A relaxing weekend...

Friday and Saturday were HOT... but then it rained pretty much all day Sunday so now it's quite pleasant temperature-wise.

I managed to have a good relaxing weekend without going to stay somewhere else, entertaining at 'home' instead for a change. It was quite nice to spend a bit of quality time with the children here, even if we did round up some kids to play soccer on Saturday morning in the heat only to have them all drop out after about 10 minutes play... (just to clarify, I wasn't playing soccer, I was doing a child monitoring job, my friend Ryan was the one mad enough to run around in the heat with the kids!) Three hard-core kids continued to play when even he had given up...

I also came face-to-face with my first snake at GGA (Sorry mum, look away now... ) Although I think it was actually already dead. This is the first one I've seen nearby and not through the protective glass of a car window whilst trawling through a game reserve. Not that scary when they're dead though. I didn't see, but only heard about the green one near my house a few week's ago...

Another first was trying Biltong (a South African delicacy, apparently). It's like chewy beef sticks, REALLY hard to bite into, you kind of have to chew... I don't think my teeth are strong enough yet.. but I caused much amusement attempting to break it. Actually it was quite tasty, but I'm not sure I have the energy to eat much of it!

And another first was my first venture into 'GATEWAY-Theatre of Shopping', reputed to be the 'largest shopping centre in the Southern Hemisphere' or 'Shoppertainment' as some people like to refer to it. For a Saturday it seemed quite quiet there, a fairly pleasant shopping experience, even if we did go and see possibly the worst movie this year 'The Marine' (only bother if you are into extremely over the top explosions and unbelievable acting). So bad it was actually quite entertaining, thus Gateway lived up to it's 'Shoppertainment' label...

All this, and travelling around the valley in the car I should have got instead of my fairly low toyota, a Landrover that loved the potholes, bumps, mud and puddles. It got a full run through dust, mud, thunder, lightening and torrential rain. All good fun! I'm really annoyed now that the nice people at Landrover never got back to me when I asked them to donate one to GGA, it would have been perfect... no scrapes on the front of this vehicle when driving on extremely uneven road surfaces. My poor Toyota...

So the weather is slightly cooler (will it last though?) and I'm relaxed and feeling much much better than last week. Thanks to all who prayed. Feeling much more positive about things too. God is good and He is faithful. Exciting things are about to happen...