A series of unfortunate events....

When it rains it pours. And it's been pouring for 2 straight weeks. It's depressing and sad and makes it nearly impossible to meet anyone to make friends, and VERY difficult to potty-train a puppy. We're still in settling in mode so each and every day there are a million errands to do... dropping the kids off to school, gym, car shopping, physical therapy, finding the new post office, grocery, setting up phones, picking kids up from school at 2 different times, and on and on it goes. All in the rain. Sideways driving rain that makes it nearly impossible to use an umbrella. You just get home and it's time to take the dog out in the rain to potty. I only have 2 pairs of long pants and they are both jeans. I feel like I am always wet and cold. Jeans don't dry well and after a while you just consign yourself to being wet and damp.
Then this weekend we hit 100 year flood level in the Eastern Cape. The area is being declared a disaster relief area. Huge chunks of road are washed away and sink holes have opened up. Huge areas are flooded. We were glad we live on the top of a hill. Until I saw this about 8pm Saturday night:
Water was literally pouring into the downstairs hall from both downstairs bathrooms. The house was flooding! The cause was the entry way. The drain had stopped draining and a second swimming pool was forming.
We called our landlord stat and found a pump and started trying to pump the area dry. In the mean time water was streaming down the front of the chimney and off the beams in the living room so we were moving furniture to high ground and moving the kids upstairs with us as their bedroom is right around the corner from the flooded hallway. One big happy family.
It was POURING! Check out the downspout in the corner...
Then right in the middle of the action Roxy fell off Teddy's bed and BROKE HER LEG in 2 spots. I am not making this up. We had to take her to the vet on Sunday morning (animals ALWAYS get hurt on the weekends...) and we just got her back today.
She was so happy to see us. I think she thought we dropped her off forever since she was broken, poor girl. She has not wanted to leave my arms since she got home. Poor baby!
She has a cast that has to stay completely dry all the time. I just laughed when they told me that one. What else can go wrong? WAIT - don't answer that!
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Seaview Lion Park

On our second weekend in PE we decided to check out Seaview Lion Park. There are 2 game parks very close to our house and we had heard that this one was the lesser of the two, aka the "chaucy" park. So not wanting to be awed and then disappointed we decided to start low and work our way up. Oh and we had heard that if you show up at noon on Sundays you can watch them feed the Lionesses. Yes please!
The park turned out to be 15 minutes from our house. You pay 20$ for a family of 4 and then drive yourself into the park looking for wildlife. Like you're on the Kilimanjaro Safaris at Disney but driving yourself. How cool is that??? This by the way would have been waaaay cooler had we been there in our own 4x4 vehicle and not a rented, orange Kia Sorento but we promised ourselves that we would correct that when we went to our next park.
The first thing we saw was a mama Giraffe with her baby.

We stopped for a long time to watch them. I even got out of the car and stood on top to get a better view. Then we made our way through more of the park and spotted springbok, and many more giraffes and zebras.
We finally got to the Lion enclosure. We were a bit early so we decided to walk around and check out the different big cats before feeding time. At first I was tragically underwhelmed. I mean they have Lions like this at the Houston Zoo and just like at the Zoo all the Lions are ALWAYS sleeping. I have often wondered if the Lions are not just animatronics with a breathing mechanism installed to make them look more life-like. This guy was at least rolling all around which was pretty funny.
The Tiger was awake. I Love Tigers.
Then it got really cool really fast. The question of the day was "how does one feed Lionesses?" the answer is: very carefully. This involves loading a bunch of carcass haunches into the back of an open pickup, letting the cats pull them out and then driving away hoping they're satisfied with what you gave them. As you can see in the video, one Lioness was clearly NOT satisfied and charged the truck as it came back around. Yowza!

FOR VIDEO CLICK HERE

After that we wandered down to see some Lions. They had not yet been fed and were obviously hungry. They were in a pen with some fencing that may have been appropriate if you were trying to contain a Border Collie or some medium sized goats. So just being there was kind of thrilling.
Plus they were glaring at us and clearly fantasizing about how we would taste. Then a little kid got away from his dad and ran down the side of the enclosure. It totally brought out the predator/prey drive in this one Lion and he charged after the kid on his side of the fence. The dad was yelling "don't run, don't run!" and Jeff was like "get your camera ready... 'Toddler eaten by Lion at Seaview Game Park' is sure to go viral on YouTube and it's goin' down!" It was SCARY. The hairs on the back of my neck were on end when you saw the speed and power the things moved with.
That Lion was mad that the kid and all the rest of us were on the wrong side of the fence and given the power of the beast, his obvious motivation and the dubious holding power of the fencing, we decided to back slowly away muttering "nice kitty" soothingly under our breath. That experience alone was worth the 20$ entrance fee. Talk about up-close and personal!
After that we headed up to the main lodge where they keep the 'baby' lions and tigers that are part of their breeding program. For 9$ you can go into their enclosure and hang out and pet them and take pictures. Yeah. I was all about doing this until I realized that the word 'baby' is relative and the newest litter was about a year old. There was NO WAY I was letting Sasha and Teddy climb into an enclosure with Lion and Tiger cubs twice their size. Especially not after seeing how fast a Lion can eat a kid if he wants to. Same experience with no fencing? No thanks! Here's a vid of one of the workers trying to get a tiger 'cub' to come with him to visit with the guests:

FOR VIDEO CLICK HERE

After that we hung out and just watched the young cats. They were very playful and endlessly entertaining. One Tiger climbed a tree and looked like he was going to try to jump out of his enclosure! Only in Africa... FOR VIDEO CLICK HERE
On the way out we enjoyed the view:
And spotted a few more animals on our drive out of the park:
So here's my pitch... we lived in South Korea for 2.5 years and NOT ONE of you punks out there came to visit us. So get your butts on-line and start looking at plane tickets. Free lodging, food and tour-guide services await you. I mean this is 15 minutes from the house and it's the LAME animal park! We could do this in the morning and then still have all afternoon to drink margaritas by the pool. OR we could do the margaritas in the morning and then take turns running past the lion enclosures wearing meat necklaces. Could be fun....
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Settling in

We have been here for 3 weeks and are settling in bit by bit. We got a puppy! There were 7 to choose from and we picked this one. What do you think?
I think we made a fine choice! Her name is Roxy and she is adorable but has made the last 3 weeks very hectic as we are potty training and teacher her that she CAN in fact occasionally be left alone in her little bathroom.
She had a fun first week playing with the kids and romping all over the yard.
Sash and her pup:
Adorable girl:
Asleep on Mom's lap:
Teddy and Roxy have good snuggle time on this fuzzy red blanket that they both love:
We have 2 lemon trees in our yard and they are FULL of lemons!
We bought a juice squeezer and have been making home-made lemonade. What else can we do with lemons? They're falling off the tree!!
Sasha is a pro at juicing...
And we put up a tree swing. This is version #1 as we actually ended up taking it down and securing it to a much higher branch:

 The first week we had a lot of fun just hanging out nearby the tree swing taking turns while Mom worked on the garden.

Speaking of gardens, I got one all dug out and planted. Expect fresh produce by Christmas!

 Now in all the above pics it looks nice and warm outside due to the kid's attire but it's actually pretty cold - in the 60's. It's just that we're used to summer and the kids are hopeless optimists. I keep telling them to go change but some times I just give up and let them freeze. They gotta learn sometime right? But Teddy and Roxy have discovered that when you get chilly you can warm up nicely on the bricks:

Jeff and the kids spent the first weekend making a home-made bow and arrows. I think they were inspired by "Brave" and all the space around them. I was pretty skeptical but they made a set that actually works!

 

 They even stick into the ground if you shoot it right. Perfect shot!

The yard is a great place to hang out. So far we have seen monkeys, a mongoose, HUGE snails, and lots of really interesting birds. Here's 2 of our favorites. The big one has a few babies in her nest and if you zoom in close on the picture you can probably see one. The other hanging basket nests are built by these very bright yellow birds. In the picture you can see 2 completed nests to the left and center high a ring that is a partially completed nest. There are also some large flightless birds but of course Maximus is making quick work of those suckers. He has my blessing... they eat my beans.

Here's my little hero. He's killed every last mouse in the house and has taken to killing them outside and bringing them to me as presents. Except for the flightless birds.... we only know about those because their numbers are diminishing and we find large piles of feathers here and there. After 2.5 years of being trapped inside, my guy is more than earning his keep.

 By about 7:30 Roxy is done for the day and will sleep just about anywhere but prefers to be held. Thankfully for her there is no shortage of volunteers for this job!

 The kids take turns getting to start out with her in their beds until they fall asleep and then Jeff and I get her and snuggle her on the couch. Finally she goes to sleep in her little crate between the kids beds.

All these pictures are from our first week. In the last 2 weeks it has rained constantly. I mean every. single. day. Not sprinkles, but torrential sheets of water. We're about to be flooded out and there is more rain in the forecast! It's really quite depressing and sad but looking at the pictures in this post has reminded me that this will once again be a nice place to be if the sun ever shows it's face again!

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