STOP THE BUS!!!!

I can't believe I have not even had time to update my blog site things have been so hectic, to the point where I feel that I am starting to loose control and as a friend of our Paul said 'stop the world I need to get off' we are all just spinning out of control.

but on a more positive note. . . Just have a look at this sleeping beauty, this week with Rob having been in Kenya, James has taken up residence in his spot, I personally thinks its his way of going HA!! to Chris since he has to go to bed earlier.

At the beginning of this week James was caught riding his bicycle in the school grounds and had his bike confiscated for 10 days, needless to say I was not impressed and demanded they get the bike back from school, as the security guard has no right to keep his bike at school. Well by today Thursday there was still no bike, in fact James missed school swimming since he had no bike to ride back to school with. So off I went stomping into school, ready to fight, found the security guard who gave me a bit of attitude, but when I went stomping off towards the principals office, he was suddenly all so friendly and then I was told, no, that the bike was only confiscated until the end of the day and that James should have come to the office and collected it the same day. So we left with the bike and everyone is happy.

Speaking of swimming, Chris and James did time trials at school this week they both did very well and Christopher apparently swam like a superstar (according to other mothers that have come to me to tell me). he won all his races except for butterfly, when he came home with his times, we asked Michelle (whose now overseas) how they compared and it appears they are pretty damn good. Imagine how far he could go if he actually trained. For some reason Chris has suddenly come into himself and his body. Even his waterpolo coach questioned him as to whether he goes to gym and said he must not do weight training if he does, based on his existing build. He told him he must rather stretch, stretch, stretch, otherwise he is going to encounter sport injuries as he gets hold since his is tightly strung with muscles. This is Chris throwing the ball during practice today.

Wynberg have offered Christopher's school free waterpolo lessons for the last 2 terms and the kids love going, this week the coach came up to Chris to ask him what school he is going and suggested he should apply to Wynberg for a sport scholarship, so we will need to have a good chin wag about this this weekend when Rob is back. Looks however as though Chris still wants to go to a co-ed school.

Chris is currently on the phone with his girlfriend, giving a whole new meaning to the word cordless phone. They spend about an hour and half on the phone, she phones him and then he phones where WHAT ON EARTH COULD THEY POSSIBLY TALK ABOUT FOR THAT LONG? Oh my gosh I sound like my mother, that what she used to say when I was talking on the phone for ages.

This week the house is once again a huge tip as the contractors came in to redo our wooden floors. More than a year and half ago, Chris flooded the bathroom and insurance have taken this long to resolve the issue. They phoned me on Monday to say they would be here on Wed, so we urgently had to clear all the furniture out of the house and are now living in the TV Room, Kitchen and our bedroom - hm mm even the spiders have moved out. Needless to say its a bit of a squish everywhere.

Hopefully the end product is worth all these sweat and tears.

As for our pregnant mommy, look like her and her babies are doing well. Now lets see if I can upload this post since my ADSL is not working, so am relying on good old Nokia phone to do it for me.

Out social boys

These kids today have a far more hectic social life than we do. All we do is cough up the money and drive them around.

James disappeared off this morning with Nic and we only collected him late this evening - after being invited by his 10 year old friend to come around for a drink with his folks (enabled them to have more playtime together). Nic has the cutest puppy, a Jack Russell cross miniature maltese poodle, it is so sweet, I am not a fan of Jack Russell's as they always jump up, but this one is so sweet and so calm. James the little sausage has managed to conn Nic's parents into taking him along with them next weekend to McGregor, the last time he went to play at Nic they were filling in the invitations to Uncle Willy's Christmas party and of course James conned his way into that one as well.

Apparently they spent the afternoon building boats that they raced in the pool - good clean fun, followed by some techno junkie stuff - playing wii.

Chris on the other hand just chilled at home and tonight went out to the spur for supper with some of his friends. When we picked him and Dillan up, we got told they were hungry, as their spur food was rather yukky, so the proceeded to order a pizza for delivery and ate that. The scary part of this is Chris made the call and placed the order himself, paid for it himself and of course ate it himself (with Dillan) but how independent is that, they might have to replace us with an ATM soon, we are starting to serve the same kind of function (just kidding, who would tuck them in at night?)

This week at waterpolo the boys were all given Wynberg Boys High School Waterpolo tournament t-shirts that, although from a past tournament, they are all quite chuffed with, particularly James - all they needed to add to the back was watch TV and they would have summed up our kids 100%.

James with all his hard earned pocket money (????) has bought himself a fishtank and single fish that was found floating about a day later. But Nic's mom has apparently got a couple of fish she is looking to get rid of and is going to give them to James, I mean what a few more pets to add to the chaos of our house.

Jess our beautiful tabby cat is definately / officially pregnant. I am quite excited about this as I have never experienced a pet having a litter of its own and just hope I am here when it happens. We are trying very hard to remember when she was on heat so that we can figure out a rough due date, we think its about early November she will be due. She has been incredibly loveable over the last week or so.

Rob and I spent some time today taking photo's around the neighbourhood of all the blocked gutters around our home and am planning to send a letter to council asking them why they are 'victimising' us all the time when there are plenty of council problems they have not attended to like missing drain covers, other blocked gutters etc. Rob has suggested we start a petition and get all our clients to sign it about the need for a swimming school in the area hmmm. We want to know from council if all the people with blocked gutters and illegal driveway gutter coverings have also been approached, as you can see from the pics, some people have bricks, others pure sand - so why pick on us!!!

Poor old Titch, all the attention is always on Mickey and now Jess, he just continues to be his aloof self, but tonight for some reason as I am sitting her typing, laptop on my knees, he has wormed his way onto my lap so as not be forgotten. How could he be, he is our eldest and most placid of the lot.

Christopher's Grade 7 farewell

so difficult to believe that Chris is in his final year of junior school.

Last night was his Grade 7 farewell dance where parents and children attend. Wow what an evening, the theme was "a night with the stars" and hall and stage were decorated for the oscars.

The kids looked incredible, thank goodness we have boys, looking at those girls and how mature they looked, I would lock up my daughter till she was ready to get married. The make-up, dresses (and let me tell you some of them were realllllllllllly short and revealing) were a real eye opener.

A while ago I posted this picture of the look that Chris was looking to achieve for the dance. I think he did pretty well in achieving the look.

A very nice touch for the evening was a little card the kids put together with a photo of our child and the following message.

I can't repay the lessons that you taught when I was small

Or give you gift for gift the daily treasures I recall

But there is one gift that I can give it's all the love you've earned

For love is what you've always taught and love is what I've learned.

The evening went on till about 12h30, he kids had an absolute ball as they had a dj that got the party going and kept it going, they were all on the dance floor most of the evening, in fact at the end it was Chris (the first time we saw him all evening) that came to us, plonked down and said his legs were sore. He was dancing like to a crazy thing all evening.

It was a great evening and the kids are all on facebook now loading the pictures for everyone to see.

OLD AGE ABUSE OF GRANNIES

Can you believe that in one week, 2 out of the 3 grannies in our family have landed up looking like this!!

Nana was the first one, to trip over a carpet I think it was and land nose first on the floor, she then tripped a second time and landed on her wrist. Scary thing was that apparently when she walked into the house Oupa didn't even notice her face . . . I think it has probably gotten worse over the days before it got better.

Then not to be outdone, Granny woke up with severe toothache, made an appointment to see the dentist and walked out an hour and half later minus and eye tooth. The root was apparently so deep that the dentist really had to tug at it and poor gran came back feeling really woozy and the next day the lovely bruise on her cheek appeared.

As if that wasn't enough of a shock to her poor body she then went to have a cateract removed, which to me sounds hairy scary, but is apparently so easy and painless. This is how gran looked when I picked her up from the hospital. the op itself was only 10 minutes, its amazing what modern technology can do.

Our Crazy week

To start our crazy week, James was off school for 3 days since he got pink eye in one eye, which of course managed to transfer to the other eye as well, so 'pink eyes' was walking around quite chuffed with himself that he was legally off school. But he did spend this time productively beading christmas presents, of course he wanted to keep going back to the bead shop to get more beads once he got going, is now scheming about how he can make money out of it.

As for Mickey he managed to go walk abouts twice this week. The first time our neighbour phoned me at about 6.50am to tell me she picked her up about 3 roads away thank goodness. Now the most recent, she dissappeared on Sat morning and after numerous phone calls to vets, SPCA and walking around calling her, we got a call from one of the vets to say she had been handed in. So Rob rushed off to fetch her and she is safety back, and the little cow is quite happy, showing no remorse, completely oblivious to the trauma she causes all of us. One good thing is that we have now replaced the faulty cat flap so we can physically lock her in at night.

This of course is all too late for Jess who we suspect is pregnant. To be quite honest we are not worried by this as we would love to experience a litter of kittens, so lets watch this space to see who the daddy is?.

Saturday morning we spent organising an outfit for Christopher's farewell dance at school on Friday. He wanted to wear a sleeveless jacket (i.e. a waistcoat), black pants and white shirt. Managed to hire everything (about R40 per item) but they did not have a shirt in his size, so after walking the shops flat, managed to locate one one in Fish Hoek that we had to go and buy. The things we do for our kids!!! but I have to admit it does look stunning on him - like I said before, don't know where his body comes from if I had not given birth to him, I would seriously have to wonder who the parent were?

Yesterday afternoon we had a lovely time drinking champaign and snacks on the forecourt of Brian's engen garage, yes you read right, the forecourt, but it was to celebrate the beginnings of our new business and progress being made with the building work.

Last night we had a nice relaxing evening with Steve and Kerry who we have not seen for a while. I will never forget when we first had our children we would go around to their place (they didn't have kids at that stage) and everything was always pristine, with clear surfaces and lots of little knicknacks all over the place (a complete nightmare for parents with kids), so it gives me such a warm fuzzy feeling when we walk into their house now and the dining room table and the corner of the lounge look like this . . .

and all the knicknacks are packed away - welcome to the world of parenting (hee hee). Jay and James played beautifully, with James in his element building lego toys for Jay

This afternoon the family are just vegging out, the boys playing rugby on the playstation and Bob taking some well deserved rest with Mickey, who when he does dein to sit on your lap, doesn't just sit on your lap, but is like a child and has to literally sit up your nostril. Me as usual I am stuck to my pc, blogging and updating my swimming schedule which just scares me, since i only have 3 spaces left before I am choc full!!!!!!

Deja Vu

What an awful feeling to be reliving this nightmare where I have a neighbour/resident (don't know who) that has complained about my running a business from home, so once again I have the council on my case.

One of the biggest complaints appears to be the lintels that we have placed in our gutters for a smoother drive over the gutters for parking purposes. According to the council they say it COULD POSSIBLY block the drains if it rains - uh huuuuu????

The only flaw with this plan is our gardener clears the gutters at least every 2nd week, in fact got Chris to ride down our road and see what other people's gutters looked like and this is the evidence.

Before I approach council I decided to approach my neighbours to check with them if they are still happy with me teaching from home and I have been blown away by the responses from all of them about how encouraging they are about me continuing, that they all think its a great idea and are happy with me continuing.

In fact the one knocked on my door last night and said that she is happy to help me by walking the streets to all our neighbours and gathering their support (isn't that simply wonderful?) My other neighbour has offered to draft a huge motivating letter about them wanting me to continue doing what I am doing.

So now my next step is to find a conveyancing attorney, cough up the thousands required for them to do their work and put in my application to council, personally would far rather donate that money to charity than pay it to council, especially since there are so many other people that are also not registered, particularly in neighbouring suburbs, but what can we do.

A couple of months ago the council came round to clear out all the gutters around our streets and I took photo's to prove that where we have a single back (at the actual storm drain itself), all the other gutters have at least 2 or 3 blue bags of rubbish that is being cleared out of their gutters - so now who is blocking the gutters and drains?

Birthday Weekend

So Bob is 41 tomorrow (Monday), can't believe another year has flown past. Had a wonderful braai with some friends last night, all drank and ate too much, but had a great evening. From the photo you can see where the boys get their photo genius from, even though their father is OLD he still acts like a big kid.

The kids are pretty shattered today, not so much from the party last night, but since Thursday they have not stopped.

They have started water polo at WBHS on Thursday and only finished at 7pm, after dropping 2 friends at home, it was late to bed. Friday Chris went to moving and James had his friend Nic to sleep over. Nic and James came up with a scheme to earn money on Saturday so that they could go to Sam's (the local fish shop) and buy a fish tank. The scammed myself and Rob out of money doing chores and even managed to get a small job out of Gran for a large amount of money.

. . . anyways this entertained them for the day and they assembled the fish tank and pump and James is now the proud owner of a single little fish.

One good thing that came out of this is that we managed to convince James that the only way he could go and spend his earned money on fish was if he went for a haircut and for some reason his brother also agreed to a trim (HALLELUJAH).

as Nic's father said about this picture 'butter wouldn't melt in their mouth's' but saying that both Nic and James get on so well and Nic is such a delightful well mannered child it is always a pleasure having him around.

Chris spent the day on his bike and managed to wipe out quite badly (or as they term it 'bailed') and is now feeling quite sorry for himself as he has a bruise on his leg where his handle bars went into his leg, although I must admit it does look quite sore.

Rob, James and I took the dogs for a walk in the forest this evening as it has been such a beautiful day. Chris in too much pain stayed home. We met up with one of James' friends and his parents and the walked around with them, while James and Sebastian charged around the forest. Needless to say the dogs who have not been out for a walk in a while are now completely shattered, but they had an absolute ball.

Tonight Gran is cooking a roast chicken with trifle for pudding for Rob and the smells coming out are amazing. It is incredible what she can produce out of her tiny kitchen. James is busy wrapping Rob's present for him and we will give it to him tonight as he has to leave so early in the morning to get to Jhb.

Tinkerbell to Stinkerbell to Mickey to . . .

Well those of you that follow this blog will know about our darling Mickey that arrived as a girl, then went to the vet where we were informed that she was in fact a he. You will also know that he disappeared last week, well he went again on Sunday night - when we woke up he was gone again.

This time however we were extremely fortunate again in that one of the neighbours a road away from us, saved him from being attacked by a dog and happened to show him to a friend of ours who said that he might belong to us, she then knocked on our door and he was returned again.

Gran and I felt we couldn't do this kind of stress on a regular basis and decided that it was time to snip the balls off, so we phoned the vet and booked him for this morning 8am. On our way to dropping the kids off, with Mickey in the new cage bought for him by Gran, he was meowing quite a lot, at which stage James piped up with "stop moaning we gave you last night to enjoy your balls" jeez he is so his father's child.

Anyways, we get him to the vet and were quoted R265 to have him neutered and were told that he was first in, so would be first out at about lunch time. So we left him there and I went to work.

Finally got to go and check on him when I finished work only to be told that the account wasn't R265, but in fact R609 as they had to spay HER, yes, you read correctly, Mickey has gone again from a male, back to a female . . .

We have decided to keep her name as Mickey since she responds to it, but it has taken us till now to get used to calling her a him to now only have to revert to calling him a her. Hopefully now the wondering will stop.

The kids of course think all of this is hysterical.

Look at this little sausage, dressed up in dad's tux. Christopher had to dress up for school, as something they want to be when they grow up. He went from a professional downhill cyclist, to a lifesaver, so a successful business man and then settled on being like his dad the boss of a company. Unfotuantely I didn't get a photo of Chris as he dressed up last night, and changed his mind again this morning - and they say girls change their minds.

Over the weekend we did a whole lot more gardening, Rob worked like a trogen and Dawn and Peter bought these plants to add to Gran's garden, oh roll on summer.


Even decided to get a bit industrious this weekend and baked some chocolate muffins, thought they were pretty good actually.

Mickey is lost

What a traumatic time, we went out to Carol and Mike's 40th wedding anniversary dinner and when we left, saw the cats, when we returned Rob's folks and gran went looking for Mickey and nobody could find him, after about an hour of searching, we all had this horible sinking feeling that he was gone, heaven alone know where.

Next morning, when Rob's folks left to drive back to J'Bay, Rob was out looking for him again at about 4.h30, but still no luck. Fortunately the kids were both sleeping out, so they weren't aware of his dissappearance.

The following morning I phoned the vet to ask if anyone had reported finding a small white siamese cat. The said that someone had phoned in and reported finding one in our road. I contacted the women and described him, particlarly the gammy eye bit and she confirmed it was him. He had crossed the road and was found in the neighbours garden.

Thanks goodness for honest people. As soon as we heard that it was them, we were all overwhelmed and rushed across the road to fetch him.

So things are back to their crazy choatic lifestyle here.

Battle of the Wills

Meet my adopted daughter / educator in the wierd ways of teenagers, Michy. I mean really to try and figure out all this slang they use on their cell phones and facebook is scary, for example, gtg = got to go tms = tell me something ams = ask me something nm = not much nu = and you? wud = what you doing? and on and on and on. Need a dictionary to try understand it.

Well my darling youngest child dissapeared for the weekend with his friend Sebastian and his older brother very kindly agreed to let him use his new bicycle, under pain of death that if he breaks it, he will have to pay.

Meanwhile, my dearest oldest child Christopher absolutely refuses to have his hair cut, and because its so curly he can get away with it (to a point), but Michelle and him came up with a cockermaimie scheme to straighten his hair and this is the result . . .

Well the week that was, involved the children just about bankrupting me (actually Chris not James) as it was school holidays and every day there was something else he and his friends were going to do from watching movies, swimming, watching videos etc. But give them their due they all pitched in to help with the childrens christmas pudding mix that is held annually where the ingredients (including 12 bottles of brandy) are mixed into big enamel baths and then mixed by hand. I am however pretty sure that Chris' friends didn't quite know what they were getting into.

I personally wasn't there, but from the photo's its looks like there was a bit of food fighting going on. My mom and Frances and Tracey were all there with their kids in tow. I must say even though it was at a different venue this year, when I walked in it brought back memories of my mother coming to fetch us from school and, without being rude, stinking of pudding mix in the car.

Mickey the cat continues to be mad as ever and has achieved serious space kadett status in our household, he is the only cat any of us have ever heard of that eats the following; lettuce, marshmallows, apples, banana's, vegetables, naartjies, cucumber, mushrooms, pineapple and other wierd things.

He also has a fixation with Rob's glasses and if Rob picks him up will attack his glasses as you can see in this video clip. In fact you will see him bite Rob's eyebrow - just a little love bite

Poor old Rob, came home early this week. Now Rob has two modus operandi on a weekend, either he is completely dead and asleep on the couch for most of the weekend, or like this weekend he gets a bee in his bonnet and is buzzing around all over the show. Here he is helping Frances find accommdation in France - think I am going to start charges by the hour for his services, that way I can go out and have fun whilst Rob's working even harder than usual . . .

And as if he didn't have enough to do he then decided to hire a jackhammer and break up the concrete outside our driveway, boys being boys, the boys couldn't keep out of it and also got stuck in - me I just made coffee.