Little visitors...

Corky and Bi spent the night with my mom and dad last night.  Jake and I don't often get the chance to have them over for a play at our house, but we managed to sneak in a few minutes with them yesterday afternoon.  Jake was thrilled to have them fetch him from school, he even told me that he wished some of the girls in his class had seen him with them!

We had someone help us out with our overgrown garden and since it's already September, it's time to get some seeds into the ground.  It all started off as fun, but it turns out that Corky doesn't really like gardening - he just wanted to get inside to the TV.  Still, he and Bi have filled one of our planters with seeds, so we'll wait and see what comes up...

 Bi was far more into the whole dirt thing than her big brother...

 My big boy was very excited to be getting back into the garden and he was thrilled to share the space with his cousins.  We still have plenty to plant and probably only got about half way, but it's a start and hopefully the rain we're due to have this weekend will help things to shoot soon...

Once she started, be wouldn't stop, she had tons of fun...

Corky was very good with helping her and making sure that the seeds weren't on top of each other...

 I love this picture...

  And this one of her planting butternut next to our gooseberries...

 Corky kinda got completely bored after that, so I convinced him to pose for a few photos for me.  He wasn't too keen on that either...

 I told him not to smile for these photos... he puts on the cheesiest grin for the camera when I ask him to smile for me...

 perfect, Corky...

 He still has a baby face, precious, funny little boy...

 But that was enough, he wanted to go inside and watch TV...

 Bi doesn't like to be outdone by her brother.  Heck, when you ask this girl how old she is, she tells you she's four.  And her name is Princess Bi...

 With good reason though, she's doted upon by all of us...

 Off to help Jake again, no time for photos when there's gardening to be done...

 Nice clean veggie patch ready for the new crop.  We were literally over grown with rocket until very recently.  It was big and busy and took over completely.  Rocket is great, just not that much...

 Jake decided that he'd give Corky some beans in a tub to grow at home (sorry Jo)...

 Hi Bi-bi...

 She loves watching the boys and its so nice to see these three getting on so well...

 Jake had lost Corky though - so, so boring...

 Damned sprinkler!!  Bi picked a lemon off our tree for Nini and didn't put it down once from the moment she picked it...

 You'd think she was a little angel...

  But this cutie pie has been known to hit her brother on the head and kick him off the couch.  She often makes him cry...

 But she's too cute to ever get cross with...

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, it just can't come soon enough this week!!

Lots of love,

Sue XXX

Badge work...

 Jake is back on a mission to earn as many cubs badges as possible in as short a time as he can manage.  He's handing in two tonight and took one last week.  He's busy with another bunch too, so while there's less homework and no sport on at the moment, he's keeping me plenty busy with his other little projects.

The one that he's had heaps of fun with was his boating badge.  He has helped his grandpa do a minor repair to his boat and has had to learn about boat safety and life jackets.  Yesterday he finished it off by paddling in a canoe.  He just had to go 50m and turn and come back, but it was quite daunting for a little guy who's never done that before.  Thankfully M, with is super cute dimples, was there to help us and I didn't need to get my feet wet.  The tide was low in the lagoon too, so it was actually a breeze for Jake.

Getting the technique right is most important...

 M walked with Jake, just in case he ran into any trouble on his route.  The wind was blowing quite strongly, but Jake did really well.  Here he's turning around to head back upstream towards me...

 An uneventful turn, just about perfect...

 But paddling upstream is far tougher than going with the current with wind behind you...

 Jake's quite a toughie though and once he sets his mind to doing something, he generally figures it out.  Especially with this kind of physical stuff...

 He was chuffed with his efforts and is very keen to do this again in the not too distant future...

 But just one last paddle before heading home.  We almost couldn't get him off the water once he'd started and I see me needing to add a canoe to Jake's Christmas wishlist...

 Whoo-hoo - you did it!!  Well done, Jake!

Jake has nearly filled both his sleeves with badges and I really must do a post on all his hard work and awesome ideas and crafts.

Thanks everyone who helped him get his boating badge!

Love

Sue XXX

A party...

 

Our weekend was a flurry of birthday parties.  M's boys spent the night with him on Friday night, which was awesome, because it was Cameron's 8th birthday on Saturday.  They'd organised a quad biking party for him, which was huge fun for all the boys (big and small) and some mommies.  Jake was super excited about Cam's birthday and was very upset with me that we didn't stay over on Friday night to wake up with him on Saturday morning, but I figured it would be better for them to have a calmer house when they woke up on his birthday.  We had sushi with my folks for supper on Friday night, which was also fabulous.

Jake's mission on Saturday, so he told me in the car on our way to their house, was to make Cam feel special on his birthday.  Before the other kids arrived, our boys were allowed a ride on the quads.  I tried to get a photo of the 3 of them together with their helmets on, but, well, boys...

 You just can't expect them to stand still and smile for the camera when there are quad bikes roaring to go...

 I managed to get two smiles...

 I think M was almost as excited to get going as the kids were.  Hey my honey...

 I don't think I have one good photo of Michael from the entire day.  Every time he saw my camera, he made a face...

  Weeheeeheeehahaha - you'll regret that one day, buddy...

Oh wait, serious and ready to go...

 My mean machine, Jake...

 Cam was a little overwhelmed to begin with, so he rode with his dad the first time...

 Off they go...

 Oh Michael...

 Michael...

 Michael...

 Apparently, unless I'm pay him for his photograph, I have to take sneaky photos of Michael...

 Getting stuck into his birthday cake...

 And one last lap before we went home.  The place is actually a farm, so rather than doing laps, there are various routes that they took the kids on.  This is Jake taking the boys mom, K, for a ride.  I'd already been with him and ended up FILTHY, but it was huge fun...

 And there goes the birthday boy on his own bike...

 See all that mucky dirt... dirt and quad bikes = the best party ever!!

It really was every boy's dream birthday party and Jake's decided that he's definitely doing this for his next party too.  Thanks for letting us share the day with you Cam, we had such fun and we're already looking forward to your next party!!

Love

Sue XXX

FF..

Finally Friday!! 

It feels like its been quite a long week this week.  It's been super busy and I've got lots done.  My photography course is finished and I am finally starting to feel like I want to pick my camera up again, just for fun.  It was an exhausting course, with way more content than I'll ever need, but hey, least I'll have some more than decent snaps of Jake.

Speaking of snaps.  My external hard drive, with all my photos since Jake was born, crashed a few weeks ago.  Something to do with partitioning and I'm going to have to take it in for some professional to try do some sort of a recovery on it.  Lesson learnt: never lend your things and always have more than one copy of everything.  I've been very upset at the thought of having lost so many treasured memories of Jake growing up, but hopefully someone really clever out there will be able to wave a wand and fix it all back again.  Then I'll need a new hard drive.  And another for backups.  This won't happen again!!

In other news, the sun seems to have found Cape Town again and it's slowly starting to warm up and dry out again.  Oh how I long for summer!!  I absolutely love getting up in the morning to slightly lighter skies.  I also have someone clearing out my over-grown garden today, so hopefully Jake and I will be getting our veggie patch going again soon and I'll post pictures as we go along.  The garden needs a lot of work at the moment, winter has taken its toll.  And I have a disgusting amount of snails, but that's all part of having a garden, right.  Hate the buggers.

We've not got much planned for the weekend.  Probably just a quite evening tonight; tomorrow's Cam's birthday, so we have his quad biking party in the afternoon and on Sunday we're going to a braai for Cam's birthday braai too.  And then Monday to look forward to all over again.

Hope you're all well and wishing you a happy, safe weekend!

Love,

Sue XXX

Fun times...

This is my cousin, Kevin, and his lovely wife, Tanya.  They were married about 2 weeks ago at Meerendal .  It was a lovely, but emotional service for everyone, as Tanya's mom died very recently after a long, tough battle with cancer.  That said, Tanya was a glowing bride and, despite the circumstances, it was a really happy day for her and Kev and I wish them a lifetime of happiness.

Weddings are always a good excuse for letting your hair down and having fun with family.  Sadly, the invites went out before M was officially on the scene and so I was invited alone, but that doesn't mean that I didn't have fun and I did see him later anyway, so don't feel too sorry for me ;o)

These pictures are my dad's and I think they show perfectly the evening we had.  We laughed and laughed and laughed.  I do have fun with my sisters.  Oh, by the way, Jo's not a Satanist, she just thinks she's cool.

The picture frame was lit up with fairy lights and the pictures taken in it are supposed to be going in the frame in Kevin and Tanya's home.  Here's my crazy family.  Looking at this picture, I'm really glad that Pauly-Wauly wasn't driving anywhere.  Oh sorry, that's his photo pout hahahahaha...

 Ok, so maybe we were all a little silly... it's such fun to be childish though...

Lots of love,

Sue XXX

PS.  My photography course finished last night.  Whoo-hoo!!!  It was such fun and I've learnt so much, but it's been time consuming and I'm looking forward to getting my date night back again!