Just another eventful Saturday

I look forward to the weekends so I can finally get some rest from the hectic work week. It just doesn't happen. The girls refuse to sleep past 6:30. I have to get up relatively early on Saturdays anyway because Emmanuel, the gardener, comes around 7:15. He works Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Today, he brought his wife, Faith, to meet us and his little 6 month old girl. I can't pronounce much less spell her name but the English translation is beautiful one. She is a little cutie and the girls had fun playing with her this morning.
In addition to the visit by Faith and beautiful one, we had about 40 monkeys come down our street today. They were all over in the trees and in our yard (and the neighbors yard). It is insane how many there were. There were quite a few babies and young ones. They were sitting all over our fence and in our banana trees. We fed them some cut up apples and then even more arrived. They were pretty brave and would get very close to get the apples. It made me nervous because the girls also have no fear. The Alpha Male monkey arrived and the mood in the troupe changed immediately. They got much more nervous. And he let everyone know he was the leader. Sofia asked why his "bum is red" and, as usual, why he has a bright blue toy hanging on him (the vervet monkeys have bright blue testicles). Then Sienna and Sofia got the bright idea to try and eat a banana in front of the monkeys. Luckily, I stopped the girls before the monkeys saw them. I went inside to get my camera and for some reason, when they saw it they all ran off. I think they may have thought it was some kind of weapon to hurt them. You could tell they were scared of the camera though. Sienna had laid a sucker down and one of the monkeys grabbed it and ran off and sat in the middle of the street licking it. So cute!
We took Emmanuel and the family to the taxi rank so that they could get home. When I got back to the house, I parked the truck in the garage and closed the garage door (it's manual). As the door closed I realized the house keys were in the truck. We were stuck. I couldn't get in the house and I couldn't get out of the gates of the house. No way in or out. I sat outside for a while trying to figure out what to do. Finally, the neighbors, Michelle (the girls call her Mrs. Shell) and Conrad came home. Since I didn't have the gate opener, Conrad had to climb over his fence to get onto our property. He was able to get the garage open and we finally got into the house.
Then later, we went to our other neighbor's, Sarah, to get the dog she wants to give us. He is a big dog but still a puppy. He is 9 months old and part Boer Bull and part Rhodesian Ridgeback. Most houses here have a big dog outside to deter anyone with bad intentions. Tippy is the dog's name. Sofia calls him Tipsy. Tipsy has a brother called Dipstick but the girls call him Lipstick. Anyway, we brought Tippy home around 3:30 and he cried and cried. We sat with him and tried to calm him but he was so upset. Then Lipstick got out of the neighbors fence and came across to us. As I was trying to get him, Tippy escaped and ran back to his old house. We went and got him again and then Lipstick escaped once again. It was chaos. I got the girls in bed and thought all was finally settled until I hear a high pitch barking/screaming. Tippy had escaped into Michelle and Conrad's yard. They weren't home and their two dogs, a Bull Terrier and Siberian Husky, were not happy. I was so afraid they would all start fighting. I called Sarah and told her to come and help me. I called Michelle and asked if she could come home. In the end, we managed to keep the dogs all calm. I fed Michelle's dogs a whole bag of doggy biscuits to keep them distracted from Tippy. Tippy had a gash in his back from crawling under the fence.
Maybe tomorrow will be less eventful.....