A Memorial Weekend, indeed!

Above are a sample of photos from our Memorial Day weekend! It was jam packed with action since Saturday morning, and the action isn't letting up too soon!

It was all hands on deck after waking up on Saturday. Our first guests, the Steenkamps from Canada, we arriving in the early afternoon, and there was a lot that needed to be done prior to their arrival! We first had to make a stop at a few shops to get the necessary supplies for the weekend and we were out of the house before 9am! Once we returned home, it was the start of cleaning and some extreme gardening. There were 2 bushes left in the front bed that needed to move to the back yard. I managed to get them out, and then mix in 180+ kg of top soil into that garden bed, to prepare it for Monday's floral purchases! In the back yard, I transplanted the 2 bushes, and then started a new bed around our air conditioner. Apparently I need a lot more mulch to finish that bed, which will also be purchased on Monday! (For the non-USA folk, Monday is Memorial Day for us - yeehaa!)

Adriaan, Linda-Joy, Jason and Megan arrived at our house just after 3pm. It was wonderful to sit down and chat with them, while Nathan bonded with Jason! The weather this weekend has been the warmest and best weather so far this year, so we took the opportunity to go and have some fun on our beach! Nathan loved the water, and jumping over the small waves, while the boys (myself and Adriaan included) released some energy throwing a football around and making stones skip on the water! Then it was time to head home, get changed and head to Red Robin for some good hamburgers for dinner! Jason said that his hamburger was the best one he ever tasted, so the Red Robin lived up to its reputation!

On Sunday morning, the Steenkamps and our other friends from South Africa, the Lechner's, came to our place for a fantastic brunch that Liesel whipped together for the 17 people! It was great to catch up with our missionary friends and see how their kids have grown! Coleson, their eldest, was a average kid when we last saw him in South Africa a couple of years ago. Today he is 15 years old, and is over 6ft 2 inches tall! Charlie puts it down to the amount of prawns they are eating in Mozambique :-) At 11am - all the males (with the exception of Nath) climbed into 2 cars and headed to the train station to catch a train into downtown Cleveland. We had tickets to the Indians Baseball game at Progressive Field. Again the weather was perfect, and the seats were in the best position in the stadium, right above home plate! The game was entertaining and I managed to fight off another man to claim an Indian's t-shirt that was thrown in my general direction :-) Unfortunately , the home team lost, but it was still a wonderful experience for all of us. We boarded the train and were soon back at our house, where a few photo shoots spontaneously broke out! That was short-lived as the Steenkamps had to drive 5 hours back to Canada, as Jason and Megan had school on Monday!

All in all we had a great time with our friends and wished they could have stayed longer and enjoyed the wonderful, yet rare, Cleveland weather for one more day :(
On Monday, we are planning to get busy in the garden again, and then relax after the madness of the past 48 hours!