Tafari!

 Last weekend we spent four days out on tafari (K's term) and it was amazing!  We were lucky enough to get to join some friends on one of the opening weekend for their lodge and they were doing a special trip for families (they don't usually allow kids) so it was a very special opportunity to share a great trip with the girls and not be terrified that our kids were the ones ruining things for someone else since everyone had kids and the blame could be shared equally.  

Friday morning we left the house by 6:30 and managed to miss all of the rush hour traffic and get out of town quickly.  The drive through the escarpment was fun, as always, since it involves a strange combination of broken-down vehicles, usually in the worst possible place, like a blind corner going up a hill (I think they do it on purpose), missing shoulder guard rails and the occasional remnants of minor rock slides!  Good times!  But traffic was light and the weather was perfect and we made good time to the lodge where we parked the truck and transfered to a boat.  

The two hour boat ride was surprisingly pleasant with both K and T taking short naps and the adults enjoying a lovely cold beer at 10:00!  That was just the start of a low level buzz that carried through the whole weekend.  If you have never had a Pimm's and lemonade you must have one.  Now.  No really, right now, go buy some Pimm's and lemonade and make one.  I'll wait....

Ok, that's better!  Keep sipping one of those every few hours for three days straight and see how wonderfully relaxed and blissed out you feel!  

After the boat ride we got settled in camp.  Our lodgings were what can best be described as a very high end tent.  The platform and frame and other aspects of the structure are built of wood and then the heavy canvas tent sort of sits on top.  But believe me, this is the most luxurious tent you have ever been in!  As most of you know, I don't camp, so you can rest assured that we were not in any way roughing it.  I think the bed may also have been the largest bed I have ever slept in.  It had to have been larger than a standard king... as in I think C must have also been sleeping in it, but he was so far away that I certainly didn't notice.  We also had space for a small cot for K and for T's travel bed.  The structure also had a great little porch looking out over the river.  The whole front of the tent overlooking the river was mesh so when the sun came up in the morning it was like the whole room would just start to softly glow, and then turn pink and then you could start to see the trees and river as you listened to the birds, monkeys and hippos waking up.  Somehow waking up to that at 5:30 is much less painful than waking up to my alarm clock at the same time.  Funny that.  We also had a hippo eating grass right outside at 3am on morning and you could totally hear him munching away and when I peeked out there was just this giant dark mass right there, which made me decide that a flashlight was probably a bad idea.

Elephants were really the theme of the weekend and they were doing their very best to put on a show.  We saw baby elephants, young male elephants trying to act big and scary, elephants bathing in the river, elephants swimming across the river, elephants blocking the road and making us turn around, elephants walking through camp, elephants doing pretty much any and all of the cool elephant things that they can do and almost always quite close.

The theme of the weekend for the kids was probably sand.  There was sand therefore there were happy children!  Holes were dug, castles constructed, race tracks graded, treasures discovered and re-buried.  We may still be finding sand in some shoes and hats a week later but who cares!  The kids were entertained.

We got to meet some great new people and all of the kids played nicely together and kept themselves entertained so most of the adults really and truly got to relax.  We ate absurdly well, I got to read almost an entire book, and felt well rested despite the early mornings.  Coming back to town and going to work the next day was a bit of a shock to the system but the whole adventure was a great reminder of why we live overseas.

K and I on our porch.  Look closely in the gap between the side of the tent and the wooden wall.  See him?  He wandered over and had a snack right in front of the tent and just hung out for a good 20 minutes.  So cool!

 This guy was trying very hard to convince us that he was scary.  Lots of ear flapping and some trumpeting.  This was one of those instances when having somewhat loud children in the car was less than helpful.

 T and K enjoying a carved friend.  The wooden hippo was probably almost as popular as sand and sticks.  The whole hoard of children would just have to sit on it any time they walked near it.

I like that the elephants are walking through in the background as is of cue... Ok, its day three, a herd of cape buffalo alone won't be impressive anymore, send in the elephants!

 K taking a photo of one of the two male lions we found.  We saw the same pair twice and this photo is from the first day we saw them.  They were obviously hungry so they were a bit skittish and I was trying to feed T her weight in jellybeans to get her to keep quiet because she kept wanting to say "hiiiiiii liioonn!!" loudly... and repeatedly...

 Same lion eying us suspiciously before slinking off into the bush.

 Just a few of the many, many elephants.

 K with a stick.  Literally drawing lines in the sand and telling people they could not cross them.  Good god!  We were at an old village site from before the area became a national park and all settlements were moved out.  We were looking for pottery shards and grinding stones and checking out animal tracks.  The kids loved it!

T relaxing and checking out some rocks.  We somehow managed to not let her get sunburned at all over the whole trip which is minor miracle and involved vats of sunscreen, several different hats, and making the poor kid wear long sleeves even though it was pretty warm.

The two male lions the second time we saw them looking fat, happy, sleep and sleepy.  This time the chatter from the girls did not even phase them as they were much to contented in their nice shady spot to be bothered by us.

This and that

We survived a rather hectic week with C traveling back in the states and me hanging out here with the girls on my own. You will notice that the photo array is a bit T heavy this week in large part because some children deal better than others with their father being out of town. Certain children, whose name I will not mention, left their listening ears at the airport when we dropped off C and have been more or less insufferable all week long. Lucky me! Other children have continued to be pleasant and charming, perhaps even increasingly so, and thus presented several opportunities for photography.

The other thing that apparently happens when C travels, in additional to K's head exploding into a million pieces, is that I impulse buy very, very large carved wooden hippos, so I am pleased to introduce Cleopatra, the newest addition to our family.

The weather here has been rather schizophrenic. We should be gently transitioning from rainy and hot to cool and dry but we are still getting sporadic rains including thunderstorms and have been having dramatic temperature changes requiring frequent sartorial corrections in order to adapt.

My frustrations with the utter and complete inefficiencies of pretty much all local entities were further increased this week when I was attempting to organize a program. Despite having initially contacted the organization involved well over three weeks prior to the event and having hand delivered the requisite formal letter (with 20 copies to be given to all of the other folks involved as there is no way they an actually make their own copies) we still found ourselves scurrying around two days before the event dealing with people claiming they had no idea what was going on. So, yet again, what should have been an easy, plug and play activity ended up sucking enormous amounts of time and energy. I have been taking all of this frustration out on my poor cuticles and fingernails which is a totally disgusting habit which I want to break so now, for the first time in ages, I have actually painted my fingernails. We shall see if this helps or if I just end up with scraggly, ugly, painted fingers, rather than scraggly, ugly, naked fingers.

Next week is yet another school break. How many breaks do these kids need, really? It is also coming in the wake of Wednesday being a day off for student led conferences. Why on earth does my almost 4-year old need to "lead" a conference? I don't know and I continue to think it is one of the more silly things that this admittedly overly touchy-feely, Kumbaya-ie school does. In essence, I spent 45 minutes playing with K in her classroom, including dressing up as a duck, reading several books and looking at the epic portfolios they create for all of the children. While I do appreciate seeing how her projects have developed over the course of the year (look! people have discernible facial features and limbs now whereas the were mere blobs of color at the start of the year) I am not convinced that I really need a 4 inch thick portfolio of exemplars to get the point.

That is about all. We all survived the week and C gets back and we start all over again tomorrow. Thank goodness we have Friday off and then are going away for a little much deserved quality safari time next week.

This is now what happens more or less whenever you point a camera at the girls. Charming!

T wants you to know there is a "izzard!!!!" on the wall!