Just like that we have a 12 year old!

Guys, time flies! Honestly just the other day we had our little baby girl. Such a beautiful content baby that slept through almost from day one. That loved food and playing. The little baby became a quite sassy little girl that kept us on our toes in the toddler years, just to become a stunning level headed girl. The tween that followed showed a lot of guts and determination - brave and always willing to do her part. Now she is on the brink of being a teen when she turned 12 a week ago and I simply can not believe we are this blessed. Blessed to have a girl that always have time for the underdog, for nature and above all for animals.

May your 12th year be blessed with happiness my girl child - may your heart always stay as pure as it is.

A fabulous birthday party

Yesterday my boys turned 9! Gosh have they grown so much and not to speak of the growing up bit. I know I am supposed to write them their birthday letters but somehow the words for that is not to be found today. So in stead I will tell you a bit about a gem I found in Pretoria for their party thanks to one of the other school moms.

We took them and their friends Go Karting at the Kollonade centre. Boy was it fun! They all loved it. Some drove like hooligan F1 drivers around the tracks (Mr L most of all) while others were a bit more careful. In the end all had huge amounts of fun.

There are Go Karts for every size - even our smallest friend - a tiny 6 year old could drive his own little car while A and her friend drove full sized adult ones.  They are petrol karts so they go well and fast. The kids get a basic safety instruction and how to drive and off they go

The very best of all is that they are running a special - R100 per kid including 12 laps, a Spur burger and chips and cooldrink. We took along a bit of sweets (only 4 types), pretzels and in stead of cake, I ordered doughnuts at our local Spar and made doughnut stacks. Every single one was eaten - but we took a lot of the very little sweets home. It turns out if you feed them burgers and they see doughnuts to come sweets are not that important.

It's a great affordable party idea - for R80 you can buy more time but with the amount of kids we had there it was not an option. I think this will even be great for the teenagers as well. The 4 girls in our group enjoyed it just as much as the boys.

You can also just pop in for some Go Kart fun and just go karting. We are definitely going to do this as a family soon.

Disclaimer - K1 Indoor Karting have no idea that I am writing this. We paid the usual in full price for our party. This is one of my "community sevice" type of posts with items that I regard as great value and fun and need to share around.

On growing old

My mom turned 80 yesterday - and started her day in hospital. It was unplanned - on Friday she was admitted for an emergency operation after her newly replaced hip dislocated. She has spent the weekend and the morning of her 80th birthday in hospital. All thumbs up for Life Little Company of Mary hospital that surprised her with a card, mini red velvet cake and 18 nurses singing "Happy Birthday" to her. Then we took her home where friends visited for a quick cup of tea the afternoon. I took the boys around after work (A is in that crazy week of ballet every evening before concert). She was exhausted by then.

Although my mom is very healthy in terms of heart, lungs etc and with a clear mind (although her hearing is getting a little problematic), her orthopedic issues are quite overwhelming. This has been her 4th time under anesthetic in 3 years for issues on the very same leg. Rheumatoid arthritis is no one's friend. All along she had hope to walk properly again and drive again. I am really honestly hoping we can get there.... really. As frustrating as her loss of independence it is for her, so the extra burden of another household's shopping and accounts is for us. We have made a lot of things easier for us all with electronic banking etc but it remains not ideal.

I am wishing her a wonderful year with some gaining of her independence. Living for 45 years with a horrid disease that see a lot of youngish people wheelchair bound is no mean feat. Really growing old is not easy.

I am wondering how many of you have the same type of age gap thing we have - children not yet grown and needing a lot of attention (where you could do with an extra set of helping grandparent hands - thank goodness my MIL is with us at the moment)  and and elderly parent needing help too?

Eleven years ago today I became a mom

A little girl was born - with a full head of fine hair, dark eye lashes and eye brows and a sweet temperament.

Happy happy birthday my sweet A - our Princess. We are so very proud of you and all that you are and that you have achieved. But most of all we are so proud of your kind heart and caring soul. We wish you all the best for a wonderful year full of blessings.

We love you - to the moon and back.

On Friday I celebrated another trip around the sun

Just a warning - if you are hungry, have something to eat first.

It was such a great birthday, honestly. I really needed the positive mood as this year has be a very hard one and may just continue to be so until the end and into next year.

My family woke me up with lots of hugs and kisses and the most beautiful cross necklace I have ever seen. As it's sort of holidays already it was a slower than usual morning. I just had to drop A off a school (the twins stayed home) - A only went to school as she had a birthday party directly after school where the clever parents rented a small bus to take the whole party off to Bounce. I then met up with two friends that I have really grown very fond of this year. When an old school friend of mine told me years ago that my friends will later be the moms of my kids' friends I honestly did not believe her. But it turns our that cool kids have cool moms and that you will find friends among the moms that you may very well have been friends with in any case. The 3 of us are planning to have a coffee club on Friday mornings next year - after dropping the kids and before work. I am really looking forward to this friendship initiative. We had a lovely breakfast (and I got some really lovely gifts too) and the work day started.

 At work I was spoiled with some very pretty gifts too. I really try to never work the full day on my birthday - in all honesty I feel I can get that for being a business owner. So I spent the afternoon with my two boys - while they played Lego and watched a DVD I mostly slept - peacefully on the couch. Great way to spend your birthday. As it was a Friday night and the au pair is already on holiday we had a family dinner out in stead of our usual spoil dinner for just the two of us. We had a lovely meal at Cappuccinos at Brooklyn Square and drifted to Exclusive books - something we all enjoy. We had small rain showers 3 times on my birthday  - I see it as a blessing. The Christmas tree in Brooklyn Square looked particularly beautiful reflecting in the rain.

We headed to Wakaberry for desert just because no calories count on your birthday !

It was such a lovely evening our with my little family - I felt truly and honestly blessed beyond words.

On Saturday morning I met a few friends at Isabellas at the Greenlyn centre. It was sort of a last minute idea and I invited them as they called or messaged on Friday. It was basically - join me if you can, no problem if you can't-and it really worked out well. It has such a nice atmosphere with the Hazel foodmarket next to it and the general market spread through the centre. Isabellas go to so much trouble if you book a table and the brought huge pitchers with cold water with mint and lemon. Perfect for a hot day.

We had wonderful decadent cake galore and a great chat while the smaller kids played in the kiddies area and the bigger girls strolled the market close to the shop. It was great to see some old friends and some new ones and my heart was light and happy when we left.

My very tasty but way too big piece of rainbow velvet cake.

It was honestly a lovely birthday - one I will remember for the many happy moments.

Fourth term silly season

Yes, it's that time of the year. Where you actually do not know how to turn around and get everywhere to attend to all the things that need attending to. This year we add exams to the mix. I had to nod my head and give my two cents of advice this morning when Robyn posted on Facebook that she has two events for two kids at the same time and no idea how to get to both. Last night A made a decision to drop one non essential item this Saturday and rather go horse riding. Usually I would have tried to manage both - my hubby as per usual was the voice of sanity that made the suggestion. Somehow this year my stress levels are not out of range (as yet) and I hope to keep it that way. I seem to just feel more calm about things. In fact - I promptly passed on a task for an end of year function this Friday on to another mom where usually I would have just done it. So I will arrive on Friday night with our troupes' table beautifully done by another mom without thinking about how I would have done it. I would like to think that just maybe I am learning to let things go a bit.

So through this all with a smile and sanity in tact, over the weekend we did the following:

Had a birthday party for the boys (a month late but a great one) at Bounce Inc. But more about the party and related things later.

On Friday afternoon A swam a gala for the school. I still get excited every time she is asked because we have such an over supply in great swimmers in her age. Her swimming has improved so much. We are extremely proud of her. It was a great moment to see her start her leg of a relay with their team in third place (the first swimmer had a bad start) and see her gaining ground for her team. Eventually they came second in the breast stroke relay race as each swimmer following steadily gained meters. They were ecstatic to win the freestyle relay.

 We watched the semifinal of the World cup rugby after their party and felt sad for the Springboks that played so well.

We build LEGO because what is a birthday without LEGO and it worked out so well - both boys got one set of LEGO and money. They are planning to buy tablets like theirs sisters'. They both seem to love the Creator series.

L made this dragon - the same set can also make two other animals if you break down the dragon

C made this parrot - also with two alternatives to try later.

 We assembled a project about the sea shells of Southern Africa - a collectors project for a badge for the Voortrekkers for A. It was so easy as she has been collecting shells all her life and they were mostly cleaned before. She also did most of the sorting and planning in the July holidays and we just had to add her latest finds from the October holidays. Tonight she will add the printed captions to the shells and tomorrow present it.

 

 We dropped by the Hasbo My Little Pony and Nerf guns event in Menlyn park . A enjoyed all the ponies - you are never too old for My Little Pony. They had all the prettiest and newest ponies there. But the guns were the real hit with all 3 of them. In fact Sunday afternoon saw some grown ups playing with a Nerf gun. Not mentioning any names here. They are truly amazing guns and seem sturdy and well designed.

 And yesterday A had her grade 4 solo performance RAD ballet exam. I have never seen her so calm and happy before and exam. I guess they learn to handle stress as we go along. To think that for this one they danced on their own in stead of with a group this is quite amazing.

So how is silly season treating you this year?

( Disclaimer - we were invited as VIP guests to the Hasbo event and received a great goodie bag. Those guns are however amazing toys.)

The 25th of September is not a great day in the history books

Honestly - go and have a look. Nothing really big happened. There are the usual tragedies and disasters. Small inventions - ok, maybe Henry Fords 8 hour day and 40 hour week deserves a mention. But that's it.  A lot of musicals seemed to have made their debuts on the day - among them Les Miserables and Evita. But nothing really big. As to famous births its really only actors that stand out - Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta Jones and Will Smith. And Hansie Cronje - Cricketer.

When the courtyard garden explode in purple Irisses it's birthday time in our household

But the 25th of September changed our little world forever because our awesome boys were born. Nothing has ever been the same again. Our house has never been quiet again. Two such amazingly different little men. Each so unique in their very own way.

My dear L, my little Lion that has learned so much and grown up so well this year. You are so determined and strong in your own quiet way. To wear contact lenses with such ease and deal with all that comes with it at the age of 7 is admirable. You tackle every obstacle with total determination - be it academic or in any other field. You are well known for your total love and dedication to sport - both as a player and as a supporter. You memory for sport scores and games is surprising and admired by so many people. And boy! Have you grown! 3cm in the last 5 months. That's a lot for a 7 year old boy. I love you to the end of the universe my little boy.  Happy happy 8th birthday!

My dear C, my little bear. This year has been such a good one for you. You have grown so much in terms of friendship and how you see the world. Your constant yearning for knowledge is amazing - as is the fact that you remember every little bit you hear or read in a subject that may interest you. You look at the world through the eyes of an artist and will always be the one to remark on a particularly beautiful building/flower or even a car. I also love how you care about others and are always looking out for others. You are really so tall now - on Sunday I was amazed to see how tall you stand in front of the church with the birthday wishes. I love you to the end of the universe (where you are quite sure you will find some intelligent life!) Happy happy 8th birthday!

Thanks to Tanya for the date in history inspiration .http://www.dearmax.org

Today 14 years ago a cheeky little puppy was born. 6 weeks later she came home with us after choosing us by running towards us when we went to pick out a puppy. Moya is a legend in her own lifetime. The most amazing companion to us all.  Even at 14 she is always ready for a walk - maybe not so much a swim these days although she does still enjoy wading in the water. Although she is slowing down a bit she remains the loving special dog she has always been. Always ready for a cuddle and a talk with those soulful brown eyes. She has such character and her love for us all shines through. Happy birthday to our very first baby. 14 is very old for a Labrador and we feel very blessed that you have been with us for so long and to have had so many adventures together.

School birthdays

When I started thinking about celebrating the boys' birthdays at school I had a Whatsapp chat with both teachers. From grade 1 on there is not much time to celebrate and they basically sing, eat a cupcake and that's the end of it. I asked them if I should bring just cupcakes or a bit of sweets and a cupcake. The one replied that just a cupcake please (limit the sugar) and the other said that I could just as well leave the cupcakes because the kids are so tired of cupcakes they throw away half of them - and just send some sweeties. I then asked the first teacher specifically about cupcakes and got the same sort of reply. Then I suggested ice cream and both teachers replied extremely positive.

Boy were the ice creams a hit! It is a hot and rather casual day just before the long weekend so it went down really well. Add to it that the kids are wearing Springbok attire today to and you have a  very festive little event. I was lucky that both teachers immediately asked me what timing I would prefer, knowing that there is another twin in another class that has a celebration too. So I could be with both as their friends sang to them and they handed out the ice creams. Even the headmaster got one as he walked past where Mr C's class was busy celebrating.

It was by far the easiest (and I may add rather cost effective as I bought it at the factory shop) festivity in a while.

So what do you do about school celebrations?

It was really a good weekend.

Flowers for my mom

I had such a great weekend - and I do think the rest of the family had a good one too. I was really spoiled with time for myself this weekend. On Friday night I went to a Stef Bos concert with 5 other ladies and it was such fun. Three of my favorite cousins went with and it was a night of good music and lots of laughter. I always forget how much I enjoy live music and although not one for big venue concerts the smaller scale ones totally fill my soul with joy.

Great eats by Loft restaurant

On Saturday morning I attended the #mombogmeetup and boy, was it a great event. I am not going to go into the details - so many others have already done that but I enjoyed the diverse and great speakers, good food, lovely venue and it was so very well organised by Laura and Heather. I loved putting some faces to the blogs I read and discovering some totally new blogs and the girls behind them. The goodie bags were excellent - I am not going to go into the details but check out the photos:

Thanks to all the wonderful sponsors - who you will find at the link above. I will go into some details about one or two in later posts. I have to mention the lovely creative food Margie made right in front of our eyes. It was fun and very yummy.

I returned home to the boys in the household making bows and arrows. It's the "in thing" in our home right now and as this develops I may give you and insight into it. Suffice to say the rest of the weekend was spent aiming at targets.

On Sunday my mom turned 79 and as she is still not very mobile (knee replacement pending) I went to help early with the many guests that came over. The kids and I made her a secret centre pinata cake which she cut to lots of laughs discovering the inside surprise. It was really tasty - the dark rich cake with the smarties inside. I will definitely make it again.

It was the first weekend in a month that we did not have a lot of grade 4 stuff going - projects, orals, tests etc. Although she does have 3 small tests and a poem to learn for this week we only did about an hour's work for the maths test. It was great having our weekend back!

How was yours?

A girly horse party

We have a  horse mad 10 year old - as I guess a lot of girls her age are. Hence we had a horse party at the stables where the kids ride. But, as she pointed out, it had to be a girly one. So with the stable owner we settled on a grooming party and for decor, we headed into the vintage type look to provide a bit of retro pretty with a girly turquoise (her favorite colour) and hot pink accents - mostly in polka dots. She was involved in most of the decor and making the decorations, the choice of sweets for the sweetie buffet , making the rice crispie and chocolate drops and she helped to bake and decorate her own cake.

It was by far the easiest, quickest decor I have ever done for a party. But let me show you:

The party table with the Candy buffet

The cake - a red velvet cake with pink velvet icing on top of blue velvet cake with velvet icing.

And the inside

We used the lovely ponies/horses that the kids got for Christmas as part of the decor and used lots of doillies for the vintage touch. I also managed to get beautiful horse themed cupcake holders that we used as part of the rosettes on the party packs and to server the chocolate drops in. For the rest we used cardboard horses I bought at a craft shop, horse stickers and a variety of ribbons.

Some details of the candy buffet - I used containers I had apart from two tin buckets I bought for next to nothing at the farm shop. The tins are old milo tins that I used for last year's lego party for the boys too. The glass containers are my coffee, tea etc jars in the kitchen.

This time we bought some sweets for their looks - all the pastel colours like love mottos, milk bottles, funny faces, jelly hearts and the  UFO type lollypops that you can clearly in the very first photo of this post in the glass bottle.

The rest of the catering was super easy - hot dogs for the hunger and loads of cooldrink and water. Having no parents and older kids sure has benefits.

The girls had heaps of fun - they could ride around the arena taking turns until they had enough (this came sooner than we thought but at 33 degrees C and in the sun it may be no surprise). Then they had a class in grooming the horses and in teams 4 horses were groomed. Then one of the grooms showed them how to plait a tail and mane and they then proceeded to treat the horses as real life "my little ponies" with ribbons and plaits to their hearts content. Then a white horse stayed behind and the girls had fun drawing on him with crayons. Most of them named this as the highlight of the day.

Following on my previous post of our Candy Buffets up to now (if you have not seen it - go and have a look - it gives you a nice idea of what to do and what not to - tried and trusted)

What was offered:
Home made rice crispie cookies, homemade chocolate drops, sparkles, chomps, love mottos, milk bottles, funny faces, kit kats, elegance fruit toffeas (3 types), fruit toffee strips, jelly tubes, lucky charm sherbet, ufo lollies, coconut marshmallow - hay bales! and  jelly hearts. We also had icies because of the heat.

One has to take into account that all the girls went to the party with us and it was only us two, one of the girl's parents that are friends of ours and our au pair - so the grown up factor is sort of out.

Total hits: Sherbet (after years of this this is no surprise) and rice crispie cakes (after the boys' party this is also no surprise ).Also all those ufo lollypops were eaten mostly right there and then. I never buy lollypops anymore as they are so unpopular but it seems this type is the exception. We bought them mainly because the fit into the pastel theme.

Miss: The coconut marshmallows. Just shows that it was the parents that polished them at the boys' horse farm party.

Favorite moment: The dad that was at the party tasted funny faces for the first time on his daughters' insistence. He left our house that night with an extra unopened bag I had - he loved them.

It was wonderful to see how much the girls enjoyed the party - there were many thanks yous, and we loved it, and I want to ride toos....

When you really want to go to the Spur for your birthday but they are not allowed to sing to you.

These are no 5 shoes!

So a certain Princess had her tenth birthday on Sunday. Gosh 10! Double digits. Fair and square a pre teen. I love so much about our daughter - she is a passionate animal lover, has the greatest heart for those less fortunate and will always fight for the underdog. She always try to find the beauty in anyone and everything.

But I can see that she is finding herself a bit in the "neither fish nor flesh" category. For Christmas her biggest wish was a Barbie - as she herself said, most probably her last Barbie and she had very specific requirements for her. She loved her and played a lot with her Barbies - with both her 6 year old cousin and totally on her own. I love that she still plays with her Barbies because some of the girls her year are really starting to loose every little bit of what makes a little girl. I am quite happy for her to be on the less mature side of all this.

For her birthday however she had the very special request of "a proper Swatch watch" and she knew exactly which one she wanted. She did not mind that all the family contributed to make this dream come true. I know she will look well after it.

She also still wanted to go to the Spur for her birthday lunch (a chain of kiddy friendly restaurants) but asked us very specifically not to tell them it's her birthday so that, heaven forbids, they come with sparklers to sing for her.

So I guess we are warming up to what may be more challenging years - I am hoping that she will stay as sweet and kind as she is through all this.

Happy birthday sweet girlchild. Love you to the moon and back.

Yesterday was my birthday

It was one of those where you are closer to the next milestone than to the previous, where work had to be done, where an OT session had to be done as per usual and a day off was not an option and one that was not particularly meant to be special in any way.

But it was special in so so many ways. It's been a long time since I have felt so loved, so special and so very happy. I can not quite define the special in single items or words.

It may be all those wonderful messages on Facebook, the many sms and whatsapps and especially the phone calls. I love those phone calls. It may be my 9 year old that made me tea and brought that and their present to my bed as H has swimming at 6 on Thursday mornings. It may be that Mr L wrote a few words on my card - spelled to him by his sister, but all on his own. It may be those very special cuddles from a really sick Mr C in bed just when I woke up. I really do not know.

It may be because I found the time to go to my mom and we had bar-one cake on her patio while the birds played in her water feature and the garden is in full bloom. It may be that my wonderful hubby took me for dinner to one of Pretoria's wonderful fine dining restaurants and we had one of our best nights out in a long time (to be honest, we have not had many in the last year to start with).

It may be another stunning addition to my Jenna Clifford collection but I think that's not that either. It's the love, the calm, the wonder of family. The wonder to love your hubby fully and be loved in return. The wonder of acceptance of where we are and striving forward.I want to keep this close to my heart and feel it every day.

6 years ago today

 two little /big boys came into our lives What a ride! Although I think we may have underestimated the storm that descended on us, we certainly underestimated the joy we would receive in return. This morning they were totally surprised by their gifts - C has been wanting one for so long, but the Leappads hit the spot for both. I usually write a letter to the kids on or around their birthday but today I am overly emotional so it is better left for another day soon.

My little boys, I love you to no end. There is no way that I can describe how you fill my life with joy, every day. Love you to the moon and back.

It was granny's birthday on Friday

Both the grandmothers has often told me that all they actually want for any gift is some form of photos of the kids. Hence we have done calenders, photo books, handmade canvasses, printed water bottles, handbags etc. This year I hit a bit of an inspiration. One of the guys in the office went past the Consol shop the other day and I asked him to pick up a few Solar jars for me (nope, I got nothing from Consol for this - this post is not sponsored in any way - wish they would send me a few but alas ). Then I added a simple little something to it to make it a wow gift.

Step 1: Buy a Solar jar for R130 (Also available at Pick n Pay for about R60 more per jar)

 Step 2 : Compile photos into one image (9 x 22cm works perfectly) I used Photoshop

 Step 3 : Print on tracing paper or bumf (thin transparentish paper)

 Step 4: Paste two edges together with sellotape and insert into jar. You can also add flowers or silk flower, beads, whatever into another jar.

 Step 5: See granny smile astonished about a lovely photo gift of her grand kids and an emergency light in one.

 I love these jars - I think they are such a clever idea. So I would like to know about some of your clever photo style gifts.