A trip to the Country!

When I was a child we used to take the liberty of an afternoon drive to the country quite regularly. I have spent many an afternoon eating my lunch at the side of the road!

Although we rag my dad about it now those were good times.

My children don't get to do that enough.

But on Saturday that is exactly what we did, packed the car and settled in for a trip to Malmesbury/Riebeek West.

We have a beautiful country.

The iconic South African windmill!

I love the different shades in this picture.

Strolling through the vines.

If petrol wasn't so expensive I could do this every weekend!

Feeding the Squirrels (and rats, geese, pigeons and fish!).

During the holidays we always like to take a train trip to Town to stroll through the Gardens and feed the squirrels. This time another "goal" was to try out the new Burger King.

Well, we ended up feeding just about every creature except for ourselves!
As usual there were plenty of hungry squirrels coming out of the woodwork, they are so tame and will literally eat out of your hand if you sit still long enough bearing peanuts!

One thing that was unusual this year was the rats challenging the squirrels for their loot! I guess it's a given that they are there but we've never seen them before! The squirrels gave them a run for their money, uh, nuts though!

Along with the squirrels we are usually also covered in pigeons, once they get wind of the peanuts, this year we found a family of geese who were much more interested than the pigeons, I was quite surprised at how happy the parents were for us to be so close to their gosling's.

Further up towards the museum we finally found the pigeons, Abi and Bryce seemed to love becoming statues for them to sit on!

Niave and Mitchell preferred the fish that were literally jumping out of the water!

Four packets of peanuts later and there were some stuffed tummies, problem was they weren't ours!
Since the new Burger King opened, Abigail has been desperate to try it out...only thing is the queue! Minimum 1 hour wait but I thought maybe by now the hype would have died down...apparently not!
After a long trek down from the top of Town to almost the Foreshore we dragged our hungry little bodies back to the station, our hunger pangs only just warded off by a Sundae ala McDonalds!!

Another trip to Town done and dusted!

The Purr Factory.

Every two years Greenfield puts on their school production. The entire school takes part - one of the many benefits of a small school is that every child takes part in things like gala's, sports day's and school plays. By the time Niave leaves Greenfield we will have been a part of 6 of these delightful events. That sentence can sound a bit sarcastic but it's not, they truly are delightful. Hard work, exhausting, disruptive to routine - yes, but delightful none-the-less!

The quality of performance that the "Dream Team" - as they have been dubbed, are able to produce each time amazes me. They are, after all, working with primary school girls between the ages of 6 and 13...you would never say so at times. The drama and dancing teachers are incredibly dedicated and have once again outdone themselves and will, I'm sure, need at least a week to recover!

So in spite of the moaning and complaining that I think we were all guilty of, it was a great success. So many talented girls and indeed parents - the sets were amazing as were the costumes.

The Purr Factory is of course about cats. The entire cast except for the grade ones were cats. The grade 1's were mice and there was 1 dog!

Four performances multiplied by 200 cat faces equals a lot of busy mommy's transforming the girls into cats and kittens of many breeds and varieties. And don't think the teachers were excluded!! They also had a part to play and took their costumes, make-up and hair very seriously!!

The Principal and grade 3 teacher!

One of the teachers told a story about stopping at the ATM on her way home after the first performance after having removed her make-up and ears, only after climbing back in the car did she realise that she was still wearing her tail!!!

The play takes place at Suzie Swishtail's Academy for Kittens where kittens learn how to be cute and adorable and finally graduate by receiving their purr's... BUT... the purr's go missing and the mystery has to be solved...

Niave was a mouse, they were Mickey and Minnie Mouses and looked very sweet in their red and white outfits and their Mickey ears! I am very glad not to have to get that hair in and out of those buns again!!

Not a very happy mouse at this point!

The boy and girl version of the mice costumes.

Abigail was an Alley Cat. 
They were brilliant - she had to have her hair teased to death 5 times in 1 week - I don't think it will ever be the same!

It's amazing what make-up can do, they were very cat-like.

Limits pushed, friendships formed, memories made, exhaustion and excitement in large amounts - thank goodness it only happens every second year!

Niave's 7th Birthday.

It's only been 2 months since then so now's the perfect time to fill you in!!

Let me start with last year...it was one of those days when the weather forecast shows 100% chance of rain. So there I was making last minute change of venue plans. 
This year I was not going to be caught out so we hired a hall - and, of course, it was a beautiful, sunny even hot day.
Oh well, better to be over prepared I always say!!

So, back to this year...because the hall was not available on her actual birthday, a Saturday, we spent a mostly quiet day at home although we did get to visit with family as it was also my sister-in-law's birthday breakfast.

The morning of the birthday.

Niave had asked for a jungle themed party as she is somewhat obsessed with cheetah's, leopards, tigers... - basically anything of the cat variety.

Normally I do most all of the entertainment, games etc. however this year I didn't feel I could manage a whole party on my own, it was time to outsource!
I still did a few jungle related games but the bulk of the time was taken up with a drumming circle. Michelle from Drumkidz had them totally captivated, well, all except Niave, she lost interest before the end - too much excitement!!

And of course there was the cake. An easy one this year, the cakes do seem to get easier as they get older!

It's always nice to come home to some sort of order when you've had a party at an alternative venue.

I can highly recommend the hall (Brownie hall in Pinelands) as well as Drumkidz.

Cross Country.

It sure has been a while! But seeing as online Scrabble has been destroyed I have a little more time to blog!!! I was ever so slightly addicted!

So lots has happened since my last post, Niave started grade 1 and so a whole new life of primary school and all that goes with it. It is amazing to me how different my children are! Experiencing grade 1 again has been totally different from first time round and "better" different so hooray!!

One of the big differences would be Niave's enthusiastic entry into the Cross Country team, Abigail wouldn't run if you paid her!!!

Now Niave is the child who, when walking leisurely through a forest, will start complaining about 3 minutes in, so imagine my surprise when she wanted to do Cross Country!!
She didn't really know what to expect first time around (neither did I) - it is a huge sport apparently, schools from everywhere converge on the venue each Friday afternoon, boys and girls and run their little hearts out.
Poor Niave nearly died the first time but her recovery time has improved dramatically since we've started training more regularly.
She has been very consistent, she comes second last every time!! But this has not deterred her, she wants to go back every week. 

She was starting to feel a little despondent after last Friday's race when lo and behold she was awarded with the Junior Cross Country certificate in assembly on Monday for "Dedication and Consistency" -they hit the nail on the head!!! Tomorrow is the last race for the term and she is rearing to go!

I didn't think I would very much enjoy spending each Friday afternoon (in winter) watching children run, but it has been fun, I've even met people that I haven't seen in years from all sorts of different schools, I love how it is so universal, schools from the most impoverished to the most "exclusive" take part and all you need is legs!

Maybe one day we'll be standing on the Two Oceans sidelines cheering for Niavie!!

December.

December was a mad month. Busy, busy, busy.
The first week of December is always manic with both the girls finishing off their school years as well as me finishing mine. That's 3 schools end of year activities in 1 week!
They each had a "concert" on the same day, Abigail had her drama showcase and Niave had her Nativity Play. It was quite a job juggling the 2 but we made it, well, most of us, Grant got stuck on the 3rd (or 4th) floor with a broken lift so he missed the whole lot!

Abigail introducing her groups skit.

Niave belting out her Christmas Carols!

When all the school events were finished it didn't get less busy...Niave was determined to get dressed up for her last year of Postcards, a 0 - 6 year old Carol Service at our church, having been 1 or 2 years as Mary and another as an angel she decided to go as the Star this time, I was quite chuffed with the fact that I threw a costume together in no time with just what we had at home! 

Mitchell (aka Joseph) and Niave - the Star of Bethlehem!

Two days later both Niave and Abigail took part in the Annual Carol Service at church. They had been practising for a good few weeks and it went very well.

Also that same weekend was cousin Marley's 5th birthday party, great fun at Roly Polyz and an hilarious magician who had the kids in fits of laughter!

For 2 years now I've been running an art workshop in the first 2 weeks of the holidays, with slightly older children - primary school age. The girls obviously took part as well and were kept very busy creating all sorts of things from pot plants to pet rocks to mosaic etc.

Budding artists at work!

We finished up just in time for my sister's arrival, and just when we thought the busy-ness was over...!

Camping Out.

One of the things on our "to-do" list is camping. However, it is not really conducive to wheelchairs so up to now it hasn't happened yet, except for last night when Niave and I got to "camp" at school for the Grade R Parent/Child Sleepover - a right of passage for any Barkly House kid!

The options were to camp outside in the playground or to sleep inside, seeing as we don't camp we don't have a tent but we do know a few seasoned campers and were able to borrow an wonderful tent and blow-up mattress from Grant's dad.

I was not really looking forward to it at first, and by the time I got my head around the idea we were on day 4 of howling gale-force South Easter winds that had caused havoc and quite a bit of damage around Cape Town so by Friday morning I was a little anxious to say the least.

Anyway, it went ahead and so we set off to brave the elements!

The tent dwellers

The children were so excited, Niave was beside herself!! We had our tent set up in about 15 minutes, but the mattress took a little longer, the pump I had didn't want to work, but there were a few campers with the same mattress and so we could borrow a pump - and some legs to do the pumping!

One happy camper!

First off we had a braai, I left our tongs behind but some helpful dads came to our rescue and got our boerewors cooked!

The kids had so much fun roasting marshmallows and playing torch games. 

By this time the wind had already subsided quite a bit with longer and longer gaps between the gusts.

After supper it was ice-lolly time before the children were gathered together for Story Time.

Then after brushing teeth and putting on their PJ's it was one last story before lights out.

 It was funny brushing teeth at school!

I had expected Niave to take a while to wind down after all the excitement but once we were settled and zipped into our tent she was out for the count!

She slept soundly the whole night. I on the other hand did not!
After dozing off around 11:15pm, I awoke with a shock at 12:50am to the sound of sprinklers, it sounded like they were right outside our tent but after some quick investigation I discovered they were the sprinklers next door at Greenfield!!
My next wake-up call was from a little boy crying and then puking 1 tent away: +- 2:45am!
Whoever suggested that roosters crow at dawn was sadly mistaken because at 3:30am the rooster crowed for the first time and every 5 minutes after that!
At 4:45am what sounded like a rubbish truck was doing the rounds and around 5:15 some very loud students either came or went from the Res next to the school.
By 6:00am we were awake to a beautiful windless day.

So after all the anxiety about the wind, it was hardly a factor, the tent didn't even sway as I thought it would.
All in all not the best nights sleep I've ever had but definitely better than I expected it to be. And from the reports of the snoring that went on inside I was very glad to be in my self-contained, cockroach-free environment!

The school provided cereal for breakfast, Niave had her's on the swing!!

 After breakfast we packed up and were home by just after 8:00am for a much needed shower and change of clothes! I'm looking forward to a good nights sleep tonight!