Well it's already December! The Aussie Proctors have arrived and are currently enjoying St Lucia for a few days. The cousins are all getting together this weekend in Pmb to bond. It is really good to see Rory, Karen and the kids again - can't believe that they have been gone for 3 years already! The boys have grown up so much and Joel (who is only 7) is nearly the same height as me!

Rory brought Sean a lovely Aussie hat which the girls keep stealing from Sean and I got the softest Aussie wool slippers. They are going to be my fav item in winter!

The girls only have 7 days left of school for the year and then it's summer holidays! We are not going away, but every weekend for the rest of this year is already jam packed with parties and visitors. I hope the weather sorts itself out though, as all we seem to be getting is rain, rain rain!

We got a big fright 2 days ago. Sean was on his way home from work, when an 18 year old girl lost control of her car and rammed into Sean's car. Luckily he was in his bakkie as he was pushed into the rock face and gutter near Cowies Hill. If it wasn't for the 3 airbags that blew and all his rollbars and bullbars, I'm sure he would've landed in hospital. As luck would have it, he walked out unhurt, although his beautiful new bakkie is a complete write-off.

Our social hockey finishes up tomorrow evening. We have been performing a bit like the Springboks on their European tour, so don't think we're anywhere near the top of the log but it's been fun. Playing after 16 years break was a bit of a shock for the pour old quad muscles, and they have taken a bit of a beating, but they've survived!

School Holidays

Well the 4th term has started. The holidays were a blur - all 10 days of them! The girls spent the first few days at home and then my great friend Kerry took them down to their beach cottage at Kelso for a few days. Sean and I went and joined them over the weekend and had a good time. Pity about the weather. It felt like the entire time they were on holiday it rained so not much time was spent on the beach!

It's the downhill slide to the end of the year. The girls have started swimming lessons again, and so far are loving it. Lauren is in squad swimming and Sarah shares a lesson with a little boy in her class. We are all so keen for summer and the beach - we even took a dip in the pool yesterday. The water is warming up and in no time, we'll be in there every day!

We had the Fergusons and Mayo's around for a lovely lunch this past weekend. Karen is about to pop with her 2nd child (a boy this time) so they're preparing for chaos! It will change the mix - coz all we have is girls between us!!!

The girls on the trampoline Sezzie's new haircut!

October is already filling up with trips planned to the berg (Sean's golf weekend), and parties and the book club girls are heading off to Zinkwazi beach for a weekend in November. We're all looking forward to the Aussie Proctors' visit at the end of November too.

August 2009

As we head into August, the days are getting longer and the sun is taking a little bit longer to set! Yay - bring on summer! I hate getting up in the morning when it's dark, but have no problem when it's light.

What have we been up to? We had Sarah's christening at the end of the of school holidays. She loved every second of it! You would swear it was her own show! She grinned from the moment she put on her "wedding dress" until she fell asleep that night.

The 3rd term has been very busy. Lauren has started learning her ballet exam work, as well as learning modern dancing - which I might add is a big hit. Hockey has become a huge focus in her life, as last week saw the start of a mini hockey tournament. This tournament will run over the next 6 weeks and they play 4 matches in an afternoon, 1o mins each way, against a variety of other Durban junior primarys. So far Lolly's team has done very well, winning 90% of their games. Let me tell you we have a little defender in the making here!!

Sarah has been hit with the flu and has been out of action for awhile, but it is thankfully over it now, and she is wildly running around again, mixing up magic potions again!!! Today I found her sprinkling all of my powder outside, casting magic spells with her big mate, Kate!

Sean is at a golf day today (lucky fish). He is playing at Kloof and hopefully will come home with the prizes! Us girls are off to watch the Natal Women playing hockey later and the girls will get a little bit of coaching in too! Let's see if Lolly picks up any tips for her next big match!

Next weekend we're off to Pmb for Heather's ballet show. Her theme this year is Aladdin! We all really enjoy it, but I think it gives poor Heather grey hairs!

Oh - can't forget - big news! Sarah has started the reading programme. She is so excited! She's brought home words that she has to read to me. Well we've done this now at least 100 times in the last 2 days, and she doens't look like she's going to tire anytime soon! Lolly is back to getting 10/10 for her spelling tests, after having a few bad weeks, but we are now drilling in the homework!

Well that's all for now folks. Better go and check on my little garden fairies!

Sports Day 2009

Well hello there. Sorry I have been absent for such a long time. Been a very busy girl!!!

Where do I start? Well a couple of weekends ago I entered my first official walk. I got my first printed number, and Dad and I, and some mates hit the road and did the 15km East Coast Radio Walk. Fran and Mom decided to take on the 5km walk, but decided that it was far too short and have pledged to do the 10km next year.

On the subject of activities and sports, the girls had their Sports Day last Friday at school and they had a lovely time. Papa and I sat in the beautiful sunshine (I don't know where winter is) and watched the girls. Sean's timing was brilliant and got there there just in time to see Sarah get 1st position in her flat race and Lolly did really well in her skipping race, giving her team a leading start. See Sarah is 3rd from the left in her video.

We had a fab time this past weekend watching the Springboks narrowly beating the British Lions at Kings Park. There were a ton of Lions out and the atmosphere was unbelievable! Our good friends, Heather and Helgaard and their family joined us and we had a good thrash! Kings Park is always such good fun as the fields were choc-a-block with people braaing and drinking so we bumped into a lot of mates! We finished off the evening with a mammoth roti and bunny chow from Johnnys!

Sunday was Fathers Day here in SA and we spent a very relaxing time with the folks and kids.

The girls finish their 2nd term at the end of this week, and then they're on 3 weeks of holiday! I really miss those days! We have quite a bit planned for their holidays, but mainly on the weekends as Sean and I are working.

Our next big event coming up is Sarah's baptism/ christening on the 18th July! A bit late, but as the saying goes, "better late than never". We are really looking forward to it, as we'll even get to see Rob and Ta as they're coming down to visit from Jhb!!

Well I'd better finish off, otherwise I'll never post this!!

Here's Lolly's skipping race!

Well what an exciting week we have just had. Lesleigh came out to visit and it has been wonderful catching up with her and for the girls to spend some time with her. She was a big hit and had 2 shadows around her everytime we all got together.

Lolly had her swimming gala on Friday and made us very proud with her swimming performance. Their house came 2nd overall and a fun day was had by all.



The big swimmer at the finish after her "froggy race".






On Saturday we headed off to Tala Game Reserve to give Lesleigh her fix of the wild animals! We had some good sightings and the wildebeest and zebra even gave us a mock run of the Serengeti Migration!!!

The crowd at the hippo hide

Mom and Les enjoying the ride

School breaks up on Friday the 3rd, which also happens to be my hubby's birthday!! We are off to the beach cottage in Kelso this weekend - so looking forward to a good start to the holiday.

Can you believe how stupid I am!! I just typed out a whole story and must've forgotten to save it!! So here we go - round 2....

Lolly-pops turned 8 this week. I can't believe how fast she is growing up. There was great excitement for this birthday as she woke us up every morning for about a week before the actual day reminding us of how many sleeps she still had to go.... Eventually the big day dawned and she was smiles from sunrise until sunset. She really tried to stretch her birthday over a number of days, starting with dinner at Spur on the 19th and then a party at Ushaka on the Saturday.

We all had an absolute ball at uShaka. The weather was amazing and we all the hit the slides with great enthusiasm. Even mom and dad were running up to the slides and screaming all the way down. How many 60-something year olds, do you see doing that!!! Mom even managed the 3rd highest slide - the Torpedo! We played hard all day and fell into bed exhausted that night.

Sunday, Sean had us all up really early and onto our favourite beach in Umdloti for the morning. The waves were pretty big, but the weather awesome again, so we pottered around there for most of the morning bumping into half of the white population in Durban - we even managed to get the Ras's down the hill!!

Well work has been hectic for both Sean and I over the past few weeks. I am hoping for things to slow down a bit this week. Sean is gearing up for the April holiday season and has even been driving his trucks around delivering stock.

We are really looking forward to Lesleigh's visit later on this week - just wish Chris was with her - really missing you guys!! Lauren has her swimming gala on Friday - so hold thumbs for the yellow house!!!

Until next time.....

Well it's already March and the kids have already passed half-term! Time is flying by too quickly for me! We have had a jam packed year already. We have been up to mates in Nottingham Road, where we had a lovely weekend. Sean enjoyed the country bike rides, whilst I went for a run with Dee.

We have also been down to the beach quite a bit and I must tell you that Lauren is an expert fisher-girl when it comes to catching those little dogfish in the rock pools. She always gets bucket loads of them and always attracts lots of children. We do follow the catch and release programme!! Talking about fish, our fish tank at home hasn't been too much of a success - we've managed to kill off about 12 fish so far, there are 2 hanging in there, but the snails are thriving!!! This is very perplexing for Sean - as he has had fish all his life!! I think it's got something to do with the water.

Sean has just come back from a fishing weekend in Pongola on the Jozini Dam. He caught 6 tiger fish and was the leader with a 2kg tiger after the first day, but Alf managed to pip him on day 2 with a 3kg tiger! It sounds like they had a lot of fun, with a lot of drinking in between!!

We are off to Nottingham Road again this weekend as my great friend, Heather, turns 40 and we're all going away to have a party!!! So really looking forward to that.

Happy New Year!!!

Lauren's 1st fish of the holiday!!

Mtonga

Well hello there! I know that I have been terrible at updating my blog and I apologise, but we have been so busy!!!

The holidays are now over and we're back to the grindstone. A little different for me this year, as I am getting into my morning job and trying to organise my afternoons around my private clients. It's a little difficult to get everything running smoothly yet, as the girls are still on holiday and only go back to school on the 21st of Jan.

Sarah starts Grade R (can you believe my little baby is growing up so quickly!!!) and Lauren goes into Grade 2! Both are really excited and ready for school now.

We have all had an amazing holiday. We had a few days at home and then headed off for a week at Mtonga in the Transkei. Mtonga is a tented camp right on the beach. The camp has 10 tents and can have 20 people there at a time. We went with another 3 families and kids, so our crowd totalled 17. We had excellent weather whilst we were there and spent every day on the beach. We are all very tanned and healthy looking and still feeling pretty relaxed. We fished, boogey-boarded, swam, snorkelled and had sundowners and bon-fires on the beach. We truly had a relaxing holiday as we were also spoilt with maids and gillys (for the fishing). I could do this again!!!