Expected no less

 There are probably very few people in this world that can say they were issued 3 passports in 1 day but our S is now one of them.   

9am Wednesday- dad headed out to pick up our long awaited passport. Passport in hand, Yeh!?  When going over the details there were 2 MAJOR typos! One of them being his first name! The other his town of birth.   The High Commission said that they SHOULD be able to reissue his passport within a couple hours.  

12pm-We get notice that S's passport has been reissued and we can pick it up.  Off dad goes again to the office.  When asked to double check the information yet again, low and behold, S's name had been rectified but NOT his town of birth.  This time dad waited the 45+ in office while they, for the 3rd time, reissued S's passport.  

2pm - finally had S's complete, correct passport in hand!  4 hours to spare before heading to the airport for our 11 hour flight from Joberg to Amsterdam.  

Nothing has come easy for us this trip so we really expected no less in the passport department. 

While I write this we are in the midst of our horrible 7 hour layover in Amsterdam.  For those of you who have not experienced long layovers they are the thing nightmares are made of but really at this point we feel we have experienced alot and this is just a hiccup in the road.  We are now about10 hours away from landing back in Canada.

We couldn't have asked for much better on the 11 hour flight from Joberg to Amsterdam.  All stayed awake for our midnight departure and then within minutes of take off the youngest 3 were fast asleep and able to put in 7-8 hours worth of "nighttime" rest.  We have parked ourselves at the back of the plane for both flights which give S the area at the back to wander should he be awake and want to roam.

We have been through the Amsterdam airport before and had relatively fond memories of the child activities to keep them busy.  They are now all gone.  Even on our way through in January they had at least one structure.  It is now fenced off and gone.  Apparently play is "verboden" at the airport now. . .

About half a day to go in this journey and we should be "home" for good!  Hallelujah!  As this will mark the 8th move for us in the last 9 weeks it is time for S to begin to understand the stability and reality of our real home!  

Play is "Verboden" even in an empy space?

Watching the planes

Hanging with my bro

Passport issued! But not in hand yet

 We were informed this morning that the Canadian High Commission was still awaiting  approval from Canada to print S's passport.  They would send Canada a reminder of the urgency as our flights are tomorrow evening and would let us know when the approval came in.

So we did what we have done for alot of the last 9 weeks.....We waited....and prayed....and waited some more....and prayed for patience. . . and distracted the kids(and ourselves)...went for cappuccinos. . . and continued to wait. .  .

Finally at 3pm this afternoon we got the email that permission had been given from the Canadian side for the High Commission to go ahead with S's passport.  By 4pm we had notice that it had been printed and we can pick it up tomorrow morning.  Yeh!!!  Nothing like cutting it close! 

So tomorrow morning dad will go and pick up the passport.  There will be a collective sigh of relief once it is in hand and we are fully travel ready for our 23:59 flight out of Johannesburg.  It has been a long haul but the end is in sight.  

We continue to try to pass the time and the kids all chose to go ice skating.  A mall 15 minutes away has an ice rink with open skate for most of the day.  Google says there are only 9 ice rinks in the country of South Africa.  The kids spent 2 hours in horribly uncomfortable, incredibly dull skates teaching a bunch of adults who have never tried to skate before. S thought it was hilarious.   There was a lot of fun had by all! Really, what else would a bunch of Canadians do stuck in South Africa for over 9 weeks?

Teaching S to bowl

Ice skating!  E may say the best 2 hours of our trip!

Early introduction to some cold

His current swimming pool.

Pretoria

 We made it to our Pretoria destination Wednesday evening by 5:30.   All in all everyone faired okay but we were all more then HAPPY to be out of the vehicle.  Our hosts had dinner waiting for us and beds ready.  What a wonderful welcome.  

We had confirmation S's passport papers arrived at the office by Thursday morning.  On Thursday afternoon the office had already called me as I was the guarantor for the application.  High five to any wife right now who can "physically describe your husband" height, weight, hair colour, eye colour.  Nothing like being put on the spot!   The lady seemed okay with my stuttery slow answers as she said the next call will be when the passport is ready for pick up.   Woohoo! 

We have enjoyed some down days, school days, walks and a trip to a 150 year old touring dairy farm stuck in the middle of the city to pass the time.  

Kids have realized that Canada's safety standards have really hedged on some serious play.   Play grounds and restaurants play places are certainly taken to a new level here.  

Cows coming in for milking

Tractor watching!

Checking out the baby calves.

Hiway stop playplace

Driving their four wheelers.

The "home" stretch

 This morning at 11am the courier came by the house to pick up S's passport applications.  This needs to head to the High Commission in Pretoria where it "should" take about 5-7 business days.  They needed our return flight proof as S flies home on am emergency passport for quick issue.  Our flights are booked for March 8 at 11:59pm.

This is the last official "paperwork" job required of us and boy, did it feel good!  Dad will have to pick up the passport when it is ready.  Apparently you can only do that between the hours of 9-10am Monday- to Friday.  

Tomorrow we plan to leave this house as soon as we are up and make the 6.5 hour drive to Pretoria.  We have family friends there that have a small flat they have booked off for us.  It may be a long week in tighter quarters but we can tour the area a bit and make the best of it.  We appreciate the hospitality and it puts us closer to passport pick up and takes a short leg off the trip home.  At this point anything that puts us closer to home brings a smile to everyone's face.

Longest S has done in the car is an hour and he was not a fan after the first 20 minutes.  Will be pulling out all the tricks and stopping when needing too but keep us in your prayers tomorrow as we make the long 650km road trip.

Watching the lawnmower with dad.  S loves anything with a motor.

E found a snail! 

FINALLY!!!!

 It is with great joy that we can finally say S is a Canadian Citizen!!!!

Praise the Lord!!  

Today was very long day for us, as we waited, emailed, called, emailed again in hopes that our papers were not just lost on someones desk.  Visions of having to fill EVERYTHING in again and waiting longer, changing flights, entertaining children ALL vanished in one email that came at 3:20pm this afternoon.  

There will be some filling out of paperwork tonight, printing off official documents in the morning and a courier pick up will happen at 11pm to file for S's passport which, if all goes well will be ready for our flight home Wednesday, March 8 at 11:59pm. 

There will be some restful sleep here tonight!

 

Enough is enough!

 

Friday has come and gone and we still have not had any word on S's Canadian Citizenship. . .This now makes us the longest family on record waiting for a response as the standard is 30 days maximum for it to be granted.  Monday marks 31 days.  This is not a prize we are happy to be awarded. 

While we are still coping well and S continues to be a joyous addition the adults are growing weary and REALLY missing home.  I asked the kids what they missed the most from home and it varied from activities(sports, choir, groups) but mostly they missed playdates with family and friends.   9 weeks is a very long time to be away from home.  

I miss hydro.  Predictable, consistent hydro.

I miss my own coffee.  

I miss doing groceries once a week NOT every 2 days(E can vouch for this one too).  Though dad does now have a better perspective of just how much a family of 6 eats.  With load shedding it doesn't pay to have a lot of groceries in the fridge as we never know when the hydro will be off for a longer time and it is not worth the chance of spoilage.  

I miss our toys and a child safe space to play them.  We have a handful here but S is at the building, driving stage and duplo, train tracks are more his game.    

I miss knowing when the kids ask what this bug bite might be from having some idea what bug bit them(the bugs are something else!).   I miss less bugs in the house(because when your husband jumps out of bed due to a cockroach the size of your big toe landing on him it's hard to fall back asleep).   The kids are not even fazed anymore by the house geckos(I am told they are NOT lizards).  I have removed centipedes and slugs over 5 inches long, horned beatles, dragonflies and we don't even bother with the ants anymore.  Misquitos and sand fleas ate Z alive at the beach houses.  We have had the pleasure of catching a large locust(which are rare for this area).

We are still grateful and blessed and know that God is faithful in ALL things.  BUT we are all very ready to come home. . .

Praying that Monday will be the day that S is made a Canadian and we can mentally prepare for the last week(s) here.  

Locust, at least 3 inches in length.

Boys at the arcade, cause what else is there to do?

Made another good bye visit to S's baby home.  He was happy to see his old friends!

Some type of tropical frog?

 

D's photo of more locust, I think?

A SMALL cockroach

Why not us?

 At this point it feels like we sent S's Canadian Citizenship documents into thin air.  We have proof they were received on January 27 and haven't heard anything since that date.   Our representative here say on average they see a response in 2 weeks.  Only 2 other times that she can recall did it take 28 and 30 days respectively for families to be granted their child's citizenship.  

As frustrating as this is for us why not us?  We know families that travel with just the parents leaving any of their other childen in Canada.  I couldn't imagine being stuck here for 9 weeks being seperated as a family.  We are all together and continue bond and adjust to our new little one.  

We are also blessed with flexible employment(we still hope😊).  Though nothing about this situation is ideal we at least know that dad's job will be there when he gets home.  Not all others that have travelled here can extend their work "vacation" indefinitely should they get stuck here for as long as we have been.  

We homeschool or shall we call it "travel school".  We don't open books nearly as much as we would at home but the kids are learning alot about life, culture and so many new bugs and creatures.  There is no "catching up" to be had for them as they aren't missing classes at home. 

Our prayer will be that we are the only ones for a LONG time that has to wait SOOO long for their citizenship and we can count this as a blessing to all those that travel after us.  

We spent a busy couple of days in Salt Rock Beach.  This was filled with Ping Pong matches, a mall trip, wave jumping at the beach with amazing surfers to watch and a trip to a Game Reserve. The Game Reserve was gifted to us by the lovely owner of the Beach house who "just wanted the kids to take some African Bush home with them".  

We returned "home" to the trampoline house Sunday afternoon.  This place is another blessing to us as the owners are here doing some repairs and so had it closed to bookings for most of the month.  When we left earlier they had said we would be welcome to share the property if we still needed a place to stay.  They are in a smaller apartment and we have claimed the large house again.  Their 6 year old son greeting E with a monsterous hug.

E has been met with a bought of swimmers ear.  Thankfully the lady here had drops on hand as they missed the cut in my medicine bag.  We have been treating with oils and Polysporin and seems to be headed in the right direction.  Please pray it doesn't resolve into anything more.  Nothing like telling a 6 year old boy to stay out of the water on the hottest day we have experienced here so far.  

Monday's forecast

Giraffe, up close and personal

Impala, lots of them

Surf's up! That's Z and E in the bottom corner.

AND Still NO Citizenship. . .

Today we were to fly home.  This gave us well over 6 weeks in country to accomplish all the paperwork with which we thought should have been ample time and then some to spare.  It is not so. . .

By midnight last night we HAD to change our flight home date and as we still have no Citizenship we really had to pick a new date blind.  We had our lovely travel agent simply pick a date within our weeks of possibly being paper ready with the lowest change fare.  Our return flight is now schedule for Wed March 8. . .over 3 weeks away.  The blessing of this date is that is does leave room for S's CIT to take 30 days with room still for 7 day passport.  Anything earlier will just be a surprise.  D said the other day that "it feels like we are just kind of wondering in the wilderness or something".  Does a little bit.  

Today will be spent planning out the next couple weeks and continually checking our phone for that awaited email saying that S is finally a Canadian.  We will all breathe a sigh of relief when we finally have it in hand.

The lovely home we are in was prebooked for the weekend so we need to relocate as of Thursday.  The trampoline home is available again as of Sunday so we have simply had to find a "filler" home for 3 nights.  We will head 30 minutes up the highway to a place on Salt Lake beach.  This one entails a pingpong table and outdoor firepit; will see if it lives up to the pictures.  I am continually glad we all micro packed as this packing and unpacking has become a bit of a science. 

We have had the pleasure of worshiping in 2 different churches since being here.  In both of them this song has been sung.  It has become a bit of our family anthem and wanted to share.  The no English section is Zulu, S's background.  Even with all these delays, changes, costs we are reminded of how blessed we are each and everyday.  Click link below:

 Come Holy Spirit(Uthando)

Learned about the tide and saw it in action!

Played in alot of sand(and took pants full home😝)

Started a large shell collection

Visited a rescue farm, introduced S to cows.  He has mastered the "moo" already.

SA version of a splash pad. 3 waterslides.  Awesome!

Z dinner date(not by choice)

And still no Canadian Citizenship, so lets head to the beach!

Friday marks 2 weeks of waiting for S's Canadian Citizenship.  With the delay in court documents this means our planned flight home of Febuary 14 is now officially out of reach. If you told me a year ago that we would be spending almost the 1st 2 month of 2023 in SA I would never have beleived you! We are now in the process of changing return flights, extending vehicle rental, finding new places to stay, letting all parties know that need to that we are in SA for an undetermined longer amount of time.  

The quandry at this point is we do not know when to reschedule flights for.  Should our paperwork take the LONGEST possible we would not really be ready to fly until March 8.  AAHHH!  I am not sure that has ever happened but am too afraid to ask  The easiest solution to this is that we have S's CIT by Monday when we would need to officially change our flights.  This would give us the ability to add the 7 days for passport and have a realistic date to base the change off of.  Please pray that that is the case!

D says we will have S's CIT by the end of the week for sure.  

Z says we might as well buy a farm here, make some new friends and start a new life.  LOL.  

E is just living the dream until we make him do something horrible like go to bed at night or come along on a family grocery trip.  

We have now moved again.  We had booked the last house until the 7th being hopeful we would have plans to head home.  The kids have been asking to spend some time at the beach and one can't be 10 minutes away from an ocean and not spend some time there when it works.  We have been blessed again with a very spacious, well equipped home 5 minutes from the ocean with a lovely host.  We are booked here until Sunday but can extend into next week as it is available.  

The view from our new kitchen

E living the dream

Indoor/outdoor living at it's best

Waves have been crazy big!

Found him the biggest sandbox we could

Another week gone by

At this point we are just putting in time.  Trying to find a balance between getting out and experiencing the country but not daily entertaining ourselves so we get used to staying "busy".  When I look back on the week we were actually very busy!

We went on a 5km waterfall hike at Giba Gorge Mountain Bike Park.  The Giba Gorge is an extremely large nature reserve area and this section was trailed with waterfalls, dirt bike jumps and double black diamond mountain bike trails.  E was wishing he had brought his bike.  

Horses we met on the trail.

We finally made it to Ushaka Wet and Wild to the joy of E and Z.  We spent the entire day going up and down water slides and they could have continued for hours more.  D also tried her hand at a number of them and said they weren't that bad.  The beauty of a water park in South Africa is that there are very limited rules.  Everything posted is really just a guideline.  There was barely any waiting as you can simply slide down right after the person in front of you.  No waiting until they are at the bottom and out of the way.  We did our best to explain to the kids that a Canadian waterpark experience would not be the same.  

S got in on some of the action as there was a large 6 person tube slide we could all go on together.  The kid area was full of a large slash pad and 4 medium size kids slide that we enjoyed together. 

A large pool with beach in the background.

Great child area!

Adam did there largest slide once!

The monkeys almost need their own post.  At our last home we didn't see much of them in large part I think do to the dogs around but here we keep ourselves on gaurd at all times.  They have taken food right off our table when we aren't paying attention.  They break into the chicken coup and steal the eggs.  They come in hoards and try to get in the windows.  At points when there are so many we just head indoors and wait them out.  Blah!

They have no real fear of people.

They will sit and wait to see if we have food.

We also spent a day at the hair salon!  D wanted her hair redone and you can not beat the speed or the cost factor here.  Z also was convinced to have hers done.  This was her first hair dresser experience and she said it hurt "alot more then when my mom does it".   Saves me a ton of time at home.  Z's hair was done in about 3 hours. D took over 6.  S and I just hung out and watched for the day. He was content to walk about, play and see things.  We sent dad and E back to the house as hanging out in a hair salon for an entire day was not their idea of a good time. 

Z half done corn rows

D chose knotless braids with curly ends.

Finally Court documents have arrived!

Thursday our court documents were finally in hand.  A week later then expected but finally here.  We had the Citizenship forms, supporting documents and photos all ready to go so it was sent off the same day.  

In addition to this application being sent the Citizenship offices requires proof of a number of applications filed with the South Africa government.  Name change, new Birth Certificates etc.  I have never had the pleasure of experiencing this part of the process as Adam always just went to the office of Home Affairs on his own but this time they were requiring mothers fingerprints and signatures as well.  So on Friday at noon we warned the kids this would NOT be a fun trip and we may have to wait a LONG time and off we went to the office.  

When we arrived the place was fairly packed.  We waited and then Adam handed in all the forms.  We waited a good while more, moved seats and filled in a form for our ink fingerprints.  We waited some more and then were in a group called into the office, waited some more and then had our ink fingerprints completed.  We were then told we needed a photo to go on our fingerprint page.  

This fancy business is parked just out front!

5 minutes and your photos are done😁

So outside the building we went, with all 4 kids, to this lovely establishment and had our photos in hand within 5 minutes.  Oh my!  We often just laugh about some of the things we experience because you would have to see it to believe it!

We then proceeded back into the building to wait again.  We paid the fees, were handed a receipt for documents filed(which is all we really needed) and finally were able to leave.  The entire experience took about 2 hours which considering a large number of the people in the building were lined up first thing in the morning and were still there waiting is really not that bad.  

Our representative here tries to prep us as much as possible but as the process is so dependent on who is behind the desk there are often additions and subtractions.  I asked the couple who were here just previous to us if they had to have a photo taken and they did not?  Always a mystery!  Just adds to the overall experience.  

We then emailed copies of these receipt to the Citizenship office so they have proof we filed them. 

Mathematically speaking we need to see S Citizenship granted sometime next week or we are looking at bumping our flights.  Praying it is so!  but ready to be flexible should that not be in God's plan.  

Kids are still enjoying themselves (Home Affairs was not their favorite) but we followed up with a milkshake at Wimpy's to make it more pleasurable. We do our best to get out every couple days to help pass the time and really experience the area we are in.  

Cargo ship watching on the Indain ocean

Ushaka Marine World