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Friday, July 16th, 2010

We arrived early! And our luggage was almost the first off! We even beat Andrew and Brigitte to the airport. We'd had doubts that they would make it there on time anyway, being that they would be required to wake up before lunchtime! Anyway, they met us at Granny and Granddad's house straight after we got there. It was great to see everyone again. Even if Granny had a dead cat wrapped around her head!

My mom had scheduled a hair-dressers appointment for me later in the day. I was NOT going anywhere in public until I had my hair colored and cut! I was hard going staying awake while they washed, cut, and dried my hair, never mind the "downtime" while waiting for the color to do it's thing! I made it through and look a whole lot better than I did 12 hours ago!

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

Happy Birthday Granddad!

Today we went to Lori Park Animal Sanctuary. It was on the kids list of things they wanted to do since they went there the last time we were in SA. We had a wander around all the animals and then stopped for a drink, and then visited with all the birds. The kids really enjoyed the birds, as did Brigitte and Andrew. We had to drag them away in the end! They're very entertaining though because they all talk and are very tame, coming sit on your arm or shoulder. We were fortunate to be there for the "big cat" feeding time. There's a tiger there that has taken a liking to Andrew. Whenever they go there he follows him along the fence. Andrew could saunter up one way, and he'd follow, stop a while, and then run back the other way, and he'd scamper along with him. It was quite funny to see. I'm not sure if he was considering him as a play date or as a tasty lunch!

It's been a while, and most things are a blur in my mind already, but I think that night we went to church with Andrew. Actually it was more of a youth evening, where they launched their new program "We won't stay silent" as well as the song and music DVD. It was very well received and since then they've done very well with it.
Afterwards, we went for coffee and lemon meringue at the café in the church complex. Andrew had been bragging about this awesome lemon meringue and when he got to the church they hadn't got any, so they made some for us straight away! The bragging was justified - it was delicious - sweet and lemony filling with about 4 inches of meringue on top! Simply devine!

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

One of the things on my list was to visit Rosebank Flea-market. It's one of the flea-markets that has an excellent selection of hand-crafted items. In fact I can't remember seeing any "commercial" products during our browsing. We even found a pancake (crepe) vendor! I think we all could smell the cinnamon and lemon juice from the car park. They were scrumptious!
We took our time strolling around, checking out all the interesting crafts and wares. We had wonderful weather, especially for winter. We'd worn warm clothes, not knowing what it would be like in the shaded car-park where the flea-market is held, but it was fine.
Sydney bought a tote bag and Maxine a bag that looks like an old stereo, complete with brass knobs! I got some beaded napkins rings, and a decorative wine cork for Rory. We also bought some vuvuzela's for gifts for our neighbors! There was a wonderful stall selling gourmet cheese, so of course we had to buy some of that too.

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

We caught the Gautrain to Sandton today! It's a high-speed train that cuts the travel time from 2½ hours by car, due only to the bad traffic, down to an amazing 15 minutes!
We bought our tickets, which are actually cards, scanned ourselves through the gate and waited on the platform for the next train to come. We had quite a giggle at Granny when it did arrive. She'd been harping on about how the back two doors don't open, only the two of the front carriages, and that you had only 4 seconds to get in!!! Well, when the train arrived, of course, the doors in front of granny don't open, so she swats my dad, and dashes off as fast as she can to the next door. I've never seen her move so fast! Her jacket was actually flowing in her wake! She made it on the train though, with more than the 4 seconds to spare! Andrew and I couldn't stop laughing about it while we were on the train though - I think it was a good 10 minutes before we got over the sight of granny dashing off down the platform!

When we got to Sandton, she was in as much a rush to get off the train! We walked a few blocks to Mandela Square where we had to take some touristy photos of course! Then we wandered through Sandton City and came across a SCHLOTSKY'S - a mandatory lunch stop was in order, as was a Texas Schlotsky's on Jalapeno Bread - aaaaah, delicious!
After some more wandering, we decided to find the ONLY Starbucks in town. Apparently, it was in a hotel lobby. After a fair amount of wandering through numerous hotel lobbies we eventually came to the Starbucks, which wasn't a Starbucks afterall, just a hotel lobby that "brews" Starbucks coffee. Still, by that time the Iced Vanilla Latte was a Godsend!
After finishing our drinks we walked back to the train station and made our way back to Granny and Granddad's house.

Tonight we went to a theater to watch "Rock Circus" I think it was called. It was quite interesting and fun, but only a small crowd in attendance since it was a Tuesday night so the atmosphere wasn't as good as it could have been. We still had a good time though.

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Another day of shopping. We went to a Wedding Dress store so Maxine could check out the dresses for her 10th Grade personal project. We had a good dig through them all, checking out how they were made, and the fabrics used, etc. The staff were very obliging. I explained to them what Maxine had to do and they just let us browse at our leisure! After that we went right next-door to the scrapbooking store where I loaded up another suitcase!

Thursday night we met with Linda and Martin for supper. It was nice to see them again, and to catch up. I'm hoping we'll see more of them - hopefully in China!

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

I can't remember what we did today, but I'm sure it involved shopping! Oh yes. We bought Sydney a new cellphone. We were lucky because as we were looking at the display, the LG representative came up to us. She showed Sydney her own phone, which was the upgrade of the one she was looking to get. So, after thinking about it a while, we went back and got it, for R500 cheaper than the regular price.

Later in the day, Granny brought out all her boxes of cake tins and Sydney went through them all, choosing the ones she wanted to take home - a soccer ball, a flower and a dinosaur which, for some strange reason, she liked! Come to think of it, she chose dinosaur fabric for her pillowcase that she made last year too!

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

Cape Town! Yippee! We arrived in Cape Town just before lunchtime, and after some sandwiches we caught the double-decker bus for a trip around the city and the coastline. It was about 2-hours long, and although we had the chance to hop on and off, we chose to stay put! Once again, the weather was wonderful. We could have had a really awful South-easter blowing or miserable rain, but we had clear skies, no wind, and amazing temperatures for July! Being on the top of the bus, our hair did get a bit blown around, but luckily the girls had worn hoodies and could tuck in their hair. We didn't bother with the en-route ear-phone commentary, preferring to listen to Granny's interesting snippets of information when we got them. Later that evening we all poured ourselves into Granny's old Volkswagen bug and tootled off down the road for supper at an Indian restaurant. The food was delicious and it was a fun evening. Not wanting a huge amount of dessert, but just a tid-bit, we ordered one dessert that had numerous little popsicle sticks of chocolate covered ice-cream. I think our order got lost in translation because we each ended up with a full dessert - oh, darn!

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Maxine wasn't feeling well today so she stayed home with Granddad. Granny, Syd and I went to the East Rand Flea-market to see if we could find any cheap scrapbooking stuff, and something for Toby.
We got Toby some winter coats which, we've since figured, will fit him now - so we might have to make some alterations come winter!

We went out for supper tonight to a restaurant called Mozambique. It had received mixed reviews from friends of my dads and Andrews so we took a chance and the meal and service was actually very good. When we got home Andrew, Brigitte and the kids decided to make milkshakes. So they rushed off to the store before it closed to buy some icecream, condensed milk and caramel. I think they used every cup and glass granny owned and made a huge mess. We were wiping up splotches of condensed milk for days after! The milkshakes were very sweet - not much milk! The girls couldn't finish theirs and they ended up in the fridge never to be touched again!

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

Our plans to go up Table Mountain fell apart when we got up late, drove up the mountain to the cable-car station and saw hundreds of cars and people already there! Parking wasn't available for miles, and then we'd have to wait in long queues. So we moved onto Plan B - the V & A Waterfront. The girls enjoyed walking around and looking at the shops. Although it was "shopping" the things were very different. I found some beautiful jewelry - gorgeous druzies and crystals enveloped in silver. I could have spent a small fortune there. But didn't.
We sat and enjoyed the sunshine while we ate lunch in the amphitheater, avoiding the seagulls flying overhead!

In the afternoon we walked across the road to The Gardens where we could feed the squirrels, and see the lovely roses. We even saw a wedding photo-session in progress.
We wandered down the road to visit all the vintage second-hand clothing stores. Maxine found a couple of nice dresses but they were still quite expensive so we decided to leave them. We'll hit CCA when we go to Dallas!

Italian was on the menu tonight! Once again, a delightful neighborhood restaurant with a wonderful menu of pastas and pizzas. We had another good meal…I might have to visit the tailor when I get back home!

Monday, July 26th, 2010

We were up earlier this morning and got up Table Mountain before crowds got there. I think there couldn't have been more than a half-dozen people wandering around on top. Although, when we left there was a huge crowd waiting for the next cable-car so I think we were lucky we got there early. The view was amazing - you could see for miles and we agreed that it was a better day than yesterday, with no haze or cloud cover.
Maxine and Sydney caught a few pictures of a dassie. There's not many left so we were happy to see one!

In the afternoon we took another walk through the gardens and took some more pictures. After a short, but awesome, stay in Cape Town we made our way back to Johannesburg.

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Happy 13th Birthday Sydney! Granny and Granddad gave her a book she'd been looking at in the store and really wanted. And, she got an English-Afrikaans dictionary so she can look up what Rory and I are saying when we don't want them to know! Brigitte and Andrew got both girls a collection of nail-polishes, because although it was Sydney's birthday, Maxine never gets to see any family on her birthday, so she got some too.

We had to be at the airport shortly after lunchtime for the long haul home. The flight went very quick though. We had a meal soon after take-off then I read for a short while, and fell asleep, to wake up with only 2 hours left of flight time! I kept checking my watch to make sure I hadn't made a mistake with the time difference! While we were waiting in Hong Kong I bumped into one of the ladies from Hopeful Hearts, Jennifer. Maxine had seen her son in the airport earlier but couldn't remember his name, and we didn't put two-and-two together until we saw them in the departure lounge at the gate.

We arrived home to see the monster that is Toby! I'm convinced Rory swapped him for another dog while we were away! He's more than tripled in size. Seriously. No joke. He didn't even look like the same dog.

Friday, July 30th, 2010

We thought we were lucky, traveling in Business Class. Turns out Rory got bumped up to FIRST Class on his fight from Budapest! Lucky bugger!

Saturday, July 31st - Saturday, August 7th, 2010

The last week has been a whirlwind of getting the Teachers Lounge ready before they all start coming back to school. My sleepless nights were for naught - everything looks fine.

The floors in my living room are a different story. After the landlord promised to replace the sagging wooden floor, he didn't. He replaced the underlayment, and then re-used the laminate. They ran out because of course some broke when they were pulling it up, so they had to match it. Well, the majority of the floor is a matte cherry finish, and the new section is a high-gloss bamboo looking cherry stain, which not only shows every speck of dust, dog hair, or foot prints, but it also seems to be slightly static for some reason, so actually attracts all that crap too! I can't bear to even look at it, so have spent the last week mostly in my study!
Then, they replaced the baseboards with shorter ones so they had to touch up the walls where the new ones didn't cover. They did a great job - using the wrong color paint! So now it looks like we've had water damage to about 18-inches up the wall. And, as if that wasn't enough, the new wood floor is about a half inch lower than it was, so you can see about a ½-inch gap under all the door thresholds, inside and outside doors! The kitchen threshold is so different in height that I trip over it every time. If you stand on it, it hurts your feet! I'm NOT happy at all. Tomorrow we'll be looking at other houses.

Sunday, August 8th, 2010

Happy Birthday Lisa!

It was maybe a couple of degrees cooler today and you could feel the difference. It was actually pleasant for a few minutes at a time! We found no houses on our search though. So we're stuck where we are, crappy floors 'n all.

Monday, August 9th, 2010

The kids start school in two days! Sydney got to find out who is in her homeroom class and she seems to be quite happy. Seems the kids she didn't want in, aren't. We will find out Maxine's tomorrow.

It sounds like most of the teachers are enjoying the new Teachers Lounge too. It's about 99% done. Just a few things that I need the Facilities Team to install. I doubt they'll get done this week though. They were still putting together classrooms yesterday!

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Why do online companies take your order, and then over a week later tell you the item is out of stock? GRRR! I'm so mad right now!

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

First day of school - kids are happy for the most part. Parents, mostly moms, got to enjoy coffee in the new café, overlooking the indoor swimming pool. It was nice to catch up with everyone, and meet new parents.

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Today I went to a Merchandising warehouse and it was creepy! I went to find some display items for our PTA merchandise. The warehouse was in the basement of a building, without any air-conditioning, only one or two lights, and boxes stacked to the ceiling. I rounded the back corner to face about 100 mannequins all staring back at me! I was looking for something to display our school swimsuits on so I had to shimmy through the tightly packed crowd - very creepy! Too many "naked people" staring at me, not moving, and I kept on bumping into them, and to make matters worse I even found myself saying sorry! I was very glad to get out of there!

Saturday, August 14th, 2010

Toby the Terror has been very busy maintaining his reign of terror over the household. He's chewed furniture, he's peed inside, he's emptied bins, he's overturned plant pots, stripped a pot-plant of all it's leaves, popped balls, eaten his way through a half a bag of dog food, and turned our carpet and sofa blue. All in a week. Yes, Toby got into the food pantry and decided the little bottles of food coloring were just too enticing and ran off with one, only to chew it, roll around in it, and spread bright blue food coloring over the rug, the sofa, and him.
I said to Rory that we need to take some pictures of him. He said that he's not sure he wants to remember him at this stage!

Overall, I think the girls had a good first week of school. They had shortened schedules so they could go through all their classes and they seem to be happy with all their teachers.

It's been so hot here. So much so that I don't even want to talk about it! Toby even climbed into the dog's big bowl of water and lay down in it! We're off to buy a kids swimming pool for them today!

Friday, August, 13th, 2010

Happy Birthday Sharrie!

The display cases do look very nice even if my half-mannequins are still naked! The purchasing lady with the swimsuit samples was off sick today so I couldn't dress them.

I went to the grocery store across the road from the school, where I usually do my grocery shopping. They've moved everything around so I can't find a thing! I kept getting lost because the "exit" signs now point in the wrong direction, and the aisles are all perpendicular to the way they were. Also have the food items that were downstairs are now upstairs. As if grocery shopping here wasn't enough of a challenge already!

Sunday, August 15th, 2010

We're off to Chengdu to visit the pandas in September. Rory has to go during the week for a business conference and we're going to meet up with him on the Friday. We'll probably fly in to Chengdu, visit the pandas, catch the train to Xi'an and then fly home from there. Hopeful Hearts has a group of women in Chengdu so I'll be talking to them to find out where to stay and what else to visit while we're there. I'm hoping to meet up with some of them too.

Then, in October we're going to Dallas for a few days. We have to enter the USA for our citizenship requirements. Once again, Rory has to go the week before, and we'll join him for a few days, and fly back together. Another whirlwind trip - long enough to stock up on essentials and say hi to everyone!

Toby and Buster had a bath today. Toby didn't exactly hate but didn't love it either. He did act rather frisky afterwards, dashing around the garden like a mad fool, chasing the ball and jumping on the trampoline. Yes, he likes the trampoline! He ended up getting washed twice because we left him outside in the sun to dry off completely and he dug up the plant pot. There was no plant in it - I think he'd already killed it - but it was still full of dirt, which ended up all over Toby!

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

Yup. At school at 7:30 again this morning to sell merchandise and then to the PTA Welcome Coffee, and then back to fill merchandise orders. Although today I did get a bit of a break and was able to get home for a couple of hours during the day.

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Today I quit the PTA Secretary position and the Merchandising position. You could not pay me enough to put up with the crap I've had to deal with or the arse-kissing some people seem to expect me to do! And I'm volunteering to do this - uuuugh, I don't think sooooo.

This morning I had the Hopeful Hearts meeting here. Now there's a worthwhile place to spend my time and efforts! We had a good turn-out and some new faces. We've got lots of events to plan and things to do. We're really lucky in that we have a great group of ladies who all work well together.

Rory has a bunch of people coming in from all over the world for meetings this week. In order for them to be able to conference call with the rest that didn't come, they have to be at work for 6:30am, which posed a problem. They had to leave at 5:30 which meant the hotel restaurants weren't open for breakfast and neither were any of the café's so he couldn't pick up any breakfast muffins or pastries on the way in to work. So, guess what I was doing for hours last night, and at 4am this morning! Baking! Various muffins, bacon quiches, and coffee cake. I was up at 4am, but awake long before. I suppose I was worried about over-sleeping or something. No chance of that happening when you're wide awake! Anyway, it's 6:15pm and I'm really feeling it now, but have to be up again tomorrow morning too! I've got bacon, jalapeno, cheddar quiches in the oven, orange, cranberry and macadamia muffins cooling, and a coffee cake still to make. My feet are sore, my head is sore, my back is sore, and I'm cranky.

So I might as well rant some more….why is it that some ten-year-old kids seem to think it's their right to call you by first name and shout your name until you take notice of them? While their mother is standing right there! OMG! And, then they come to your gate, and ring the bell, not once, not twice, not even three times, but four, five and six times.

Okay, I'm done.