Surfin SA!

For our last big trip here in South Africa, we headed to Jeffrey's Bay.  Jeffrey's Bay is the surf capital, where they host an annual surf championship.  It made headlines a few years back when the Australian surfer punched the shark.

We did attempt a surf lesson, however the real purpose of our visit was my shell collection.  I had read that it was the best beach for shell collecting.  Since we have been here I have loved collecting shells, the ones you find here are really amazing!

Everyone came to the Shell Museum, some under duress, but the museum was worth the trip.  The majority of their shell collection came from a lady who had lived in Jeffrey's Bay and collected shells from the 1940's-1960's.  They had an unflattering writeup on Charlotte where they called her an eccentric old spinster that referred to the shells as her children.  The girls read this and started asking me if the shells would be my children...gotta love teenagers!

Everyone pitched in and helped me add to my collection, Charlie was an eager hunter and Kelly was always happy to go to the beach with her new camera in tow.  Look at the pile of shells we get to sort through!

We stayed right by the beach called SuperTubes and on my morning shell hunting trips I'd head down with the surfers.  There were sometimes about twenty of them out there and they really were fun to watch.

The old lady in Jeffrey's Bay would drag out boxes of shells to show visitors, I promise I'll not do that to any of you when you come to visit!

We visited St. Francis Bay and the lighthouse at Seal Point which is the most Southeastern Point in all of Africa.  The waves were really crashing against the rocks and made it lots of fun to climb around.

Check out this African beach house in St. Francis Bay!

Boogie boarding!

We finished out the trip with Greg and the kids taking a surfing lesson.  I took a million photos and videos in the hopes I'd get one of them riding the perfect wave.  Charlie had the best luck of all.  Sadly, Kelly hasn't shared any of them with me yet...so I"m putting in the post...maybe someday she will share them!

We headed home with two big things on our horizon...Kelly's 16th birthday party and our pack out...more updates to follow on both!

Fun February

Charlie was so excited to go to his first "kissing booth", his favorite puppy Isaac who is a guide dog in training was in a kissing booth at the mall, so we went to support the cause.

Blue Man Group came to South Africa and we were happy to take the kids to the show at Monte Casino, which is about half an hour from our house.

The show had changed a bit since Greg and I saw it in Chicago in the late 90's.

Big balls at the end...

Our kids loved it and Charlie (with the drummers) said he is going to take his kids when he is a Dad.

Our friend Erica came back to visit after she finished up a volunteering trip in Tanzania.  Our other friend Sarah flew up from Cape Town.  Right after they arrived we went to a friends fabulous 40th Birthday Party, here is Greg and all of us!

We needed to do something fun and we decided that the only thing better than one houseboat was two houseboats...so we headed back to the Vaal River.

Ladies boat!

Greg also had a friend from work in town and so we had a boy boat.

We had fun racing up the river together and anchoring out at night.

We dropped one anchor and moored the boats alongside each other for the night.   I loved seeing Erica's smiling face out the window in the morning!

We awoke to a nice rainy morning, where the only one moving was Charlie trying to fish.

We had a lazy breakfast and sadly turned our boats to head back.

Swatch buddies!

So sad to say farewell, but we look forward to seeing Erica & Sarah somewhere amazing next!