I enjoyed a nice break from the PC last weekend, opting not to turn it on for just about the entire weekend – certainly a change from the norm in other words!
Friday evening was a pretty quiet night, with Chantelle working meaning single parent mode for me. Getting Jessica down for the night, a late supper, some Angry Birds with Chantelle and a little FIFA on the Xbox made up the first night of the weekend.
Saturday morning it was up before the break of dawn, hurriedly getting ready for Saret and Francois’ early morning wedding that Chantelle and I were attending out at Klein Joostenberg. Monty and Cheryl had graciously agreed to come through to babysit Jessica, and following their arrival at our pad just before 8:00, Chantelle and I were out of the door and heading through Stellenbosch to reach our target destination.
Of course, it would have helped if we had bothered looking at a map or pulling out the GPS before leaving, instead of blindly relying on Chantelle’s memory of a previous visit years ago (and a quick chat with her dad), because a good 7km or so past the venue (unbeknown to us), out deep in the Cape Winelands, something tugged at Chantelle’s subconscious and she finally succumbed to my pestering about checking the GPS.
Just as well we did, because one u-turn later, we pulled into the parking lot, just on time for what had been the scheduled start time!
Not that it mattered in the end mind you. As a proper bride should act, Saret was indeed well behind schedule and the ceremony started a good three quarters of an hour later than what it should have, meaning we had plenty of time to taking in the stunning view on the farm and surroundings, enjoying ambling on the rolling green lawns, and take in a particularly vicious geese fight that ended in pretty much an explosion of feathers!
As for the wedding itself, it ran flawlessly, with Saret looking amazing in the wedding dress that her mother designed and made for her. The weather turned out perfect, and it was a small, intimate ceremony which Chantelle and I felt quite honoured to be invited to considering the fact that there were so few guests invited – pretty much only family!
The ceremony was followed by the usual photo taking session, before we were finally ushered into the beautifully laid out and decorated reception area, were we partook in a delicious buffet breakfast, took in all the speeches, laughed at a funny video presentation made by good friends who couldn’t be there, and of course tapped our feet to the insanely enjoyable selection of music put on by the excellent music manager for the morning.
The highlight of the morning had to be Francois and Saret’s opening dance though, loads of fun and very, very unexpected! :)
Unfortunately for us though, just as the dance floor was starting to take off, we had to bid farewell because Chantelle had to return for her afternoon shift at work, though not before she had first approached the musician (a bloke called Christiaan, who apparently had done pretty well at the Afrikaans Idols) who had entertained us with his vocals and guitar during the period before the reception in order to buy his CD.
Happily avoiding getting lost on the way home, we made it home, had a quick cup of coffee with Monty and Cheryl, before Chantelle left for work, and the Montgomery Snr. pack returned home to Bellville.
This left Jessica and me home alone, and so we opted to spend the rest of the afternoon and early evening putting together the new flat-pack TV stand we had purchased for the braai room, in order to free up the lounge table so that it can make its way back to the lounge (at last), giving Jessica some more raised surfaces to pull herself along in the process.
The TV stand itself was pretty damn cheap, only R500 on special at Makro, and despite some minor mistakes in their tooling (nothing which my saw and chisel couldn’t fix), Jessica and I got the thing assembled and I’m must admit to being pretty pleased with the results – it fits the space absolutely perfectly!
With that out of the way, it was bed time routine for Jessie, late night supper with Chantelle, and plenty of FIFA on the XBOX to round out the night, with my season as Exeter’s coach progressing quite pleasingly if I say so myself.
Sunday was Jessica and daddy day again and apart from managing to squeeze in a delicious braai (which could actually have happened on the Saturday now that I think about it) and a trip to the mall, the only other thing I can remember achieving on the last day of the weekend was the big room reshuffle, where I successfully managed to empty the big chest of drawers in the study, make space for it in the braai room next to Chantelle’s baking shelf (the one reclaimed from my now rather disorganized shed), and then proceed repack the entire space.
Of course Jessica didn’t like the fact that I again was giving her my full attention for much of the day, though it was pretty cute how she helped me by putting things into the drawers whenever laid down stuff in front of her!
And that was pretty much the weekend as far as I can remember it.
Enjoyable enough then, for one of those single parent weekends I’m not particularly fond of! :)