Well another week over, and another week closer to going back to the US! I know, how many weeks are in three years. Another exciting week, we almost lost our dog, had Thanksgiving in a foreign country and went to a South African school play! Hunter's class and two other grades hosted a play about the 2008 Olympics! Guess what Hunter's role was-the American. Their idea of an American is a cowboy from Texas, so he had to wear a cowboy hat, boots and a bandanna. It was hysterical to listen to an entire production of children singing with a South African accent.
Kids are doing great, Taylor and Hunter's new sports of choice are now soccer and cricket. Claire is still Claire, keeps me on my toes. She is actually talking a lot more than she has. She has a speech therapist that is fantastic, honestly impresses me more than any of our therapists in the states. She now says please and thank you for everything, yes I do raise them right!
The weather is awesome, Windows and back doors are left open during the day, and the kids love the freedom. The pool still has it's security net on it, so Claire is safe to be outside without me, remember our property is completely surrounded by a wall, and she cannot escape!!!!!!! I have the most beautiful gardens, I laugh and say that I had to come all the way to South Africa to get amazing Hydrangeas again, I used to have them in Broadmoor. I am posting pics of the backyard and patio. You walk out our main living room(they call it the Lounge) and you enter on the huge patio! Have to go the plumber is here ti fix the geyser(geeeser) the hot water heater! PS How I miss Friday shopping, Pat and I have always gotten up at 4:30 to go shopping, and of course a large Starbucks would be awesome tooo!

She's Back!

Lilly is back we picked her up from the vet this afternoon, yeah! She has to go in daily for checkups until they feel she is better! Today was Pat and my anniversary -13 years. We went out to dinner, with the whole crew, and we laughed to think that thirteen years ago we never would have thought that we would be sitting in Africa! What a gorgeous country we are in, I wish you all could see what we see every day! Of course there are parts of this place that I wish I could leave. It breaks my heart to see children begging in the street or to have a maid come and work for 9 long hours and only get paid $11! I wish that I could pay her more, but you have to very careful not to make them think you will give lots, because you will have beggars at your door! It also scares me at night to think that we have to have such security! When the sun is up is when I feel the safest! Some interesting things, there is no self serve gas stations-ladies this is great ; the car washes are a drive thru driveway and they manually do everything by hand= R40, which is about $4.00! One Rand is equal to about $10 US dollars! You have car attendants, they will watch your car while you are in the store, and you tip R1. I have found that people are extremely helpful and kind, Taylor got another invite for this weekend. Hunter has four girls that like him, do you blame them?, but he thinks one of them is pretty! It is illegal to talk on the phone while driving, but you never see police. Your security company is who you call in emergency, they can also access a physical emergency! What a country, I hope the good will out weigh the bad and this is going to be a trip of a lifetime! By the way, as we were driving to dinner, along the coast of the Indian ocean, we saw a HUGE pod of dolphins. They are my absolute favorite to see in the ocean, and we could see them from the street in a car!!!! Tommorrow is Hunter's class play, I will post pics. I also want to post pics of our house, We finally cleared the last box out of the house with a only a few remaining in the garage! To think I now have to decorate for Christmas!

Well it has been a sad two days. Yesterday we came home to find Lilly lying on the ground and she would not get up to come to us, so we rushed her to the vet. They were/are concerned for her, she was running a high fever, and very lethargic. My boys would be devastated if anything happened to her. Let's hope everything is fine, I have even taken to her, although she stinks! We will find out more this afternoon. I also found out that my nephew, Caleb, was having a horrible time after he has had his tonsils out. He has been throwing up blood and has been back to the hospital twice, please keep him in your prayers!
On a lighter note, we are trying to plan our "holiday" trips. Everyone here is off from December to the end of Jan. so everyone travels. I think one of the places we are going to is The Addo Elephant Safari lodge, where we can go on a safari and see some more animals. most hotels and lodges have a nanny for every room, so we can go on night drives also and leave Claire. We are also looking into a place called Jefferey's Bay, it is a beautiful beach area about an hour away where you can go horse backriding on the beach and also has many other accommodations. We will mostly do long weekend trips, because Pat wants to work some during the shut down. They are combining two plants here. Gotta go and get kids!

It is Sunday night, Monday morning at 1am, and we have set the alarm off again. So now I am up and thought I would let you know how our Thanksgiving went. We had it Saturday because everyone has school and all of the dads have to work on Thanksgiving, there is a group of 6 American families here right now. It was nice, everyone brought their favorite Thanksgiving dish. I am not a great cook, but I was going to make my mom's sweet potato casserole' until I went to the store and tried to find the ingredients! They do not have everything we are used to or it is packaged differently, so I gave up and said that I would bring a honey baked ham! Assuming of course, that i could just pick one up, again no such luck! So I cooked and basted my own honey baked ham (mom, don't faint!) and it turned out awesome. It was also a challenge to figure how to cook it, on what degree and for how long-They use the metric system and their ovens do not have the same temps! Thanks to my ten year old we were able to cook the damn ham!
We had dinner at one of the American family's house and all was good! We invited Taylor's new South African friend, Aidan, and he got to have his first Thanksgiving dinner. We are the first Americans he has ever met, I know, dear lord! the good thing about him is that his dad is a pediatrician, Pat was sure to tell him all about all of our medical friendships at home!
One funny thing, we are the only southerners, so even with this group I have a very strong accent. The joke of the day was that I have named our new German shepherd puppy "Lilybelle" Remind you that this is suppose to also be our guard dog, good luck is what they said to us!
I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving dinner, eat lots and watch lots of football! We would die to see a game, we only get the highlights on the Internet! Every once in awhile you may get a pro game, but usually it is just South African sports!

Well, we finally have furniture! It is so nice to have a piece of home. I have worked since this past weekend and finally have everything in the house put away, what a job! Life seems to be settling, it helps to have our own furniture, I feel like we have been displaced forever. Our Internet is up and we have skped our parents, but we currently have a bad connection. This is supposed to be fixed by Friday! We are enjoying renting(cannot buy because this is not a permanent move, just temporary) we make a call and everything is fixed.
I have found the people to be very kind and friendly, you should see the look of amazement when I open my mouth or Claire shows up with one of those bows-you cannot miss us from a mile away. everyone just laughs at me, but has been extremely helpful. We set the alarm off two to three times a day-It is so hard to get used to the whole alarm thing. we feel like we live at Fort Knox!
The weather is gorgeous we leave our back doors and windows open and the kids and dog run in and out. The boys and I had our first tennis match, mom actually won. the kids only have a week of school left and will be out until Jan 20th!
The hardest part is to see the poverty. It is not directly where we are ,but you have children begging in the intersections. We have learned to put food in my car, so that if we see them we have something to offer! Hunter is very concerned about this and comes up with a new plan everyday! You learn not to waste food, and to be aware of others, what an awesome experience for my kids. through the kids school we will be providing for three children's family for Christmas. It does not take much to help out. it is the least we can do for all that we are given. There is also a place called Baby Haven were children are left so we are trying to do something there! be thankful for all that you have and all that you have been given, we all live in the lap of luxury compared to what some of these people have.
Now the exciting- We walked with the elephants this past weekend, how amazing. we actually held their trunks and walked throughout the brush with them. Of course Claire held her hands over her ears the entire time(nice pics!) On our way to the elephants we saw a monkey on the side of the road, yes a real monkey just hanging out! We also went to a place called Monkey Land where there were tons of monkeys all over. They would come up to you as you sat eating lunch. We have also seen the most exotic birds in our yard, we saw a bird that was black and white stripes in the back while his front was a gorgeous color of red.
I had my first invite for a luncheon, very formal, GM wives. Taylor got invited over to play at someones this week!!!!!!!
Here are some recent pics!

We have arrived!

Hello all!
It feels like I have been away for ages. I am just now getting Internet service, and cannot wait to start emailing and skyping everyone. Our new lives started off with a very long flight, but we all made it and actually the kids did awesome. Claire was a champ, and slept through most of the flights. We were spoiled in first class, I am not sure how we will ever go back to flying anything else.
My last days at home were extremely sad and very hard to get through. I am thankful everyday for the wonderful friends that we have met along the way, each and everyone of you have touched our family in some sort of way. My parties were wonderful, and the special family get togethers were awesome. Taylor’s last few games were the best and how I will miss sitting on the sidelines with all of you. I am so glad I had all of those special times, they will stay with me forever. Even living with my parents those last few weeks were the best! I had a knot in my stomach for those last days that it made it hard to even speak, every time I did -the pain of leaving such great friends and family was too hard to bear.
But now we are here! We stayed for the first few days in a hotel overlooking the ocean, and then moved to a condo on the beach. Although it sounds wonderful- We were very crowded and very anxious to get in our house. The first few days here we got familiar with where we were, and where everything was. Pat drove for the first few days because I was terrified of driving(we drive on the right side of the car and the left side of the road), but I did it and I have not crashed yet, although I almost took out Pat’s boss’s intercom backing out. It is the hardest to back up and park!
We have moved into our house, although we are living on blowup mattresses until our furniture arrives sometime this week. Hey, we are use to living like this. Our house is amazing! There are four bedrooms, five baths, two offices, living room, dining room, kitchen and a bar room. It has maids quarters in the back, and our yard is awesome. we have a tennis court and a pool in the back yard- the boys have loved the tennis courts but the pool is still to cold to swim.
South Africa is nothing like I imagined it to be. We live in a small area of Port Elizabeth called Walmer - it is probably one of the safest areas to live in, and the boys school is only two blocks away. All of the shopping is within this small area. The stores are great, and they have some really good places to shop. It is not that far off of what we are used to in the states. The restaurants are great because they all have indoor play sets with nannies in them- even really nice places. We have yet to sit and talk with our kids at dinner because they play the whole time, too bad I do not have my buddies to eat with-It is the coolest. We have eaten at a place called the pink fig the last two Sundays. It is set on a large farm like area with a cottage like restaurant that serves the best breakfast ever- the best part is that it is surrounded by tree houses, tree swings and outdoor play sets! It is the best family place I have ever been too!
The boys are doing good-it amazes me how resilient kids are. The boys have started school but the year has only two weeks left. They have kept a great attitude about things, and have done quite well. They have been bringing their footballs to school to play at recess. This is a small school of only 200 children, so the boys were treated like rock stars (They think Americans are amazing) Hunter gets out at 12:50 and Taylor at 2:00, they then get to choose to go to any sports, and of course they do. Hunter has tried swimming, tennis, art and cricket: while Taylor has done tennis, swimming and cross country. I am actually thinking about switching to another school, based on the curriculum, that I am going to see this week-Lisa, Candy hold your breath-it is a catholic school. Another family that will be here in December did a little more research on schools and she found that this school can actually transfer into American colleges (They have two high school age girls and a 10 and 7 year old boys) The kids will be out of school until mid January. We are going to do a lot of traveling over that time.
We got a German shepherd puppy today, I know crazy! But my boys deserve it, they have been incredible with this whole move.
We went to a game reserve this weekend and saw zebras, giraffes, rhinos, and cheetahs. You drive your car through, the rhino walked right in front of our car and stopped and stared right in-we all freaked out and thought he was going to come after us-Taylor screamed “I do not want to die today.” It was amazing to actually see the animals in Africa! There are some good things about were we are and then there are some bad things. When we were staying at the condo on the beach I had to drive the boys to school, it was so weird to see all of the domestics (maids) walking to work to all of the different homes. The culture is so different, You are either very rich or very poor- there does not seem to be much of a middle class of people. The domestics are $ 11. a day and they work from 7:30 to 4:00. I have been using one to help me prepare our house for our furniture, it is very nice to have help-god knows Pats not much help!
Pat is doing good, trying to get a handle on work. he says that they are so behind the times with their processes- so they are trying to bring them up to the present. We try not to think about the economy, but know that it is very bad-, pray Gm SA holds on!
I am sorry for the long note but I just needed to touch base with so many people. I think Hunter and I are the most homesick. Pat asked him who his new friends were last night and all he said was “Cyrus”, I had a knot in my throat and stomach for hours I could not speak- these are the times I wonder what have we done. We are too far away! but then I stand back and I have to remember the opportunity that has been given to us. All of a sudden I will just stop and it will hit me that I am in Africa, how cool!
We have been able to find a lot of American items, we have been to McDonalds and KFC, but oh the things I miss. I miss Starbucks, Sonic’s ice, Wal-Mart and of course Target.
We are planning on going to an elephant park this weekend were we will be able to ride elephants. The scenery is absolutely beautiful, you take a drive and you see the Atlantic ocean. The weather can be quite cool to warm, but it is always windy!
I hope everyone is doing well! I wish I was there to sit at the ballgames, to take walks with my buddies or to just to hang with my pool buddies. And oh how I miss seeing all of the kids especially our most special friends. please keep us in your prayers and please remember us with a smile!
GO STALLIONS!
We have a skype account, if you get one search our email address and our contact will pop up! We have talked to my parents and Pats via the computer-it is so cool to see their faces. I am going to get a Vonage phone which will allow me to have a local Shreveport telephone number so that I can call and people can call me!
You will hear from me soon
OHHHHHH how we miss you all!