Seven years

This blog post is a little late. One month late, to be exact. But I couldn’t forget to mark Miss B’s seventh birthday altogether (not to mention showcase my ongoingly inexpert cake-decorating skills). I couldn’t do it here on the day, because it was right in the middle of our trip and we were staying on an ostrich farm with basically no internet access. And minimal baking equipment, although I did manage to produce a cake—of sorts:

Enormous eggs

So, I left you with this image last week:

Which, just in case you were wondering, is not a regular-sized egg in a novelty mini-pan. No, that is an ostrich egg.

See, most of our accommodation in South Africa was self-catering. And two of us quite like to cook—not coincidentally, the same two who did most of the supermarket runs. One of which came at the end of a five-hour drive en route to an ostrich farm in the country, when we had 30 minutes to buy 3 days’ worth of food for six people. We were a little bit punchy, and everything was in Afrikaans. Suffice to say, it didn’t take much discussion when my friend BC spotted a box full of ostrich eggs sitting under the regular chicken’s eggs and nudged me meaningfully. How often do you get an opportunity like that?

I'm baaaaaack

Okay, well, technically, I got back on Monday. But, instead of arriving home at the civilized hour of 3:00 pm as planned, we were subjected to the wondrous efficiency of American Airlines and, two delayed flights and one 10-hour layover later, we actually walked through our front door at 1.30 am on Tuesday morning. Then I spent three days trying to get over my jet lag, wade through my overflowing mailboxes (virtual and real-world), re-stock the larder, and manage Miss B, who has no activities scheduled for this week because school starts in a few days. Luckily, DP took her off to work with him today and gave me some quiet time. Which, naturally, I am using to update my blog, because that’s way more fun than copy editing a 150-page article.

Holiday snaps

Thoroughly enjoying our holiday....Here are a few samples of what we've been doing:

More to come later...