I am little behind on blogging this week, but better late than never…right?  We had a busy last week and it is shaping up to be a busy week this week. 

On Saturday of last week (2/11) we lost power during a pretty intense thunder storm.  Power did not return that evening, or the next day and not until late on Monday.  We actually ended up going for over 50 hours without electricity.  Needless to say we didn’t have much that survived the fridge or freezer so we had two big braais and ate meat for every meal (even breakfast).  Things could have been worse, but it is still never fun to go that long without power.

Ben spent most of last weekend and week writing abstracts, workshop proposals and scholarship applications for an AIDS conference in July.  Everything was due on the fifteenth and being out of power for so long made things a little crazy.  He was up until midnight most nights; needless to say he was exhausted by the end of the week and ready for a relaxing weekend (more on that later).

Last week we celebrated Valentine’s Day by making heart shaped sugar cookies for daddy and some of the staff.  We ran into some delays with our power outages, but we made do!  She loved rolling out the dough and using her heart cookie cutter.  She still needs practice on how to best utilize the dough so you don’t roll it out fifty times, but that will come!

Today is Sister Diane’s birthday so on Friday night we cooked a big meal in her honor.  I made focaccia bread, salad, corn on the cob and chocolate muffins.  Ben contributed some grilled shrimp and beer can chicken.  And Joe made some roasted red peppers (who knew they were that easy to make?), pickled onions, and a delicious punch drink (he is quite the cocktail master).  We stuffed ourselves silly and enjoyed each other’s company after a busy and hectic week.

We then spent this past weekend at our friends Peter, Callista and Aviva’s house.  They treated us to the usual relaxing atmosphere and fellowship and even took us along to some friends houses.  We went to a braai on Saturday afternoon to celebrate a birthday and then that evening we went to Eric and Nicole’s house for some amazing Thai food where we once again stuffed ourselves silly.  Eric made some Tom Yum soup that was out of this world along with several other thai dishes!  We enjoyed the relaxing time and were sad to see the weekend pass by so quickly.

On Sunday we met up with some of the other Cabrini staff members in Matsapha for a four day strategic planning session.  Ben will be in meetings until Thursday evening and Mikayla and I are enjoying some AC!  We went to a small game park today (Mililwane) and hope to do some swimming (although the pools don’t look too promising).  We do have decent Internet here if anyone wants to try to Skype with us.  Just let us know.  Here are a few pictures from the game park.

I love this picture for some reason.  These three guys were just all nuzzled up next to each other. 

On Friday we leave for St. Lucia, South Africa to celebrate my birthday.  Side note – this is not the St. Lucia most people in the states know of, so look it up if you are confused.  This area is known for their hippo, crocodile and bird populations.  They have some beach areas, although I am not sure they are like the traditional beach you think of.  If nothing else we are going to enjoy some family time before Ben leaves the next week for three weeks in the States.  If nothing else, we can sleep in and play a little Settler’s of Catan!

Mikayla enjoying her painting activity sent by Susan at Cabrini College.  Thanks Susan – she completed the whole box in one sitting!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2012 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.