Day 4 - No more quiet time in South Africa

My body clock is still all over the place and I woke up at 2:30 a.m., wide awake. I knew I had to go back to sleep. By about 3 :30 a.m. I had gone back to sleep. Only to be awoken at about 8:30 a.m. by the first 11 people from the British contingent of the Britton family to arrive. They seemed to faring okay after a 12 hour flight from the UK. In this first group was my Dad, who had orchestrated this trip to celebrate his 80th birthday, and his wife. My youngest brother and his three young children and the brother just older than me, his wife and 3 of their 4 children.

It didn’t take long for them to get used to seeing the sun again. In England they have to watch TV to see programs where they can see the sun. The young kids were immediately in the pool. Shortly

after the first group arrived Julian and I went back to the airport to pick up my eldest brother and his family and the 4th remaining child from Julian’s family. With the luck Mark has on vacations no-one is really willing to travel with him any more and so he often finds himself travelling alone. Suprisingly everything went like clockwork for their travel and they got through the airport with no delays. Getting their rental car was another matter. Somehow their reservation had been closed even though they had only paid for it 2 days before. After close to an hour of researching and sorting everything out they got their car ... which had a dead battery and so had to be replaced.

Finally we had the whole of the family back at the Lodge and as always the typical Britton family banter began. It is amazing to see how we all so quickly get back into a jovial mood having not seen each other for a year or so. The first chore was to go food shopping. The Britton’s have never been shy when it come to eating and so we all left for the local supermarket. After about 30 mins in the supermarket, Guy, Mark and I had a nice blend of food and drinks in out shopping carts. Julian on the other hand had a nice blend of wines in his shopping cart. Luckily Alex was there as well and she reminded Julian that food would probably be a good idea as well.

After a Mediterannean style lunch it was time to relax by the pool again. This seemed to be mostly for the adults and older kids who seemed to be suffering from their long 12 hour flight. My family and I had no sympathy as we reminded everyone about our 20 hours of flying and 10 hours of layovers.

That evening we decided to go out to eat because no-one wanted to cook. We ended up going to eat at the same restaurant Barbara, Hunter, Savannah and I had eaten at the night before. And surprisingly they had no proble

m making a table for 22 people. Luckily the waiters had a great sense of humour and put up with our constant wise cracks and even give it back. About a half hour into the meal two of the youngest kids were asleep at the table and I think you could see a lot of people flagging.

When we got back to the hotel I think it was the fastest I have ever seen our family retire for bed. Tomorrow it is the penguins and fish and chips.

Colossians 2:2-3 - “... that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”