Day 69, Year 6 Start of a New Year
Date: Saturday, January 1, 2011
Weather: NO WIND!! Overcast with Rain Turning Sunny
Location: Simon’s Town, Western Cape, South Africa
My father was a very stern man and he insisted that one should live New Year’s Day the way you would want to live every day of the coming year. So we slept in until 9 o’clock. Hayes Martin would not have approved of that! Then we spent the rest of the day on our respective computers. I don’t think Hayes would have approved of that either. It would have looked just too passive for him, but we did get some work done. We continued to search the Caribbean for a place to meet our children. We have now worked our way to the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Things get cheaper but we still haven’t found the perfect place. I worked on naming South African photos all day and Mark got all of what I have named posted on the website. So a bit of progress was made.
My hope of catching up on correspondence to family and friends didn’t happen, however, so that will be on the continuing agenda. We did send a Happy New Year email to Lynne and Ed of Constance. We haven’t been very good about keeping in touch since we left Richards Bay and since we spent most of 2010 with them, we thought we should at least say Happy New Year. But the first email we sent was to our daughter who was in a car accident yesterday. The whole family was in the van when a man pulled out of a side road without looking and T-boned them on the passenger side. Heather was in the front seat on the passenger side and Sam in the seat behind her. Heather is a little stiff but Jed and both boys are fine. Sam keeps asking why the man was so impatient and didn’t look before driving out onto the main road, but evidently both boys were very brave at the time of the accident and don’t seem to be traumatized by it. We read Heather’s email after mid-night when we sent yesterday’s log and started our new year with a sigh of relief and being very thankful as parents and grandparents that no one was hurt. But the van door did not escape injury and it is possible that the van frame is bent, but that can be fixed or replaced.
The good news for today was the weather. The wind has stopped blowing . . . totally. What a relief! It rained during the night and all morning, but then the sun came out and it was a beautiful afternoon. I think we might have one more day of this before we get another blow and after that we are looking forward to a week or so of light winds. But today was a good start and perfect weather for starting the new year.
