Cpt. Hook & Smee

Meet our pirates; Capt. Hook & his First Mate Smee.

Joel has been a bit pirate obsessed for quite a while and now Eli seems to be following suit. Joel let him dress in his 'old' pirate costume this afternoon and Eli really enjoyed it.

It's great to watch them grow together. Joel is beginning to realise that Eli's not a baby but rather is good fun, a good play-mate and a great brother. Eli is talking all the time now (his language is very advanced for his age) so they're really enjoying each other's company and getting into mischief together.

They are such a blessing they are to us!

Carry On Camping

We're home and we survived!

Actually we had a lot of fun and are really keen to go again. The boys had a ball and were really tired at the end of each day. Eli loved having Iza around to play with and generally the kids got on great. We had a really good time with Dawid & Petra and feel that at last we're building some good friendships with some church folk (only took 4 years!).

The campsite, Nightsky Caravan Park near Bonnievale was great, being well serviced with good ablutions with hot water and electricity near the tents to plug a fridge into so we had some cold beer. The site was next to a dam and had lovely views of the mountains in the distance.

Are We Mad?

Pray for us!

This afternoon we're going camping for two nights. Quite what possessed us to agree to it we're not sure. We're having visions of the Carry-On film but hopefully things will go a bit better than that. At least the weather will be good and if things go really badly we're only a two hour drive from home.

Breaking News - Mugabe Wins Election

I know that the election isn't until the 29th, but based upon previous knowledge of the Zim' election process and past behaviour by Mugabe and ZANU-PF the election result isn't really up for discussion.

Maybe I'm just overly cynical but I prefer to think of myself as a realist (it's a fine line between the two) and as such I see little reason to get excited about the prospect for change.

Joel The Showman

Joel is surprising and delighting us at the moment with his 'maturity' - dare I put it in inverted commas?!! He certainly reminds us that he is very definitely 5 years old and not a toddler as he was last time we looked! Two class examples from recent days:

(1) Mummy, daddy, that boy's got chicken pox (spoken at 100 decibels whilst walking past a very unfortunate acne'd teenage boy in the Nature Reserve!)

(2) Mummy, daddy (whilst jumping on the trampoline), I've got a good joke. (This should be interesting think m and d whilst preparing to laugh "hilariously"..). What's small, green and sticky? (We don't know Joel.... this could be gruesome!) A frog swimming in jelly! (All delivered with perfect comic timing - we did laugh hilariously this time because it was really funny!!)

This could be why his teacher often says that he has the class in stitches - we have a little showman on our hands. Oh dear!

Easter Weekend

We've had a really good weekend so far, enjoying some great family time and sharing it with friends too. On Friday we went to Betty's Bay to see the penguins but unfortunately the wind was too strong and we had to give up. So we ended up in Pringle Bay where the boys had strawberry milkshakes and tormented the fish (see left) whilst we chilled out and pretended they were someone else's children. We also took the boys to meet Peter & Gloria who run the Wild Olive, a guest house we sneak off to occasionally.

On Saturday we had a braai and a potjie (if you don't know what they are you'll just have to come and experience them) with some good friends joining us for the afternoon and evening. In fact we were all so relaxed that we lost track of time and the kids all went to be very late!

Easter & The Silly Season

Easter is the most important of festivals for Christians and as such we celebrate Easter in a low-key but meaningful way, taking time to remember that by giving up His life, Jesus opened the way for us to have life and a genuine relationship with the Father. For us this is a very important time of year, much more so than Christmas or any other festival.

Moved!

This blog has moved!

Our new address is: www.dpfinnie.com

The move will be complete by Wednesday and Blogger will redirect you to the new address for a while but please update your bookmarks to save a bit of time.

Birthday Boy!

Would you believe that the letter of the week in Joel's class is 'B' so for show & tell today he stood up and announced that he was the 'Birthday Boy' and told the class all about himself and his birthday. What a star!

Joel opened his presents after school (not sure we'll get away with that in years to come) and was thoroughly delighted by them. The four favourites are Victoria from Underground Ernie, Tom & Helicopter from Fireman Sam, a Zorro action figure and a set of Charlie & Lola DVDs.

This evening we went to Primi's for pizza and pasta which is always a huge hit with our boys. Joel invariably chooses Primi's when he can and the food is excellent.

So we've had a really good fun day with lots of laughs and some really great presents for Joel. Thankfully they're both in bed now so we can chill with a film.

5th Birthday Party

After a whole year of waiting (we're not joking!)Joel finally had his Zorro party with 15 of his little friends, mostly from school. He was thrilled to dress up as Zorro and couldn't believe his eyes when he saw his cake!! All in all lots of fun was had by everyone, including Eli, who got away with scavenging from the party food table all afternoon while the bigger children were playing games!!

Mum and dad were pretty pleased when all the kids, siblings and parents finally left though - it's exhausting hosting a kid's birthday party! Now we're looking forward to the big day tomorrow (Wednesday). Joel has been counting the sleeps for the last 3 weeks and is telling everyone that he is having his dinner at Primi Piatti's, his favourite pizza place! We wonder how long before conversation swings to what theme his party will be next year?

Random Post

These photos have been sitting in the 'draft' box of our Blogger account for a while so thought we might as well just post them.

Joel is delighted that Eli can join him on the swing at last

Weekend

We've had a really fun weekend which started with breakfast in the Nature Reserve with some friends from church. We're getting to know Dawid & Petra as their Daughter Iza is the same age as Eli and the both go to the same nursery. They adore each other! It's great to build some new friendships, we've been a bit starved of good friends so hopefully the kids will be a good catalyst. Over breakfast we agreed to go camping next weekend in Wellington, so we had to sort out a tent and borrowing some stuff to make it all a bit more comfortable. Hopefully we'll do a bit better than my good mate Roger (see here).

Most of the rest of the weekend was spent playing in and around the tent in the garden. Joel was really upset that we couldn't sleep in it for the last two nights, but tomorrow we're planning to get the mattresses and sleep out, but we'll see!

Cape Argus

So here are my official stats for the Cape Argus yesterday:

Time: 3:31:02
Ave Speed: 30.99
Overall Position:6925/28669
Group Position: 7/422
Age Position: 1096/3366

Recent News & Events

This weekend and last have been extremely busy but full of fun! Last weekend the boys had a Thomas birthday party on the Saturday morning, complete with little sit-on train for them all! Eli was very scared of the noise and Joel wouldn't go near it - that worked well!!! The party was amazing as the mum had really gone to town with Thomas accessories!! Eli was in 7th heaven - the biggest decision being what shall I eat next?

Cape Argus

I rode the Cape Argus on my road bike this morning and cracked a respectable time of 3:30. In truth I'm a little disappointed as I know I could have gone better but circumstance and my legs conspired against me. At least I know what I need to do next year to crack a sub 3hour.

Unnecessary Quotation Marks

Bethany at The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks has posted one of my pictures: How Personal?

Do pay her a visit and enjoy more silliness of a similar ilk.

Health Care

Paula had a real eye-opener experience of the South African health service last Friday. One of her friends in CNP, who also happens to be a home based care patient, has been really struggling to get information, test results etc. etc. Finally fed up with all the fobbing off that seemed to have been occurring, Paula bundled her friend, 1 of the carers and another friend into the car and drove to the local clinic for some action. After 3 hours (a miracle in itself!), we had finally found the right healthcare professional who could help; established that the patient has got TB; received the first TB counselling session and 2 days's worth of drugs and made an appointment for the AntiRetroViral clinic the following week - it turns out that our friend had been taking vitamin pills thinking that they were ARV's!!

Boschendal - Cape Argus MTB Challenge

On Sunday morning I rode the Boschendal 55k MTB race and finished in 3:18 which wasn't too bad for the first MTB race of the season. The course was very fast and easy with only one hill of note two thirds of the way into it. The course was also very sandy which made for some challenging riding at times. All in all this is the easiest of the MTB classics but a nice prelude the real race season which starts shortly.

Next Sunday morning I'll be riding in the Cape Argus
which is the 109k road race. Last year's post is here.