebresos. We had lasagna for dinner and it was fabulous.  It was the first time I had it in a long time. We soon went swimming and I taught my self to do a back dive. After some time passed we went back inside and the Sebresos left and we watched a Christmas movie and went to bed. Well that was our Kenyan Christmas.

Christmas Trip to Dubai

By Porter Fairbourne

This year for Christmas break we went to Dubai.  So I was ready to go to Dubai.  We drove to the airport and we got in line and we got there really early so we had to wait. Everett bought some really gross Oreos. We finally got on the plane and then I felt so uncomfortable.  Well I did what I always do on planes, I fell asleep on my dads lap for the whole plane ride.  When we got to the Dubai airport and had to get in line.  We saw two people faint which was crazy! Then later that day, we went and hit the slopes which was pretty awesome. They had jumps and stuff and it was pretty steep for inside a mall. The mall were massive. We ate at Shake Shack a lot that week. It was the most mouth watering, stomach growling, hamburger place ever. We also went to a place I like to call Atlantis, I call it that because everybody else does and that's what it says on the sign. 
It's so cool, they have slides that go up hill and lazy rivers that are so fun they are more like rapids. We also went to a really big mosque.  It wass so cool, there were all of these gold leave poles and big chandeliers. That was fun. We had a really good time.     

Our Dubai Vacation

By Alta Fairbourne

 Let me say that Dubai reminds me of home. With skyscrapers as tall as Paul Bunyan and the same old restaurants like Subway, Mc Donald's , KFC, Wendy's, Pizza Hut etc. We were in heaven as we spent every little second at the biggest mall in the world it had every store you could think of including the biggest toy store in the world, a ice rink, indoor amusement park, Movie theater, A little kids place were you go through lessons to do what you want to do when your older and its called  Kidzania and its really big and expensive look it up.There is also another mall we went to that wasn't as big but it was still huge and it had a indoor ski hill.  This is were we went. It was super awesome because me and Everett got one piece ski suits. We all got on our matching ski equipment and hit the slopes (bunny hill). It was colder in there than we thought, and really slow ski lifts to the top.

Then we would skied down in three seconds. We didn't have gloves so our fingers felt like there were going to fall off. After a couple dozen runs our time was up and we had to leave. Right after we went to Shake Shack. The best food ever!  We all had super fun skiing and eating.  As we headed back to hotel,  my dad couldn't seem to get home. The roads kept sucking us back onto the freeway.  It felt as if it was taking hours,  even though we were so very close. Well, anyway, our hotel was called the Al Barsha Hotel Apartments and our hotel room was huge. It had a living room with a black couch a TV, and a coffee table with three lamp posts around it. Next to the living room was a dining table and the kitchen. The kitchen had a big fridge and a microwave also a oven and cupboards full of cups spoons plates etc. Next to the kitchen was a washing machine. That followed up to our rooms which both had a bathroom with a shower. The next day we decided not to go to the mall but to go to Atlantis. It is one of the biggest water parks ever. It was so super duper fun! Where we went on pitch black dark water slides down into a shark tank to super steep rides that you barely touched the slide. But I thought that the family rides were the best.  We headed up to the top not knowing what was ahead.  We all got in the huge tube which soon started down the slide with drop offs twists and turns and it seemed like the tube could easily go off track and we could all die. In the end all of us were laughing and smiling and saying, "let's go again!" but Little Everett was crying saying, "no way! too scary!"  We ended up going on the other family ride, that was way more scary. I was going backwards; I didn't know we were going to drop as we got closer the drop I started to scream, "turn me around! help! help! help!" My life flashed before my eyes as we dropped super fast and then went up the slope and back down it ended up so fun. But little Everett was crying saying, "way too scary!" but then we went again on both of them and this time Everett didn't cry. After that we split up, my mom and dad went on a ride we were to small for and we went on a different ride. My mom and dad didn't know what it was like as they stepped on a glass circle and a dome closed around them. Someone's voice said, "one. two. three." and the glass fell away from their feet and they dropped into the slide, shooting them up and up and up and then they went down and down and down. After that, my mom and dad were pooped as they went to get their clothes on and we went on more rides. We soon left and we went home taking us a half an hour due to my dads expert driving skills, if you know what I mean.
The next day we drove really far and went to church then we went to a park and rented a four person bike  (we managed to fit 5) and road along the boardwalk. Then we went to a big Mosque.The next day we went ice skating and saw a really cool fountain show. The we got on a long airplane home back to the old Kenya then I realized Dubai is the complete opposite of Kenya.