Our last summer days...

 This is always the best time of year, weather-wise.  I really love spring, but for me autumn is always calm and the days are warm, with cooler evenings, bringing better sleep.  We are still spending lots of time down at the beach and the boys love it!  Michael is crazy about Marius' little blow up boat.  Jake is a little nervous, because Michael likes to tip them all out.  Michael's by far the most daring out of the 3 boys...

 Jake prefers to hit the water with his board...

 Cam too...

 It's quite fun watching them from the shore...

   There's Michael trying to stand up in the boat, while they surf the waves...

 9 out of 10, if he's not chucked over board, he jumps in anyway...

 So... I bought a new lens.  I'm very excited about it!  It's a Tamron 150 - 600mm!!  That's a big boy!  We're going to Kruger in July and so it's mainly for that, but it's taking me a while getting used to how heavy it is and teaching myself some new tricks for getting my pictures sharp.  The beach is awesome - so many unsuspecting subjects...

 And there's Robben Island...

 When the water's flat, Michael's not that happy; he wants to be dunked...

Jake & Cam don't seem to mind the little waves for body boarding...

Jake - love that you can see his little froggy legs in the wave...

A bit of action for Michael...

Michael having a go at paddling...

It was easier to let Marius do all the hard work though...

The water in Blouberg's never very warm, so the boys don't often stay in for madly long...

Jake headed back in for a bit though...

Splashing his board around (he's not supposed to do that!)...

And eventually landing on his rear end...

Which he thought was pretty fun...

So, to be totally honest, I was actually a teeny disappointed with my new lens when I flicked through the photos on my camera.  Once I'd downloaded them though, total opposite.  I'm thrilled with it!  The pictures are sharp and clear and I cannot wait to get into the bush with it.  The biggest trick is to set the shutter speed up higher than usual to avoid camera shake.  The lens is nearly 2kgs heavy, so to put that on the end of your camera, focus, hold it steady and shoot is not easy as easy as I'd hoped, especially without a tripod.  I'm learning and having fun with it...

None of these photos have been cropped in anyway, so I'm happy with what I managed to snap in my first attempts...

This is Table Mountain on the lowest zoom settings (totally zoomed out)...

And this is fully zoomed in...

These photos were taken the following week, when I had Jake at the beach on my own...

I was sitting on the bench at the top, along the roadside...

It was spring tide and the water was warmer than usual.  Jake didn't board for long, he wanted to get over to the island...

So again, totally zoomed out from about 200m (girl's guesstimate) away...

Robben Island in the background...

OK, so now I know the light is awful in this pic, but that's the island Jake was on and I wanted to show you these boats...

I tried to fix the light up a bit, but failed... too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.  Don't focus on the bad though, look how close I can get...

and back to Jake...  Where's Wally???

And as far as taking a portrait goes, not too bad...

And this time, I did try cropping the photo to see how clearly I'd actually managed to get it - not bad, right?

Today marks the end of the holidays and back to school.  It was such a short break, we hardly even noticed it.  Getting back into routine is hard and Jake was not a happy monkey this morning heading off to school.  Going back on his meds means less food enjoyment and he knows he'll have a sore tummy and feel ill today.  I tried giving him hydrospasmol to alleviate the inevitable tummy ache, but he was feeling quite sleepy when I dropped him off, so possibly not the recommended trick, although the chemist said OK to try.  Rugby training starts today, but swimming is having a bit of a break as the pool is under repair.  Exams later this term, so it will be hard work one for all.  Hopefully less stressful for Jake than usual though.

Sending love,

Sue XXX