Hello!
I am planning to reformat the way that I blog... I will be shooting for shorter posts much much more often! I have been so bad at updating as I let the events pile up and then my list to post about grows to an overwhelming length. I have been throwing around some different ideas, and if you have any to share, I would love to hear them!
Last Thursday was the day we have been preparing for since we arrived in July! Adam drove Paul and Micky to the airport so they could head off on their 2 1/2 month furlough in the states. We have been busy busy busy since we arrived, getting settled in, practicing our driving, learning our new roles and just generally adapting to a new culture! The time has gone quickly, yet Paul and Micky did a fantastic job of preparing us to step into their roles here. Adam and I are trading off doing the school run depending on what the day's schedule looks like. It's a rather boring day in town once we drop the kids off at their schools then just wait for them to get out so we can head home. Because of the cost of diesel and the wear and tear on the bus, we don't drive home during the day. On Monday's Micky and I always take the school run as we have physio appointments and just make it a girls day, taking the opportunity to enjoy lunch together at The Bush Stop Cafe. On Thursdays, Paul and Adam always take the school run as they have a men's Bible Study breakfast that they go to. Adam and I will continue that schedule while Micky and Paul are gone. I am thankful for the homeschool curriculum that we have which allows Ethan and Caeley to work independently as needed. I'm not sure that we will continue that format next year, but for now it is working very well as we adjust to life here and different schedules!
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Besides adjusting to new schedules, we are adjusting to the scenery and wildlife here! This was just down the road from The Fold on the way home one afternoon. There was a group of 5 giraffe and I unfortunately only had my cell phone as a camera. Can you see the baby? It was so very adorable and by far the smallest giraffe we have seen so far!
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| Caeley at The Bush Stop Cafe :) |
Nutshell:
Thank you to all of you who are supporting us through prayer or finances! We couldn't be here without you. While some days are more trying than others and we are each processing this adjustment differently, we know we are exactly where God wants us. He literally reminds me each and every day as I continually see ways that he has been preparing us for this. In a nut shell, we are healthy and happy - although we greatly miss you all! We are enjoying stepping into our roles here and and are working to figure out our family dynamics on the field. We would greatly appreciate your continued prayers as Paul and Micky are gone until January 3rd.
Details:
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| Adam and Sam working on the water tanks. |
Adam has been very busy working on all kinds of things around The Fold's property! Plumbing, electrical, welding, you name it, he's probably done it! He has also been hard at work getting our apartment all fixed up. Our apartment was 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and 1 large room that serves as the kitchen, dining room and living room. Thankfully one of the bedrooms was large enough that we could divide it into 2, so he has been busy building a wall, building 2 closets, and cutting a doorway through a thick, plastered brick wall. He has also painted our bedrooms, built lofts for both of the kids' beds - as the bedrooms are quite small, and installed kitchen cabinets as we were using a card table and a diaper changing dresser when we arrived.
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| Paul and Adam hard at work! |
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| Caeley really enjoyed helping Adam paint her room! |
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| Adam and Junior |
I have taken over the training meetings with the housemoms for Micky, and the devotional time with them, and the Bible story time with the kids while Paul is gone. During one of the trainings with the housemoms I showed the moms the curriculum I brought to teach the kids about Character Qualities and they really liked it. We discussed what order to study the first 5 or 6 in and started with Obedience. So during Bible time each night with the kids, I read part of Leading Little Hearts to God and we talk about a character quality. I introduced the concept of character to the kids and they were having a hard time understanding. Thankfully several weeks ago at a book store I saw Karen Kingsbury's book : The Brave Knight. I didn't have a plan for it, but it was on sale and I couldn't pass it up. It ended up being perfect for this! We started last week with obedience and have read many Bible stories that are great examples as well as a few other books. The kids have been enjoying memorizing Colossians 3:20 - "Children obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord". We do it with motions every evening and the night that Paul and Micky were on the plane to the US the kids tried their best to say it loud enough for them to hear!
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| Enjoying an activity with a parachute during Bible Story time to reinforce our lessons on Obedience and Generosity! |
The kids each have their own chart and are working to earn a sticker each day. If they get 5 or more stickers out of 7 days then they will get a treat! They seem to be enjoying it and the older ones are doing well! We have 3 preschool boys who tend to be naughty though! I'm guessing they're going to be pretty disappointed when they don't get a treat tonight, so we'll see how that goes...
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Ethan and Caeley making pizza
for their Health and Nutrition Class. |
Ethan and Caeley are doing well! They are wonderful with the kids here and I love watching them all laugh and play together! Ethan likes to ride his bike and play soccer and basketball. He is dreadfully missing Taco Bell though! Caeley likes to spend time with the kids, whether they are playing outside, jumping rope, watching a movie or braiding her hair! She has also been helping me a lot in the kitchen as we cook everything from scratch and it takes awhile, and she loves to snuggle! We all miss family, friends and familiarity, but we are getting more and more used to life here.
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| A funny sign at one of the places we stayed! |
Last month we headed to Johannesburg on an overnight shopping trip. We needed some things that we just couldn't get in our area. Because it is so expensive to make the drive to Joburg, we reserved a night at a hotel to be sure we had ample shopping time. Well shopping took much longer than we anticipated! Nothing is quick in Africa! So, we quickly decided that we would stay a 2nd night. It was quite an event as hardly any hotels here have rooms for a family of 4. Even Holiday Inn only has 1 single bed or 1 double bed per room! We finally found a very reasonable b & b place and reserved it online. That night, we arrived there exhausted and in the dark only to find out that the unit was double booked, the lady had lost our phone number and we had nowhere to stay! We didn't know what we were going to do as LOTS of tourists were visiting and ALL of the hotels were booked. The lady at the b & b took us to the house of a friend of hers. He had a similar set up and had an opening. However, we got there and wanted to leave as soon as possible. It was one of the scariest feeling places we have ever been. The man kept disappearing and reappearing, even scaring the lady that brought us there. Ethan and Caeley would have been sleeping on a separate floor, the bed for Adam and I to sleep in was decorated with chains hanging over it from the ceiling... It was all just dark and scary and weird. So even though we weren't sure where we could find to stay, we knew we couldn't stay there. We ended up in a gas station parking lot on our cell phones for over 2 hours before we finally found a place. It was a bit more than we wanted to spend, but much much much cheaper than it ever would have been in the states! We ended up at Villa Simonne with a beautiful 2 bedroom apartment that was decorated as if in Italy and had 2 huge balconies overlooking their amazing property. We had a fun night there learning to play snooker on a real snooker table which was about 4 or 5 times the size of a regulation pool table! We hated that we got there so late as there were so many beautiful areas of the hotel that we could have enjoyed, especially when we saw the in ground trampoline the next morning!
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| Ethan with the Snooker Table! |
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| Ethan and I were barely able to break up this bar fight! |
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| This a Strelitzia or Bird Of Paradise Flower. It is indigenous to South Africa where it is also known as the Crane Flower. Villa Simonne was just beautiful and had amazing flowers all over their property! |
We were having a decent amount of success with our shopping, finding: pots and pans, baking sheets, sharp knives, a tv, a little bit of clothing, tea tree oil toiletries, some bed sheets and random houseware items. We could find a lot of these items close by, but the quality would not have been too good. We found that out quite quickly! We spent a couple of hours the second day at the Rosebank Craft Market. I got to go there last year when we visited, but Adam and the kids didn't. It was so much fun! It is booth after booth of African items and souvenirs and you have to bargain with each person at each booth where you want to buy something. Ethan and Caeley surprised us and jumped right in to the bargaining! They did a fantastic job, got great deals, and had a wonderful time! We also squeezed in some time to car shop and ended up finding a vehicle that we really liked. We were searching for a 7 seater SUV. We needed to be up off the ground due to the road conditions here and we wanted to be able to pick up people at the airport and drive places with Paul and Micky or kids from The Fold. Adam found a Ford Territory that had low miles and was a good price. (The Ford Territory is well known in Australia especially.) We test drove it, liked it and it fit exactly what we were looking for, however we found out that it had to go through a road worthy inspection the next day before it could be sold, so now 2 nights in Joburg turned into 3. It was much cheaper to stay there another night than to drive home and back to pick it up. So, back to the cell phone, LOTS of phone calls, and we finally found a 3rd place to stay at a really good price. We had a fun night playing games and pool, got up the next morning to wrap up our shopping and picked the vehicle up at around 4:30, when it was ready. Normally the drive home would have taken us 3 1/2 hours, but we did not realize we were making a mistake until it was too late. We were heading north from Joburg, on the Friday night before the schools here have a one week holiday. Oops! Everybody and their brother and uncle and cousin...were headed north on vacation! It was a traffic madhouse and it ended up taking us over 6 hours to get home! We were exhausted by the time we returned but look forward to someday heading to Joburg to spend the night just for fun! We enjoyed our family time, but didn't have much time to rest, relax or do any of the fun stuff that Joburg has to offer besides the craft mall.
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| Ethan and Caeley with our new vehicle: a Ford Territory. Perfect for picking up people from the airport. HINT HINT! |
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| We went out for a 30 minute drive one afternoon to try out our new car and ended up being gone for 2 hours! The road we traveled had very rough terrain with groups of rocks and areas of water. It was quite a fun adventure! Here Ethan and Adam are walking up the hill ahead to be sure that we can clear all of the rocks! |
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| Here is just a glimpse of the amazing view we were blessed with on our way home that day! It doesn't begin to do it justice... South Africa is just breath-taking! |
The Sunday before Paul and Micky left, some new friends down the road invited the 6 of us over for a visit. They are property managers at a private game reserve just minutes from us here at The Fold. We enjoyed a relaxing and refreshing day of visiting on their beautiful thatched roof veranda, swimming, touring the property and then going for a game drive. The property has a bounty of animals: zebra, giraffe, elephant, rhino, crocodile, leopard, lion, hippo, lots of antelope type game as well as all of things we have here on The Fold's property. We had a wonderful time riding around the bush, watching for these magnificent adrenaline-inducing creatures! Unfortunately, we didn't see anything too unusual in our eyes, namely the elephant, rhino, crocodile, leopard, lion or hippo, but we were there at the hottest part of the day so that worked to our disadvantage. We look forward to going back and visiting with David and Anita and seeing more of the property. It is currently owned by a man who is enjoying it himself for now, but will eventually allow overnight guests. It is a 5 star lodge and the most current price for staying there, including meals and a game drive, was $700 US dollars per person, per night! Wow! We are thankful for the opportunity to enjoy this property, but also thankful for new friends! It was so nice to just visit, laugh, relax and pray with new Godly friends!
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| Elephant tracks! They were on many of the paths that we traveled! |
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| Elephant tracks and poop! |
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| So absolutely stunningly beautiful! Don't miss the wart hogs to the right side of the picture! A mama with her babies. |
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| Kudu close up! |
We drove the bus 2 1/2 hours away one day to get the tires aligned. Even though there are tons of buses this size on the roads here, this was the closest place we could find to get the job done! It was a very scenic drive with mountain after mountain after mountain... We look forward to venturing back that way someday! Here are Ethan and Caeley on the way to Polokwane.
Lucky needed an eye check up last month at the hospital about 1 1/2 hours away so all 4 of us took him. His eye check up went very well, although the visit to the hospital was quite lengthy as we had to wait over an hour to just get his file and check in for his appointment, but as I had been there with other kids before I was expecting it. After his appointment we went to a couple of shops and then to this awesome coffee shop that the 4 of us had stopped at once before. It is a coffee shop with a playground in a huge sandbox, lots of beautiful plants and flowers for sale, and cage after cage of really neat birds! Lucky had a great time and Ethan and Caeley had a lot of fun showing him the birds and playing with him on the playground while Adam and I had a cup of coffee.
One of the really popular restaurants here in South Africa is Spur. It is a sit-down restaurant with a big menu of burgers, chicken, steak, etc... Each location is named after and decorated for a different American Indian Tribe. The Spur in Lephalale, about 45 minutes away is a wonderful supporter of The Fold. They have donated many things to us and feature us on the advertising in their bathrooms. Earlier this month they treated 23 of us to lunch! Spur always has a great play area for the kids with climbing equipment, trampolines and video games. It was a nice treat to go out all together! Everyone had a great time!
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| Shimane showing off some school work! |
The kids here have about 5 weeks left of school and then they are off for almost 7 weeks for Christmas holiday. We are looking forward to not having school runs, but even more to having the kids home!!! We are anxious to have more time to spend with them and have been brainstorming special things to do together over the holidays! Micky bought most of the food for our Christmas Day meal before she left and while most of you will be wearing sweaters and eating turkey or ham around your dinner table, we will be outside in shorts having a braai - steak, boervoers, potato salad, watermelon and we might even get in some swimming somewhere!
As you can see, we are staying quite busy and are working to balance our time as we get acclimated. It has been nice to have extra family time in spurts as we can manage it since we are all still processing all of the changes in our lives.
Thanks for hanging in this long! Next time it will be MUCH shorter. I promise!
Love, Jen
or as they say here in South Africa - CHEERS!
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