Tea anyone?!

I took these pictures for a project called 365project but had to post them here too.

I had left my nearly empty cup of tea on the table and found Bonnie soaking up the remnants with her paw and licking it off!

She has done it before , quite often, but don't think I've ever captured it, she is a very funny cat!

Back to school.

This week was back to school, Abigail on Monday, Niave on Tuesday and me today.

Abigail was super excited to be going to grade 3 but also a little nervous. She is at school for an extra hour each day now which makes it a long day when you add on extra-murals but she will adjust soon enough. It was very sweet to see all the friends reuniting after the holidays, everyone seemed very happy and keen to be back. Even the new grade one's were happy, apparently not a tear was shed - by the children, can't say the same for the parents!!!

They have much bigger desks and chairs compared with grade 1 and 2!

Niave was also happy to be starting and is enjoying her new teacher and classroom. They have a staggered intake so the class is still quite small with new little ones starting every day.
So no hitches or major upsets and the 2011 school year is off to a good start - Hooray!

The end of the holidays.

Friday was the last official day of the holidays for us. Although I was feeling a bit below par thanks to a lingering headache and a bit of low blood pressure I thought we needed an outing to mark the end so we headed out to Imhoff Farm in Noordhoek. Niave has visited there once on an outing last year but Abigail hadn't been and I knew they'd love the animals.

It is a big farm with many places to visit but our place of choice was... the farmyard - of course!

There are all sorts of farm animals to observe and feed - pigs, goats, chickens, ducks, horses, sheep etc. but the best by far for my children were the bunnies!They spent a lot of time in the bunny pen, even while we were waiting for our lunch - I sat by myself taking in the view (which was beautiful) while they discovered a burrow of baby bunnies that even the workers didn't know about!

It was another unpleasantly windy day and I don't enjoy wind so after lunch we got ready to go home, just as we were driving out of the gate Niave announces "Look, real camels!". I had known there were camels there but I couldn't find them (how on earth could you miss a camel?!!) anyway, we had to turn around to have a look. Here they are: Isak, Luqmaan and Barak!!

Camels are particularly smelly and make some interesting noises, Niave was a little nervous but Abigail was braver, she wanted to have a turn to sit on one but he snorted at her and she quickly changed her mind!!

My favourite photo of the day:

Goodbye Pickle.

Pickle the hamster came to live with us in July 2008.

He (or she) was the much loved pet of Abigail who held him and played with him for hours on end.

(Abigail took these photo's recently with my old camera.)

A few weeks ago Pickle had a gummy eye, after a couple of doses of eye drop antibiotics it seemed to get better but on Thursday he suddenly was very, very ill. We could only get an appointment at the vet for the next day but before the time came for that appointment Abigail discovered he was dead. Poor little guy, I'm not sure if the heat had something to do with it but at 2 and a half years old he was a grampa by hamster standards, but Abigail was devastated.

We buried him in the garden and had a little "funeral".

Dealing with death is hard for anybody and this was Abigail's first real experience of it. She was very upset and would tear up from time to time throughout the day, or come up to me quietly and say softly "I miss Pickle".

Niave on the other hand is very matter of fact about it. She is convinced that Pickle is in heaven so he is happy and she is happy he died so he could go to heaven! Not quite the same emotions that Abigail was feeling!

Anyway, we have a new hamster as of yesterday, a girl, named Annie (yes, she's been watching a lot of Annie these holidays!!) so everyone is a little happier and she is very cute.

And so we enter phase 2 of hamster ownership - Niave has been promised one when she is 6 so our days of hamsters are far from over!!

Summer.

Summer without a swimming pool sucks. Especially when we have a heatwave and the temperature is hovering around 38 C for a week.

We were very kindly invited to swim at different friends the whole week but on Tuesday afternoon when we were all wilting the slippy slide made an appearance for some cooling off fun:

Wonderful cool water!

Yippee!!

Some people thought it was all just hilarious!!

Such sweet smiles!

It was too hot to take photo's so I don't have many from this week, it was too hot to even think, never mind lug around a heavy camera.

Fortunately it is cooler today, even a drop or two of rain, a wonderful relief after the oppressive heat. Thank you to all those kind people who shared their swimming pools with us - we really appreciate it!