We Went On Holiday. Also, There Were Ducks!

Is it too late to tell you about our awesome holiday a couple of weeks ago?  I know, I know.  Bad blogger, but you know what I was sick and also, I’m not a slave to my blog.  (OK I totally am)

For our 6 year anniversary we spent the weekend at Houw Hoek Inn.  We just keep going back to this place despite our one terrible holiday experience there a while back.  But, can you really blame us for coming back?  It’s amazing there – see for yourself!

Do you believe me now?  Pretty cool huh.  Whenever we go to Houw Hoek, we always say that we are going to go to the ducks.  I think it’s an easy way for them to remember it.  They love the heck out of those ducks.

The whole reason that we went up there in the first place is that Seth’s parents had taken the girls with them the night before (for us to be able to go out for a celebration dinner on our own – so sweet!), so we had to go up and fetch them.  Then we thought we might as well stay!  Actually we thought about staying for the rest of the time before we left, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to pack the whole house into the car and survive in the “wild”.

So we drove up on the Thursday which was made a holiday in South Africa just for our wedding anniversary.  Yip, South Africa loves us so much it made our special day a holiday.  OK who am I kidding…  But it really is a holiday – it’s Human Rights Day in South Africa and that makes our celebration even sweeter, cos without our human rights we wouldn’t have been able to be married in this country, oh say 20 years ago!  So glad that’s over with.

Anyway, back to the holiday.  We had to stop for our traditional “we’re on a road trip” breakfast at Wimpy.  Do you have a stop like that on your roadtrips?  Normally this is swiftly followed up with some “padkos” (or food for the road for you none Saffers) from Woolies, but we’re healthy now so we skipped that bit.  (Despite what our greasy burger and farmhouse breakfast would suggest – but it was the first burger/bad food that Seth had had all year!)  Yay us!

Once we got there I felt the stress melt away.  Or that could be my sanity.  I’m not sure which.  The kids were a bit crazy, but it was fun nevertheless.  That Friday, Seth still had to work, leaving me in this foreign place all alone with our brood.  Terrified is kind of an understatement about how I felt being left alone with the kids that wanted to be in a thousand different places at once.  We managed to get through the day, even with running around like headless chickens and being chased by a bee who seemed to have a strange obsession with my camera.  Tired is how I felt afterwards, because it was crazy hectic but we all survived.

Have I mentioned that Riya is potty training?!  (I don’t know why I haven’t – it’s pretty much taken over our lives, I don’t think I’ve met anyone that needs to go to the loo that much!)  Well that is how we spent much of the holiday.  So I feel like I need to tell you about this very special toilet that we had to visit oh, every 15 minutes or so…  So this is the toilet…  Snazzy hey!  I think it could be around from the original days of the inn, like 1850 or something.  And even in all that time I don’t think it was ever used as often as it was by these little bums this weekend.  I almost moved our stuff in there to sleep on the floor we were there so often.

It was really nice to spend some time away with the kids and with Ga and Papa (they also stayed on till the Saturday morning)!  The girls really loved it.  And let’s be honest here, I was so grateful to have some extra hands when Knox was crying, Riya needed the toilet and Kyla was screaming because she wanted to go to the park (on the Friday while Seth was at work that is).

Once Seth parents left on the Sat morning things started to kind of go downhill – the weather turned cold for starters (but truthfully I kind of wanted that because there are awesome fireplaces in all the rooms).  But anyway, we also went to Hermanus for the day, went for lunch – the food was still frozen and when they finally heated it properly Riya vomited it all up.  Then all the shops closed and we had to go back to the Inn.  As we pulled up in the parking spot Riya wee’d all over her seat…

You see what I mean?  So we got over it and we moved to a new room for the night.  We all got into our pajamas, made a big fire and went to sleep.  Although I think Seth may have stayed up to watch Spiderman 2, which is like totally worth it and all.

In the morning the fire had died, but I kept hearing noises coming from the fireplace.  I assumed it was just the coals settling themselves now that the fire had died.  Seth was convinced that there was a bird stuck in there.  A flipping bird!  So we called the guys in but they didn’t find anything so we went to breakfast.

Kyla had been complaining about a sore tummy and while I was taking Riya to the bathroom, she vomited all over herself.  Thankfully it was just a cough-induced vomit so it wasn’t too hectic and I think we managed to do it quite inconspicuously despite being in a crowded room full of people.  She managed to eat a little bit but just minutes later, it was all over the floor, all over her and all over me.  Again no one seemed to notice.  Thank goodness.  We had it all almost cleaned up when suddenly there was a loud smash and the room went quiet.  I looked up to see that Riya (despite being told a gazillion times not to) had been holding her glass in her hands and had let it fall by mistake.  This time there were about a hundred eyes on us as we turned red and ran out of the room.

Back in the room, the bird was now tweeting with gusto.  We called the guys back and the kids and I sat on the bed while Seth loaded the car full of our crap.  The bird exterminator guy left quickly to go and get a torch and obviously this is the time that the bird took its chance to escape.  And when you’re a bird and you’re escaping, it totally makes sense to fly towards the people in the room and not towards the open door on the other side of the room.  I screamed like a little girl and then Riya screamed like a little girl and almost fell off the bed trying to scramble towards me, she could possibly even have kicked Knox who was now also crying.  Kyla just stared, blank faced at this bird now sitting on the window in front of us.  Just then it flew into the bathroom so I got up as fast as my scared little legs could carry me and I slammed the bathroom door.  Shew!  The bird-man came back just after that, waltzed into the bathroom, grabbed the bird (in his hand!) and left.  Just like that.  In case you didn’t notice – I don’t like birds.  I still shudder just thinking about it.

So on that note we left.

I must say though, that all in all it was a really lovely holiday.  The cellphone reception is a bit dodgy so it really forced us to spend that time together and not “together but looking at our phones all the time”.

I was going to share all the photo’s that the girls took, but I think I will leave that to tomorrow because they deserve their own post and not to get lost in the bulk of this ridiculously long and already photo heavy post!  (On that note, do you read these kind of long posts or do you just look at the pictures?)

This is a couple more of the photo’s that we took…