We’re on holiday for the week, and my sister is housesitting our place (hope it’s going well there)

The weather in Shelly Beach on the south coast of KZN is just gorgeous. It’s just the best thing in the world to hear the sound of the waves breaking on the rocks outside our holiday flat while blogging.

It’s really nice now that the kids are older and are really enjoying the sea now.

Bradley got dumped by a massive wave this morning for the first time and he’s not a happy camper this afternoon.

Our days are filled with either swimming in the sea and playing on the beach and walking on the beach, we haven’t even used the complex pool yet!

Oh and one pic before I get back to doing nothing… The shot I took with my BB this morning on the beach in honour of #ODWS (one day without shoes) that @portfoliosa is hosting today

See ya all soon!

It was Lance’s 40th birthday yesterday, and I bought tickets to see the Shaolin Monk show at Montecasino as part of his gift.

Just the two of us, mind you.  Even though Bradley would have enjoyed it, Connor is too small to sit through a 2 hour show and it wasn’t fair to take only one child.

The reason we went… Lance has had a thing about any kind of martial arts forever, and he’s always wanted to see them.

The not-so-good…

• The show started with a story, which carried on until after the intermission.  It was ok, but not wow.  Thinking about it now, the only reason it wasn’t wow was because I felt it lacked emotion.  The story was quite sad, explaining the history of the monks, but it wasn’t emotional enough, so it was difficult to get into.
• The first half was not mindblowing

The good…

• The kids in the show were AMAZING! They were seriously impressive doing head stands for 10 minute stretches and a weird balancing act balancing on one foot with the other foot hooked behind their ears… for 10 minutes!!
• You should have seen the little dudes doing flick flacks across the floor using their heads!
• A guy actually walked over a stand covered in long blades!
• A guy lay down on top of a bed of blades, then a bed of nails was sandwiched between him and another dude, and a concrete slab was put on top of the other dude… before being smashed by another dude wielding a sledge hammer!
• The second half was mindblowing
• The suppleness of all of them was just incredible

I’m glad we got seats close to the front, I think if we’d sat at the back the effects would have been lost.

In short… it was good, and we’re both glad we finally saw the show but we won’t go again… until the boys get older because I feel they need to see it at some stage.

I went to Louisa‘s house yesterday to drop off her photos and over a cup of coffee we were discussing some of the scary stories she got told when she was pregnant, and how she stopped people from telling her.

Then a little later, she mentioned that someone had asked her, after Nicola was born, whether she’d heard my stories.  Until then she hadn’t realised that I’d had so many miscarriages and nearly lost Bradley and then Connor being in NICU etc etc.  And she was surprised that I hadn’t said anything.

The thing is I believe that every mother has a story.

At some stage, every single mother has had a problem.  Whether it was during pregnancy, or birth or feeding or pooing or whatever.  And in addition, every mother has a different story about each child they have.

Now I know I talk a lot.  If asked, I would have told her my very long story.  However, my story is a scary one.  And it’s not likely to happen to everyone, so until a new mom is ready, I won’t be telling her my story.

It would put her off pregnancy and babies for a long time actually.

And that’s why Louisa didn’t hear it then.

However, she heard parts of it yesterday And I think she gets now why she didn’t hear it sooner (apart from the fact that it’s not the kinda thing you talk about on Twitter )

And talking about mother’s stories… I’ve just read this on the DPS blog… and it’s truly inspirational.  It’s called shoot to live.  I took quite a few photos of Connor when he was in NICU and I’m glad I did, but this mother’s story is amazing… this is why photo-a-day is a good thing to record your kids lives even though it’s a schlep and you think they’re trivial things you’re recording… you never know if they’ll do that particular thing again.

I think I want to change the project 365 name to Shoot to Live after that actually!

OK, it’s Christmas Eve and the presents for everyone are wrapped… apart from the ones from Santa.

That begs a question?  What do you do to keep the magic of Father Christmas alive?

This is what we do…

1.  Clearly the angel at the top of the tree plays a big part

2.  We visit Father Christmas at Cresta, because he is the real deal.

3.  We have an advent calendar which helps out count down the nights.

4.  All Santas presents are wrapped with special wrapping paper and special gift cards are used so that they don’t look the same as the other gifts.

5.  Tonight, on Christmas Eve, it’s the most exciting bit though.

• We watch Santa’s progress across the world using Google Earth and Norad and we know it’s bed time when he started getting close to Africa.
• We put out cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the reindeer before the kids go to bed

6.  On Christmas morning, the kids will wake up to see crumbs in the plate, and chewed bits of carrot.  Flour footprints just in front of the fireplace and 2 filled stockings on the floor in front of the Santa gifts under the tree.

Oh I just love the magic!

Have a wonderful Christmas with your loved ones everyone!

We have an Angel at the top of the tree and she’s magic.  In fact, she’s so magic that she can even see whether children are good when she’s packed in her box at the top of the cupboard.

She’s the one, in our household, that tells Father Christmas whether Connor and Bradley have been good or not.

This is one of my family traditions.  I’ve been thinking about these traditions since I read Burgh Baby’s blog post about the same topic a few days ago.  My parents had a fairy at the top of their tree, and she was magic too; and I’ve continued with this tradition with my kids.

It’s been quite funny this year though.  Connor can now talk properly, and Bradley and him often have arguments and fights and very rough play etc where one of them inevitably gets into trouble.

Now it’s ok for us to use the Angel as a threat.  If they do something wrong we’ll tell the kids to remember that the Angel is watching and she’s going to tell Father Christmas and then they won’t get gifts.

The kids have taken this one step further this year though.

If one of them does something wrong, the other one stands in front of the tree, looks up at the Angel and says “Angel, Bradley/Connor is being naughty, he did…. ”

LOL! Then the other one runs to the tree and shouts “Sorry Angel, I won’t do it again, please tell Father Christmas to still bring me presents!”

I hope this magic never runs dry!

The kids watched “Return to Neverland” on TV tonight, and they loved it as much as I do.  There’s something about magical and fairy stories that I just love.  And of course there’s something even more magical about Peter Pan.

It sparked a few things in the house too.  Within moments of Jane learning to fly with magical fairy dust and then watching the Lost Boys fly too… both boys started trying to fly around the room and saying that they wished we had a fairy that could sprinkle magical dust to make us fly.  Connor was even lying on his tummy on the floor pretending to fly.

Then towards the end of the movie when the Lost Boys spat on their hands and then high-fived each other, Bradley started spitting on his hands too.  Lance tried to stop him by telling him it was disgusting, and then I reminded him that he must’ve done it as a child too.

I started thinking about another daft thing we used to do as kids… one that will never see the light of day again (or rather, it shouldn’t be happening).  Remember pricking your finger with a pin and your friend doing the same, and then touching fingers… so that you were blood brothers?  I remember that.  Everyone did it.  I can’t even imagine trying to explain that to my kids… thankfully they’ve (or rather Bradley) has had it drilled into their heads that you’re not to touch anyone that is bleeding.

And so the course of your child’s experiences start differing to your experiences… those games are no longer as innocent as they used to be.

Hmmph! I got an email from my school reunion Facebook group this morning with all the details of the reunion and I’ve been steaming about this ever since.

It was clearly organised by a whole load of people who had their kids when they just left school (so the kids are now adults) and a bunch of singles without kids!!  It’s been organised as a lunch on a Saturday with no kids, and spouses if they have to be there!!

And if you’re wondering about the adult kids bit… it’s the 20 year reunion   I’m THAT old

There’s no way I can go to it now.  I spend enough time away from the kids and Lance with my photography and my day job!

Oh well, no use whining too much, I probably wouldn’t have had much to say to them anyway.  And in fact, none of the people who have said yes were my close friends anyway.  And I really didn’t enjoy school…  I never fitted in… I was a bit of an odd-ball.

So, it’s really no great loss… but still… I was quite curious to see everyone

On Friday afternoon I bumped into an ex-boyfriend as I was leaving the office (he works in the building).  He was a little vague unusually so I wished him a good weekend and I was about to go to my car when he obviously changed his mind about telling me his news, and he told me that he was having twins.  In November!

It was so funny when I congratulated him.  He was genuinely surprised that I was happy for him.  He eventually said that he’s only just got used to the idea, but that he is happy about it… now.  Strange man   He then started reminiscing and saying how far we are now from our varsity days with endless pub and drinking evenings etc. LOL! I agreed with him and said that now things will really change, now that he has 3 kids!

As I said goodbye, I mentioned that he’s going to have to get bigger cars too.  Especially with twins.  And I knew that would be a major thing for him because he drives old jags and minis!  There’s no way his brood will fit now!  So he laughed and said he’d have to get a crap caravelle or something to fit everyone.

He made me remininisce too.  While I drove home, I was thinking how funny it was that he’s come full circle.  When we were at varsity he used to drive his dad’s VW combi.  LOL!  And one epic holiday we went with a whole bunch of mates to Knysna on a camping trip with this clapped out combi.  It took a month of sundays to get there!  It wouldn’t go more than 80kph and we had to carefully work out whether we had enough petrol to get to the next town to fill up because it chowed gas!  LOL! In the end it was a good thing we took the van because it rained the entire time we were in Knysna and everyone else’s tents leaked so most people had to sleep in it too (Al and my tent was watertight so we were fine)!

That was a GOOD holiday.  I’m surprised I remember so much about it, considering the volumes of Tassies (very bad plonk) and OB’s and Amarula Cream that we consumed!

Hehe so he’s going to have to get a massive car again Love it!

On Wednesdays, there’s a sushi chef that makes fresh sushi (well, obviously LOL!) in our canteen. It’s really yummy, but getting quite pricey so I don’t have it as often as I used to.

Anyhoo, this Wednesday I really felt like having some, so I mentioned it to colleagues as we were going into a working lunch meeting.  And OMW did I get rapped over the knuckles!

One of my colleagues is quite a serious diver, and she told me that she doesn’t eat fish at all anymore, because of the over-fishing and the wiping out of fish species that’s going on in the world. 

She really wasn’t happy with me when I went and bought some anyway.  LOL!  I mean, I know that the oceans are over-fished.  I know about the high levels of mercury that now exist in the fish that we eat.  I know all that.  But, I still like eating fish  .

I probably sounded callous to her, but I really do understand where she’s coming from. I commend her for not eating it because of her beliefs.  I also commend her for not eating other meat products for similar reasons.  But, I’m still going to eat fish.

Typing this out makes me feel like a bit of a hypocrit, but anyhoo…

The conversation with her reminded me of the time that I went diving (the one and only time!), when I was at varsity.  A whole group of friends, Nats included, went to Sodwana Bay for our diving course.  It was an absolute jol!  I loved every minute of it, and should have carried on doing it (diving, that is)… but that’s a story for another day. 

While we were there, a fishing boat came in the one day with a marlin on the back (just after we’d come in from a dive).  I remember how outraged we all were about it.  It was such a beautiful, huge fish, and it was heartbreaking to see it on the boat.  Absolutely heartbreaking.   It was also particularly heart-wrenching because we’d just come from our dive and were in absolute awe with what we’d seen.

So yes, I do understand where she’s coming from.  But, I’m still going to eat fish

I was very impressed with the apartment we stayed at in Shelly Beach.  What an awesome place!  And what a view!!  It was nicer than the last place we stayed at (and that was incredible!).

And now, I’m determined to make my house nicer.  I felt quite depressed actually, coming home today after spending time in a beautifully (newly) furnished place.  My house just feels so dark!

And because I know you’ll be wondering if it’s as nice as it looks in the link I’ve posted above, I just have to show you photos that I took.

The view from the kitchen

View from the balcony looking towards the boat launch in Shelly Beach (no zoom used!)

Every morning we watched the fishing boats launching and this boat arriving (just after sunrise). They seemed to be cleaning the sea from the debris that’s still floating about after that major storm a few months ago.

This one was taken after sunset a few nights ago (with a long exposure to catch the light). The municipality had piled up debris along the beach and burnt quite a bit of it that night. Probably because they couldn’t get a vehicle to collect the stuff. But STUPID because smoke polution they caused in the process was horrendous!

And one of the best bits was spotting a lone resident Blue Duiker (or at least that’s what we think it was) in the shrubs that form part of a reserve between the beaches and the apartment blocks. Poor thing actually, I hope it wasn’t alone. I wonder if the residents in the area know that it’s there?

I’ve got so many photos from this week.  I think I’ll forego my photo a day thing for the next week, and post photos from our trip on my photoblog instead.