Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

We’ve certainly slowed down our lives and travels these past few days. Phew. We are getting some much needed relaxation, this traveling with babies thing is exhausting (I know you don’t feel bad for me).

We’ve been squatting at Nollie’s parents’ beach house since Thursday. It’s a three bedroom cottage (everyone has their own room!) in Franskraal which is on the doorstep of Gansbaai where they film a large portion of Shark Week. We’ve spent a couple of days hanging out at the beach. The beach gets a serious thumbs up from me (not easy to do) with it’s amazing white sand, dunes and hardly any people. The downside, that water is FREEZING. I’ve been spoiled and been going out ALONE for about an hour each morning for a walk along the beach. Charlie joined me yesterday though and we had some great fun.

It isn’t all beach though (I’m clearly not vacationing alone). We’ve done some day trips as well. Hermanus is about 40km away and a super cute little town. We have visited twice now. They have great restaurants along the coast, a cute little market and whales. In the winter it’s one of the best places to spot whales. Apparently there are so many off the coast that you can hear them singing even in Franksraal. We were lucky enough today to spot one. Honestly it was cooler than I expected. I’ve never seen a whale in the wild and it was actually quite thrilling. There’s always something special about finding an animal like that.

This morning we spent some time at the Klein River Cheese Farm. They had a great play area that C was pretty stoked about – it was huge – with a big climbing structure, balls, sandpit, trampoline and tree houses. They offer picnic lunches complete with basket and blanket. We ordered our lunch and got spread out under the trees when all hell broke loose.

Now a picnic lunch is actually no picnic (ha!) with a crawling baby, but M wasn’t the problem. The problem was the damn chickens. I mean live chickens who attacked us as we spread out our lunch. Seriously. Attacked us. This is my worst nightmare [Hannah Terpstra I know I have your sympathies]. C did a good job at first staving them off, but they eventually became too much. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so damn scary. We eventually had to move when they stole C’s bread and he had a fit.

We moved back into the children’s play area and set up on a picnic table. Unfortunately, these are some smart ass chickens (this was clearly not their first picnic) and they followed us. Now it was time for some serious anti-chicken action. Jacob stepped up and managed to hit two chickens with one bucket. That was the last we saw of them.

In boring family news on the way home today in the car C and M were playing peekaboo in the backseat to much laughter. When they were done C told M that she was his best friend. That he has ever had in his whole life. Oh my heart.