Snow!

We would not have guessed that moving to South Africa we would experience snow in the winter.  While it gets pretty cold and windy here, and there is no central indoor heat, snow is pretty rare.  Winter this year has seemed much more mild than last year, or else we have acclimated more than we realized!

In mid-July, we were enjoying a Sunday afternoon pizza picnic with a couple other missionary families.  We turned around to see what all the kids (all boys except one) were doing and discovered they had taken the empty pizza boxes and turned them into sleds!

While the grass sleds were a great discovery, we did get some snow flurries just a couple weeks later, while Aden was at school.  You can almost see the flakes falling if you look closely at the brick wall behind Wiley and Noah . . .

Later, however, after Aden was home and while Noah was napping, the snow started falling harder.  In some areas near us they had a couple of inches of accumulation; we didn't see any stick to the ground at our house, but the boys were thrilled with the adventure of it.

By the time Daddy came home from the office, and everyone else in the city was also coming home cranking up heaters and making dinner, the city power was overloaded.  In a massive load-shed, our power was cut off for several hours.  We weren't able to make dinner, so found a nearby pizza place with a generator and enjoyed a hot meal to help us warm up.  It all became part of the adventure, as the power was off and on through the meal; the boys watched the traffic jams out the windows; and they enjoyed Mommy's latest creation: cardboard building discs to keep them entertained in restaurants and airplanes.  (Click on the image to view full-size.) 

When we arrived back at the complex, there was yet another element of excitement - the backup battery for the gate had died, so we sat outside with about half a dozen other cars waiting to get in until we were able to contact someone who could disconnect and open it manually.  We put all the boys in one bed and piled on duvets and blankets, to help them stay warm.  About the time the boys crawled into bed, the power was restored, but we let them sleep together anyway since we didn't know if the power would go off again in the night.  Thankfully, everyone stayed warm, which made the adventure a positive experience (enough that Aden decided to include the story in his autobiography which he works on from time to time).