With Grandad, Sue and the dawgs

Seems like a lot longer than a week ago that we stepped off St Helena onto the ferry which carried us away to the ship – much has happened since then! Our first order of business today, and we had been anticipating that this would be a stressful and tiresome event, was to renew our drivers’ licences and apply for temporary ones so we wouldn’t have to abuse our obliging chauffeurs. My dad drove Nick and me to the licensing department in Randburg which was blissfully quiet today, especially so early in the morning. We had no queues to wait in as we filled out forms, had our eyes tested, thumbprints taken, and even only a minor wait at the cashier’s window to pay and then our temporaries were issued immediately. We could only say thank you to the Lord for the smoothness of the operation – what we had thought might take hours was over in about half an hour. After that it was off to Northgate with my mom and the boys as well, where we needed to buy a SIM card and airtime for cellphone usage, and sort out some banking. Didn’t get too far with getting connected since there is a new security thing here and all numbers have to be registered (RICA’d). Also ran out of time re. the banking as we joined my folks for a long-awaited Wimpy outing. Went directly from there to Tony and Sue where the boys had their fourth, no fifth, Christmas this year (last night when we got home there were Christmas presents from Raymond and Lara waiting for us all). Tony thoroughly spoiled them with waterproof digital cameras and a whole pile of other gifts – wow! Spent the afternoon with them where I made up for Nick’s ban on any shopping at Northgate by taking Sue to Cresta shopping mall where we wandered around and tried things on. It was so much fun to hit the shops with my (sort of) “stepmom-in-law”! Meanwhile, the boys had been trying out their cameras in the pool and playing with some other things, and Nick had been playing around with a film camera – now a new acquisition for him from his dad, along with hotshoe flashes and a lens or two. We stayed on for supper (always a pleasure to experience Sue’s highly developed culinary skills) and came home after pudding.