Passport paperchase!

Another glorious weekend has trickled away from us! After a good week at work, I took Friday off in order to get my application for a new SA passport sorted out. The wise decision makers in the upper echelons of Home Affairs have decided that one can no longer renew your SA passport, but you need to reapply for for a new passport every time it expires! This means that I must now get each fingerprint taken for my application. Even the officials at the police station that I had my prints taken at, couldn't believe the lengths I had to go to for "renewing" my SA passport!!! Once submitted I have to sit back and wait for up to six months to get my new passport! You gotta love bureaucracy!

On Friday, I was also privileged enough to go watch Nathan at the "Little Gym". Here he gets together with other children his age, and they have an organized fun time. They play games, and sing songs, and even learn a little bit about gymnastics! It is always good to see him interacting with other children!

On Saturday, I headed to Cleveland State University for my last Saturday class. When I got home at 4pm, Nathan was waiting for me and his first words after I walked in the door were, "Dada, swings and slides?" How can you deny a request like that? So we all headed out to the playground where he just loves spending as much time as possible!

Sunday was a stunning day with temps reaching 25C and not a breath of wind! After church we headed to a local park with a picnic lunch and a newly acquired kite! After letting Nath play on the slides for a bit, we had our lunch, and then tried to launch the new kite - unsuccessfully! There wasn't even enough of a breeze to tickle the tails of the kite - let alone launch it into the atmosphere!

Later that afternoon, Nathan and I made another trip to Huntington beach! The sky was so clear and the water looked so inviting as it reflected the sky off its surface. However the 6C temperature quickly convinces you that looks can be deceiving! But it was still great fun for Nathan to throw whatever he could into the Lake!

After dinner, Nathan took Liesel in search of the local resident ducks in our neighborhood ponds, as the sun is only setting these days around 8:30pm! So Nathan definitely had his fair share of the outdoors this weekend!

C'mon SUMMER!

What a beautiful week we had, weatherwise! Spring is finally underway. The is rising around 6:30am accompanied by the songs of a colorful assortment of birds, and sets after 8pm. This allows us to eat dinner at 6pm and still have time to go to a playground afterwards and let Nathan exhaust his energy reserves. Or if it's not the playground, it walking to the neighborhood pond for some duck-spotting and pebble tossing! Life is good!

This week our house formally passed all inspections so the final paperwork is being drawn up for us. On Saturday, I am still attending a programming class at Cleveland State University. Sunday was probably the hottest day of the year so far and I took Nathan to Huntington Beach. It seemed the entire Cleveland western suburb population felt that this was a great day to go to the beach, and we had to park in the overflow parking! The water is still far too cool to swim in (around 5C) but there were hundreds of people lying on the beach, strolling on the waters edge, or jogging and cycling on the pathways. Nathan and I headed straight to the sand to make sand castles, but this superseded by throwing things sticks into Lake Erie! A bit later, we headed off to our bible study, but made a pitstop at our local McDonalds for dinner. The reason we chose McDonald was not for their high quality dishes, but rather the fact that they have a huge kiddies area complete with a tunnel system that Nathan seems to love. He may even be a spelunker in the making, judging by his enthusiasm for crawling around and exploring the maze of tunnels. His confidence is growing minute by minute and he is taking up more and more challenges, which is amazing to watch as a parent!

Tomorrow I plan to try and sort out my forms for the renewal of my South African Passport, so that I won't have any problems during our planned vacation to South Africa at the end of this year!

Home inspection!

Today we had our home inspection done, and the house passed with flying colors. There were a few minor things that need to be sorted out - but nothing that I would consider a dealbreaker!!! So God-willing, in 4 months and 2 days time, we will be starting to move into the house! I took a lot of photos and put them into a slideshow below - enjoy the sneak peek!

Sneak peek at our new house!

Nathan's fear of heights being conquered

Look at my Video Blog to see Nathan's conquering the highest slide inj the playground!

Back to Africa ......... and Back to School

This week was a sad one as we had to say goodbye to Liesel's parents on Tuesday, as their 10 day visit had drawn to a close :( We were very blessed to have them share Easter with us, but even more, to have them see our new house first hand! They left with suitcases full of happy memories, and also left their grandson with more self-confidence! During their visit to the local playground, Nathan graduated from the 3 ft high slides, to the largest slide in the park! It must be about 10 ft tall, and this has now become his number one passion at the playground, even more so than his former favorite, the swing! Now Nathan runs with reckless abandon to the top slide and turns onto his stomach and slides down feet first shouting "Wheeeee!"

Other news this week, was that Liesel and I went to sign the papers for our house on Monday evening, and I arranged the mortgage on Tuesday! There is something really satisfying when you look at your dream house on the Internet and the words "In Contract" are stamped across the images (and knowing that you are the reason for those words)! Now we just have to wait 4 more months until we can move in........ sigh :(

On Saturday, instead of looking at houses, I was sitting in a lecture at Cleveland State University! My company has paid for me to attend a computer programming course scheduled for 3 Saturdays. Fortunately I have been given Monday's off. This Monday I am having our house inspected. The home inspector said that he should take 3 hours and I am looking forward to seeing the home again! Home inspections are required to ensure that there is nothing serious wrong with the house you are buying, and if there is, the seller will need to fix whatever is found - before we move in! That's all my news for this week, however, I keep checking back as I may update the blog with new photos and let you all know how the home inspection went!

The real meaning of Easter!

John 3:16 (New International Version)


"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

It's that simple!

I have uploaded a video on my video blog site . This is all about the ministry that Liesel's dad has started in Botswana, to deal with the terrible HIV/AIDS epidemic there.

"I'm dreaming of a White.... Easter"

Mother Nature seems to have misplaced her Meds again. Monday and Tuesday this week, gave Liesel's parents false hope of warm spring days ahead. On Tuesday we even experienced a record high of 27C. 24 hours later, we experienced a sprinkle of snow,
as predicted. The snow has since then not let up since then, and for Easter Sunday, I would say at least 8 inches of snow was waiting to be brushed off the car this morning!



This week, Nathan and his grandparents spent as much time as possible bonding! Its not just any grandparent who would bring Nathan a ride-on scooter from South Africa in their luggage! He is loving every moment he has with them and it will be really sad to see them leave on Tuesday :(
The week has also been unbelievably busy, which makes it seem to fly by. Liesel has shown her folks as much of the area as she could. They have been to playgrounds, libraries, shops, beaches and different neighborhoods. On Thursday, she had arranged for our realtor to take us to a house that I had seen earlier, but Liesel and her folks had not. We saw the house and everyone was very impressed with it! So we decided to put an offer in right then and there! The realtor told my in-laws that 3 other offers had gone into this house and none were accepted as the seller refused to drop his price by $2000! A lot of prayer went up for this house, and on Saturday morning, on our way to Detroit, the Realtor phoned and said that they had dropped their price by $7000. I accepted the counter offer and am now pleased to present our new house to you!



The seller really appreciated how flexible we were with the move in date, as they were building another house that would only be ready in the middle of August. We said that we would wait, and that means that the seller would save by not having to look for temporary housing between moving out of this house, and into their new house. So my colleague Brian can relax for a few months before he needs to help us move in August!

On Friday we drove to Detroit to spend some time with Liesel's uncle. This would also be the first time Liesel's mom would have seen her brother in 3 years, as well as another sister. On Friday night, Liesel's uncle took us to their church's Easter Friday production. It was so professionally done and very moving. The duet at the end summed up the whole experience, Jesus' blood never fails me!
We had a great time with the family there and Nathan loved playing with the other children there. He even took part in his very first Easter Egg hunt on Saturday, and I must say he got quite a collection of chocolate that he will be forced to share with me ;-) We drove back on Saturday afternoon, into Cleveland's winter wonderland!

On Easter Sunday, we headed for Church, and Norman and Gabi could experience one of our worship services! It was a fantastic service, with the highlight being the Handel's Hallelujah chorus performed by the choir at the end of the service! That afternoon, we decided to give Nathan some more practice at finding Easter Eggs (read finding calories for his dad). This time round he was much better and quicker, and I think he will be able to hold his own for next year's hunt ;-) After that I took Liesel's aprents out for a drive to see if we could get some successful sledding in, and then driving along side the same lake that they were walking in on Tuesday! The sledding was not too successful, but the drive to find good photographic opportunities turned out well! Here is one of Norman's photos:


And that concludes our wonderful week! Happy Easter!

1 year and counting

In all the excitement from this weekend, I forgot to mention a very important milestone in the McCarthy household! This past friday marked our 1 year anniversary of landing on US soil! Looking back over the year, it is amazing to see how God provided for us throughout this time! We can truly say we have lacked nothing!

The USA does feel like home to us and that this is where we belong! Now, what better way to celebrate, than with some South African chocolates that Liesel's parents brought along with them! Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Aero...........

God is good => life is good!

Gogo and Oupa have landed!

It's Sunday night and after a quick excursion to the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, we finally have Liesel's parents safely in our living room! It's wonderful having family here with you, because there is so much that we want to share and show our loved ones! These opportunities are very few and far between! But now we have 10 days to share with Nathan's Gogo (grandmother) and Oupa (grandfather)!

Living in Cleveland really is something that you can't really explain to other people, unless they experience it for themselves. Take for example this coming week, currently the temperatures are between 20C - 25C. So you would think that we are well on our way into Spring, but alas, our forecast for Thursday has snow for us with negative temperatures again. That's the beauty of Cleveland! You never know what to expect. On the bright side, Liesel's parents from Botswana (where temps are often above 40C (100F) will get to see snow for the first time in a very long time!

On Saturday morning, Liesel was off to an early start and went off to a neighborhood resale, and came back with some more toys for Nathan at ridiculously low prices! The boys went shopping again! That afternoon we drove around looking at houses (most of which were way out of our price range :-( ), and made a quick stop at the grocery store and got ourselves the Happy Feet to watch later that evening!

On Sunday, we headed to Church, which was beautifully decorated for Palm Sunday. Afterwards we had lunch and then went to go look at yet another house! This house was interesting, and not in the good way ;-) Let's just say that this owner has rather unique tastes! Later that afternoon, Nath and I went down to clean Liesel's car while Liesel tidied the house for the arrival of her folks! Then a while after supper we excitedly jumped into the Buick and headed for the airport!!!

Watch this space as we take photos during their stay here. Unfortunately at 11:25pm on Sunday night we have no photos yet!