is it really Christmas on Friday?

Well this past week flew by.

On Monday I took the Boo and his buddy to the Waterfront for ice cream and to check out the boats, one of our favorite pastimes. We ended up stumbling into a carnival and I got conned in to taking two munchkins on a very rickety, but fun, roller-coaster. Goofy smiles at their best!

On Tuesday, was the SAAO year end staff picnic at a winery in the Nuy Valley.  Staff came down from the telescope at Sutherland and out from Cape Town and it was a great way to put faces to the names of people I had only heard of. 

We had a really great day.  I ended up playing a hilarious drunken game of Petanque (think Bocce ball with really dense metal balls) with some of the Sutherland staff. One of the resident dogs, who had a fascination with rocks, kept trying to run off with these really heavy balls.  Fortunately I held my own, and developed a dead eye in defensively knocking out our opponents shots, as my teammate was Tim's boss ;)  Wouldn't do to mess up that relationship!

The Boo at play on the winery grounds:  In the first shot the vineyards are just beyond the trees and stretch all the way to the base of the mountains in the background.

There were large concrete tubes on the winery grounds that the Boo had a ton of fun with.



Indications of a successful day:


On Wednesday, South Africa took the day off for Reconciliation Day.  The New York Times had an article on this but it didn't seem to mesh with our experience of the holiday in Cape Town.  The NYTimes article seemed to focus on the meaning of December 16th to the Afrikaaner portion of the white population but I learned of the holiday from the black staff on site who were staying home with their families to recognize "their day."  The history here is thick and recent and we are only just learning our way through it.

Since SAAO was closed, we did enjoy our day off, historically-loaded holiday or not.  I went for breakfast at the Millstone (cafe with the treehouse) with Minna, our favorite Finnish neighbor.  Her youngest daughter was at horse camp all week at the stables at Oude Molen Eco-Village and it was a great opportunity for her and I to steal a little adult time. 

When I got back onsite after a wonderful-as-always breakfast, the Boo and Tim met me at the trampoline just across from Minna's house.


Since it ain't a holiday in Cape Town if you don't go to the beach, we called up Benne and Robin and met up with them at the Dunes in Hout Bay.  This is the same place they took us to our first weekend in Cape Town, the one on the beach with an awesome playground in the sand.  We spent hours at the cafe as the Boo hit it off with a host of different South African kids.  We rounded out the day on the beach and then followed Benne and Robin home to their cool house for homemade lasagna and entertaining conversation.


Thursday and Friday followed suit, with lots of outdoor play and visiting with neighbors and friends.  Now I hear that Christmas is this Friday.  Was I supposed to do something about that?