Random News

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My dad flew out on Thursday night. We are so glad that he could spend some time with us, but goodbyes do not get easier. The kids were both quiet and sad on the drive home and missing Papa reminded them of all the other people they miss. : (

We enjoyed a few meals at Mugg and Bean while my dad was here. My new favorite sandwich is the Warm Herby Chicken Sandwich, which is like Thanksgiving dinner on bread, only with chicken instead of turkey. Stuffing, cranberry sauce, herby chicken and delicious bread, YUM!

Last night we watched the Super Bowl with some new friends. The Doritos commercials were among the best. I will also admit to loving the half time show. That Madonna has still got it! The kids had a great time learning how to play flashlight tag and we all enjoyed a good old American cookout, complete with potato salad, deviled eggs and baked beans. It is nice to know there are other Americans on this side of the mountain, not that American's are better than the other people that live in South Africa, but it is just nice to be with people who know what it's like to miss things like Cap'n Crunch, Hostess Cupcakes and other such things.

We started watching the Australian version of the Amazing Race and it. is. Awesome. It reminds me so much of the first few seasons of the Amazing Race where the contestants actually had to work hard to get to the Pit Stop. We have watched 2 episodes and so far they don't have annoying things like Speed Bumps and U-Turns. Sometimes it is hard to understand what is being said because of heavy accents or different word usage (chooks for chickens), but there are some super fun teams and they are just so excited to be on the Amazing Race. Apparently Australians are a little more lenient about their language on TV as Darin and I have heard a few utterances of "SH!T" that were not bleeped out. Our friend downloaded the whole season for us off of YouTube, which means we can only watch 10 minute segments at a time, but that is a minor inconvenience.

This morning Jori thought she had worms. On our drive home last night, Tyson brought up some show we had watched where the people had huge worms living inside of them and we were explaining how kids and adults can get worms from contaminated water and how these worms make the people very sick and they can have diarrhea. Well, our little Bubba had a bit of a fever and stomach ache since Friday night and last night woke up with diarrhea, and when I was sitting up with her this morning she said "I think I got worms from the swimming pool because you couldn't see the bottom". She just sounded so sad, so I was happy to inform her that she did not have worms. She also said "Will I ever be able to sleep again at night?" because for the last 2 nights she's been waking up with stomach cramps. Being 5 is full of scary thoughts and ideas for sure.

Tomorrow is the start of another school week. I'm thinking of doing a few lessons on fractions with both kids and also talking about our community. The kids are being exposed to such a diverse group of people and cultures and I think it would be interesting to talk with them about different people that we know here in South Africa. We'll see if either of those things happen, but I think it would be a nice change from just doing workbook pages.

That's all for now!

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