Christmas and Holidays.

The December holidays always seem like 6 long weeks stretching out in front of you when you are waving goodbye to school on the last day of the year. However I have found that the first couple of weeks are taken up with Christmas preparation and rushing about for that, then we have this lull between Christmas and New Year when nothing much seems to happen and then I suddenly realise that it is the 3rd of January and school starts in2 weeks time!

In the week before Christmas we visited the water slides at Muizenberg. Abigail had been to a birthday party there in January and Niave had been begging the whole year to go. In the end she didn't really like the slide but had fun in the pool. Abigail and Kelsey enjoyed the big slide and I was glad to have Niave's friend's dad there to help chaperone the sliding as it was blowing a gale and freezing!

We also spent a morning down at the beach. We discovered a gem at Dalebrooke which has a wonderful tidal pool and hardly a grain of sand! Well, enough sand for some small children to dig in but not enough for me to come home feeling like I brought half the beach with me! Lovely rock pools at low tide too.
Christmas morning was an early start. I told Abigail not to wake me before 6 but at 5:55 a little voice was heard. We manged to delay her till 6:30 and then eventually woke Niave at 7 as she is not as early a riser as her sister who still has to learn the art of the lie-in!

There was much excitement as they discovered new clothes, much needed swimming costumes, DVDs, books and in Abigail's case a much coveted J-board! Niave received a scooter which she was over the moon about.

After church we had lunch with Ouma and Oupa which was delicious and very relaxed. After stuffing ourselves with all sorts of Christmassy roasts, treats and puddings we settled down to watch Annie - the Disney version which was lovely. I much prefer it to the original as the "baddies" don't come across quite so bad and Miss Hannigan not quite so drunk! (We have woken many mornings since then to renditions of It's a hard knock life or Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya tomorrow...)

Grant is on leave this week so we've been trying to think of some wheelchair friendly outings to do as a family. On Tuesday we went to the Planetarium and Museum, it is really such an economical outing, it cost R32.00 for all 4 of us for the show at the Planetarium and a museum pass. Afterwards we had a small picnic and fed the birds. We couldn't find any squirrels!

Today Grant went cycling so we took a drive to Simons Town to visit the Scratch Patch with my mom. It was another VERY windy day here in Cape Town but fortunately quite sheltered once inside the Scratch Patch area.

Abigail trying to get the balance right on her new board.

Niave doing swimming of one kind and another.

And so we head to the end of 2010 - it's been quite a year, what will 2011 bring?...