We made it!

Ok, I am going to try and get this post written, even though my typing fingers have two strikes against them right now. Strike 1-my hands are so cold that they are all white and Strike 2-the keyboard on our new laptop is not as large as a regular keyboard, which leads to hand cramps. But enough about my poor fingers!

We are in South Africa, 2 days in and alive to tell about it! So far we have seen several giraffe, a herd of impala, some ostrich, and most recently a good sized spider in the bathtub. I am just glad I was not in the tub at the time! We saw one hornbill, which thrilled Tyson, even though he claims that he “hates” all hornbills because last time we were here, they would peck on his bedroom windo and wake him up. Now he considers the hornbill a friend and has been lamenting the fact that his new “friend” has not come back. Jori has made friends with several butterflies. We are thankful for the wildlife to keep our children occupied!

We were warmly welcomed back to our current home by Amos, the gardener who we met in 2008. Tyson and Jori both went running to him for hugs and have been following him around and hanging on him ever since. Poor Amos. We have been reminding them that Amos is here to work, not to play with or babysit them. They are quite disappointed by this as they would much rather stick around here with Amos than run errands with us. Poor kids.

We have also been over to Tshepo Ya Bana twice and have been able to catch up a bit with Mark and Chris Harding. Tyson and Jori are happy to have some kids to play with and are MOST looking forward to seeing Fetsi again soon. He is away at school til Thursday, which is a holiday of some sort, but also our sweet boy’s 7^th birthday!

As I mentioned before, we have been running lots of errands. Yesterday we were out to get groceries, return the rental car and I think there was one other thing, but honestly, Darin and I were kind of sleep walking and barely mananaged to stay awake til dinner time. We also did a lot of unpacking yesterday, which was oh so fun. No, it really was not and I did not manage to find the motivation to continue unpacking today. Instead, we ran more errands. We went to Kolonade Mall to get Darin’s cell phone set up. We were also hoping to (possibly) get a smart phone so we could have internet service, but first we need three months of bank statements from a bank here in SA. So we headed over to the bank only to find that it closed at 3:30, which means we will be heading back to the bank tomorrow. We will also be bringing back the other phone we have (thanks Scott and Lia) to try and get service started on it so that Darin and I can communicate with each other.

After our failed attempt at the bank, we headed to Mr. Price Home to try and find a couple things (hair dryer, laundry basket, plastic bowls) but couldn’t quite get over the sticker shock, so we headed to Pick N Pay to pick up a few things there. Again, total sticker shock. Things are just SO much more expensive than what we are used to. We did pick up a couple items (still not a hair dryer, which is sad because I’d love to warm my hands with one right now) on our list and some things that were not on the list (chips and pop) and then headed home. We were out a bit longer than we intended, but quick threw together some spaghetti, gave the kids baths and put them to bed.

Now it is after 9 and we are thinking of heading to bed. We made up a pretty good grocery list and a menu of meals, so hopefully that will get us through the next week! I am wishing I knew how to cook from scratch. Rebecca S., if you read this, I sure wish you could send some cooking mojo my way!! Your facebook food always looks so good. Tomorrow we will head back to the bank, back to the mall and back to the grocery store. The poor kids will come along with us. Pray for us all!

We miss you all so much. Tyson came out of bed tonight saying he missed his friends from school :( Jori missed playing peek a boo with Reid. Butterflies and birds do not compare to real friends!! Hopefully we will figure out the internet situation soon so we can actually communicate with you all. For now, I am back to typing blog posts here at the house and having Darin transfer them over to the internet several hours later.  It could be worse. I will keep reminding myself of that.