gerry the giraffe & my muddy birthday boy...

I shouldn't be surprised I guess. Eli's always been a child who seems to get the most excited over the freedom to run wild, get super dirty and have access to anything remotely dangerous. Instead of a new toy, he'd jump for joy at the opportunity to operate a tractor, play with a string of Christmas lights, or run through a mud puddle deeper than he is tall. And, although it wasn't nearly that deep, that's exactly what he did first at his birthday party this week. We spent the morning at the Giraffe House with some of our SA friends feeding animals, checking out Gerry the giraffe, and letting the kids bounce around in the bounce-house for a while. Later, we enjoyed some cupcakes and silly masks in honor of E turning three. Our friends brought some fun new toys for him as gifts which was really nice. Because we've had a good bit of rain lately, the place was an absolute mess with mud. After his first jump in the puddle, I surrendered and let E run around bare-footed the rest of the time. It was the best gift I could have given my little southern bumpkin by far :-)

Jesse was off on Friday of last week so we planned to travel outside of Cape Town and follow the Garden Route~ it's a really popular and beautiful route along the southeastern coast of SA. We headed out on Thursday afternoon for a pretty long drive to an area called Mossel Bay where we stayed the first night. While our place had a lot of charm, it was very, very cold and required us to bundle up in layers for the night. Somewhere in that cold night came the rain. And the next day, more rain. And the next day, a monsoon :-) You think I'm kidding, but the owner of the second place that we stayed said that he had only seen this type of rain one other time in his lifetime of umm...probably 80 years...it got quite comical really. While we were able to visit some pretty neat limestone caverns called the Cango Caverns on Friday, we weren't able to do the other things that we had considered for the trip because of the weather. So...we returned on Saturday and Jesse and I went out for a date night to the movies which was nice.

On Sunday, we visited Hillsong again for possibly the best two worship services I've ever attended in my lifetime. Robert Madu from Texas spoke for both services and let me tell you...if you haven't heard him...you should. I looked briefly on Youtube and I think some of his sermons are available. Check him out if you get a chance!

My Dad is still here with us and will be here until next Monday. We're supposed to have some really pretty days this week so I'm hoping we can hit the beach again at some point. I have been so glad to have him here and am so thankful that he came all this way for us.

For those of you who were praying for Maw-maw's foot surgery, thank you. Everything went well and last I heard she's already on the move a little again...I can't imagine ;-)