Birthdays, curtains and still no weavers

It is Mr B's birthday today. We celebrated this morning with the whole family snuggled into our bed witnessing the opening of his two presents (a green t-shirt adorned with african animals and a beautiful photo of a lake at sunset complete with waterbirds, framed in recycled dhow wood) and two cards. In retrospect, perhaps developing a postal address should have been something we did at the start! However, the two parcels we posted to ourselves before flying out here never made it (all those lovely books..) so even when we do have a postal address I will be wary of encouraging parcels and presents.

He spent the day searching for Rufous-tailed weavers again. Found lovely habitat complete with ostriches, secretary birds, sunbirds, canaries, buntings and lots of species of weavers...but still none of the target species. The (many) people he gave lifts to along miles of muddy tracks all had a look at the picture in the bird book and testified that, yes, the species is definitely in the area...but not a single sighting today. Has someone warned them that he's coming??!

Meanwhile the Mancub and I went on yet another exciting morning expedition - this time taking the material we agonized over yesterday to my friend M who has a team of staff who make up dresses, cushion covers, suits and - what we needed - curtains and sheets. I spent most of yesterday evening trying to write out detailed instructions about what lengths to cut the various bits of material into and how to join them so that the curtains are the right size and (after Mr B pointed it out) so that the various patterns and stripes match across the panels. Can you get a degree in curtain planning?? It certainly seemed to take me an awful lot of mental energy, especially as one of the fabrics I had chosen turned out to have the pattern running down instead of across the material...

Tonight we will have our first evening out together since we arrived 6 weeks ago. The housekeeper where we are staying has agreed to babysit and we're off for a meal out. But first, home to feed the kids (and try out the birthday cake!) and wash off the days mud and grime before putting them to bed.