It's Raining, It's Pouring 10/17

Last night(Friday night), Darin and I headed into Pretoria for a night on the town. We left the kids with Kirsten at 5 and off we went. About 10 minutes into our drive, we could see that we were heading into something other than the sunny and dry weather we've grown used to. The sky was very dark, there was a lot of lightning and it was getting windy. Of course, we kept driving towards the bad weather. We were, after all, headed to Baobob, so we couldn't turn back. We did have some rain while we were driving, but by the time we made it to the restaurant, it was pouring. Thankfully there was a parking garage, so we didn't have to go out in the rain. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner, and yes, Sarah Weeda, I ate a garlic cheese roll for you! We hung out at the mall for a while after we ate. We went to an internet cafe, where I was fortunate enough to be able to chat with my good friends Amy and Pauline. We even did a little shopping, which is fun to do when you are out with no kids. Around 9 we decided to head home. We are becoming such early birds out here in Africa, most likely because at least one of our kids is up between 5:30 and 6 every morning.

It was still pouring when we went out to the car, and the lightning was still flashing. As we got closer to our exit, we were excited to see that the rain had made it to Hammanskraal! It often stays south of this area because of how the land lies and some other reasons too, but I am not a meteorologist, so I don't really know why. When we pulled off the main road, we could see that some large branches had blown off the trees. We also noticed that the guard who now sits at the entrance to our road (because of more game being released, I believe) was sitting in his little wood shack in total darkness, which we thought was very strange, until we realized the power was out. We drove up to our gate and could see that Kirsten had lit some lanterns. When we got to the house, she said the power had only been out about 20 minutes, but Tyson had insisted she get the lanterns ready when the storm first started a couple hours earlier. She had no problem getting Jori to bed, but Tyson did not like the thunder and lightning and tried to convince Kirsten that he should sleep on the sofa. She didn't let him, but it did take her two hours to convince him to stay in bed. That's my boy!
Anyways, when we got up this morning, we still didn't have any power. Our water was running very slowly because without power the pumps don't work. We all kind of sat around, and I eventually went back to bed, because getting up a little after 5 in the morning does not really work for me. Around 10, the power finally came back on. At least it came back on in half of our house. All of our bedrooms are still without power, and the water pumps are still not working. Darin and Mark Harding are outside right now trying to figure out what's going on. I don't mind the lack of electricity, although our kids do miss their sound machine. I am not so keen on the whole water issue. Thankfully the tanks were full to begin with, so we are getting water, just not very quickly. Just another day in Africa.