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.