So after a great Friday spent with the colleagues at the official Touchwork Lunch and Team-build event, the rest of the weekend luckily filled up with just as enjoyable activities, despite the fact that Chantelle was on duty for the weekend, and the whole of Gordon’s Bay was without electricity for the entire duration of Sunday, due to scheduled Municipal maintenance.
After serving breakfast to her guests come Saturday morning, Chantelle came home to free me from the shackles of looking after Jessica, as wifey and the little one headed off on a Kuilsriver adventure to attend Michelle’s Stork Party, giving me some breathing space to head out and purchase some more cobblestone pavers for the driveway project I currently have underway, and of course a moment to actually sit through and sort out our medical expenses for taxation purposes. Fun times I tell you.
Anyway, on their eventual return from Kuilsriver the two of them swung by to pick me up for a quick spot of Pick n Pay shopping, before dropping me off again with a tired and hungry Jessie-bean to contend with. 16:00 rolled on in and it was back to action stations as I grabbed together everything Chantelle had assigned to my list, grabbed Jessica and hit the road towards Gordon’s Beach Lodge, arriving just as the first of our braai time guests for the evening were piling out of their cars!
On her own initiative, Chantelle had gone and invited Ingrid, Chris and the kids, Maria, Wayne and the kids, and Sanette and her young one to come and join us at the guest house for a late afternoon braai, meaning of course that I had been contracted in to put on my heat resistance gloves, don my champion braaier apron and pick up my dual wielded tongs once more.
What followed was a fantastic evening of kuier, wine and braai (with homemade malva pudding and custard for dessert!) on what turned out to be a beautiful evening, with things only really drawing to a close well past 22:00 (if that sounds early, remember, we all have kids!), and Sanette and Ruth opting to sleep over instead of making the trip over the mountain to get back home.
As for us, it was also a first because little Jessie who had been a real star on the night and a favourite amongst the girls, had been allowed to go to sleep in one of the rooms at the guest house, meaning that after we had cleared everything away and locked up for the night, we had to pick her up, take her down the steps, get her in the car, and then put her into her cot back at home, all without waking her! Which, by the way we did, meaning that from here on out, we now that the green light for late night visits with the friends again! :)
As I mentioned earlier, Sunday was to be a day without power, and so I was rudely awoken at 06:00 when the power supply was cut, thanks to Jessica’s baby monitor going off its head. With no real options in terms of warm breakfast available to Jessie and I, except for her milk bottles which we had prepared the evening before (wow, flasks are far more efficient than what I thought), the two of us decided to join Chantelle, and her guests for breakfast, enjoying some tasty toasted cheese sarmies with coffee for me, and steaming hot Cerelac porridge for Jessie! (Gas cooking. Pretty damn useful at times.)
Having cleverly thought this out after having received the notice from the Municipality earlier during the week, I had made the call to alleviate our potential boredom on the day by organising a Lotter and Montgomery clan get together at the guest house for a braai (yes, another one), and so after a lengthy morning period at the guest house helping a guest transfer music to her knock-off MP3 player, I eventually slipped out to Pick n Pay to restock up on the braai necessities, before taking a couple of minutes to do some blogging on the laptop in the hopes that Chantelle wouldn’t notice that I had left Jessica fast asleep at the guest house in her care! (Just joking, it was planned. Kind of. I think. Oh, and another thing. My damn laptop’s back light blew in the process! Could definitely have done without that.)
Anyway, it wasn’t long before it was back to guest house and straight into battle with wet wood and loads of charcoal, apron tied tightly around my waist and my red tongs in the hand! The full strength Montgomery clan was with us (in other words Monty, Cheryl and Robert), as was the Lotter clan (sans Claire and Riley would couldn’t make it, meaning the tally included Mom, Pops and Ryan), with the Lotters having arrived in Ryan’s shiny new silver VW Polo Vivo he had just taken into possession off the showroom floor that very week!
Again we enjoyed a fabulous afternoon of catching up, drinking wine (for most of us) and playing with Jessica, after which we enjoyed the braai (which came out well again, much to my relief), followed by some leftover malva pudding and ice-cream from the previous evening to round the meal off!
In the end the two sets of folks stuck around for basically the whole day (the power was only scheduled to come back on after 18:00), with Ryan, Pops and myself even venturing out on the beach to catch the sunset on what had actually turned out to be a fabulous sunny day after a rather gloomy start – which was of course just as well seeing as there wasn’t any electricity to keep us happy had it been a shitty day all the way through! :P
Back home for Jessie and I, and the rest of the evening was again dedicated to putting Jessie down whilst watching Avengers, before the tedious grind of finishing up for the weekend and getting ready for Monday kicked in once more. Horrible as always, but certainly not enough to spoil what was a fantastic weekend of friends and family, that’s for sure! :)
Ahem, if you want to see the rest of the pictures, check out the photo gallery here!