family vacation

So my mother was born in Cape Town and was adopted by loving Belgian
parents. She grew up in the Belgian Congo next to a lake where she
could water-ski just about every day, and eventually ended up in
Belgium when the Belgian Congo did its thing and became Zaire.
Incidentally it is now again called Congo.
Well, a few years ago my mother found her biological family, and
along with her husband they have been to Cape Town to visit her
family on a couple occasions. We had planned to go together as a
family, my two brothers and I with my mother and her husband, this
year except for one unforeseen event at the time, here I am in
Afghanistan.
So we then planned to go in 2009, and during some of my rare moments
with little to do I thought I would check out flight prices for next
March. Gunter and I expected flights to be in the $2000 price range
what with the rising oil prices and all, but it turns out the cheap
fare was under $1400, and some were already selling out... for March
2009, 10 months away. We then decided that if we wanted that fare we
had to buy our tickets now so we did. I will be leaving on 31 March,
arriving in Cape Town on the evening of 1 April (not exactly a short
hop, with a connection in Johannesburg), and returning on 14 April,
arriving in DC in the wee hours of 15 April. My two brothers will
only stay a week returning the 8th, and my parents will stay until
the 22nd. They will spend a few days at my new "mansion" before and
after their trip.
Well, it might be a few months away but we are most definitely
looking forward to this trip. It has been a while since we were on
vacation as a family and we thought we'd go big by spending a good
15-16 hours together in a steel tube to kick it off!