Black Tuesday

Didn't realize it's been over 2 weeks since my last post.  Whoops!

We finally took our first weekend trip to Sun City a few weeks ago.  Rusty and I rode the longest, fastest Zip Slide in the world that was actually sponsored by Garmin, so I felt safe.  The next day was spent at the water park "Valley of the Waves" and the hotel pools.  There is so much child care here that we were able to drop the kids off at a babysitting place while we did the zip slide, then we hired a sitter to come to our room and put the kids to bed while we caught a little musical show at the hotel.  $11/hr was worth it!  Room service was very reasonable as well and was easier than venturing out with 2 kids 3x a day to find food.  Unfortunately Jackson had a fever the entire weekend and cried all night long, so we'll have to go back.  The hotels were busy setting up for the Nedbank Golf Challenge which begins today.  Lee Westwood and Tim Clark are currently in the lead.  The day we left there was a triathalon taking place on the grounds and surrounding area.  It was a lot warmer in Sun City than in JoBurg and only a 2 1/2 hour drive away.  The scenery between cities was a bit scary as there really wasn't anywhere to stop.  We drove by several makeshift townships and am just in shock at how many thousands of people live like that because they have no other choice.

Jackson ended up having tonsillitis and started feeling much better after getting on antibiotics.  He's also trying to get more teeth.  Now both kids have a horrible cough and runny nose, and Rusty's been fighting a small fever for the past 5 days.  It never ends!!!  We've been told by several people that everyone gets sick a lot the first 6 months after you move here.  We hit that mark on the 19th, so we'll see if that theory is actually true.

We have a couple of rodent visitors in the master bathroom on the ledge up by the roof.  The rat was confirmed one night and the mouse was caught on Thanksgiving.  Poison and steel wool will be put in place very soon.  I also had to kill another giant cricket using Rusty's pitching wedge.  Rusty used his engineering skills to build some screens for a few of the windows since they don't exist here.  Now we can keep them open all night without worrying about getting bit by mosquitoes.  Moths have made their way in and according to Miranda they are the scariest thing she's ever seen, so she is now the proud owner of a princess mosquito net that surrounds her bed.

I bought some real ice cream, not the kind made with vegetable fat, but it still just wasn't the same.  But there's some good stuff we got at the Montecasino last weekend when we went to a kid's fair.  I am also missing chocolate candy with peanut butter.  There just isn't any here!  Don't these people realize how good it is?  I have resulted to dipping my chocolate bars in a jar of peanut butter.

Thanksgiving was lovely as we had about 18 friends over for dinner.  Since the turkeys here are not genetically altered with steroids, I had to cook two.  We had all the traditional foods, but it still felt like it was just 'pretend' Thanksgiving.  The next day I put up the tree and all the Christmas decorations while wearing shorts and a tank top.  Weird.

The school year is over on Friday and Miranda will be in a new class when classes resume in January.  She will be the 'big kid' at her preschool as the oldest class will be starting kindergarten.

The dryer blew up on Monday but luckily I have wonderful neighbors who let me use theirs.  The air is also very dry here so it's easy to put things outside to air dry.  We had a day where we didn't have electricity for 8 hours, and that turned out to be a lot easier than the 4 hours we were without water one evening.

We went to the organic market last night with our neighbors and their friends for dinner and candlelight shopping.  The rain scared a lot of people away but we sought shelter in an empty booth and enjoyed wine and beer until it stopped.  The artists have started making religious-themed items and I now have a hand-carved wooden nativity set as well as a beaded Christmas tree and sterling silver cross pendant.  Sure beats Black Friday!  Which they don't have here, but they did have "Black Tuesday" which has to do with the newspaper media and a bill called the "Protection of State Information Bill".  Google It.