Catching Up

Can't believe as I type this, we have just finished putting up our new Christmas tree, tomorrow is 1 December and the kids start opening the advent calendars. Whilst James is diligent and opens one a day, Chris by probably Wednesday will have opened and eaten all his chocolates already.

I just LOVE Christmas and we went out this morning and bought a new Christmas tree, but I couldn't resist these other 2 items, one is the countdown to Christmas the other is the train advent.

Even Jess got involved in decorating the tree.

I was very privilege to spend the day away from the family at something called a Shape day. This was my birthday present from Frances and the girls, where we spent the day attending talks in the morning and treatments in the afternoon. The whole day was put on by Shape magazine. We all had a lovely day, even if there were a lot of ladies there.

Rob has spent most of the weekend finalising his application for a British passport or is it citizenship. Finally they have found a way to apply but its going to cost a fortune, but money well spent in the long run.

I am sooooooooooooooo pleased the kids exams are over, now we wait for the results. The evening when I climbed out of the pool, I could not find the kids. Finally found them on top of the wendy house roof - supposedly learning - I think all they learnt that day was that gravity works when you are elevated and have to keep yourself up. You can just imagine what their white school uniform shirts looked like . . .

Last weekend we had a drive for our neighbourhood watch and Doug and Tra provided their fire engine for rides, well of course James and Nic commandeered the truck for their own personal enjoyment. James also had his photo taken with the police officer from our area, wearing one of their bullet proof vests.

Tigger continues to grow bigger and bigger - Jess is amazing and carts him around all over the house by the scruff of his neck. It is so sweet as Mickey not to be outdone, regularly sleeps cuddled up between Jess and Tigger - one big happy family.

TIGGER UPDATES

Nothing to say really - the pictures speak for themselves - and the video at the bottom

LITTLE TIGGER HAS ARRIVED!!!

Today at about 3pm Jess had her little baby and he has already been christened Tigger. Its now 7pm and no more babies so clearly that all she's having - what a clever girl.

She started this morning at with her labour and it took her till this afternoon to pop the baby. I went to collect James from school at about 12 (Chris was still writing exams) so that they could witness the birth. Even though Chris was here, James is the only one who saw it happening, Chris was on facebook.

Here are some photo's and a video.

This weekend after a long long time we had a braai with friends who we have not seen for a long time, Wayne, Tracey, Frances and most of their kids. Frances came on her own as her daughters desterted her, Sarah went to sleep out and Michelle, looking stunning, went to the movies with her boyfriend. Tracey and Frances doing their usual mad thing, no wonder the kids do mad things as well - check out the photo's

The kids that were here then decided to let off smoke bombs, to great shouts of glee and too my horror as I didn't realise they were smoke bombs and thought they were fire crackers.

Poor old James came home from school today with a cut on his hand where apparently one of the girls in his class 'stabbed' him with a pencil, not quite sure what the story was, will need to speak to the teacher on Monday, but supposedly the girl that did it was very sorry ?????

Going through my photo's I remember Chris taking this one of James, I was in the bath and as usual that is when all the kids decide that is when they have to tell me everything, but he fell backwards into the washing basket, as only James could.

This afternoon Chris was studying - check out the sunglasses - he borrowed them from his friend Kevin and thinks he is soooooooooooooo cool.

We attened a fundraising tea at Woodside for my mom and she had dressed the table so beautifully. I am truly blessed to know people that I do who came along to the tea to support my mom and especially to Tracey-Lynn who is such an incredibly good soul, doing so much to support Woodside - THANK YOU TRACEY!! We had Nicky sitting at the table with us and Tracey S managed to get Nicky to giggle as she was tickling her with a bunch of lavendar, but as soon as called my mom over, she only had eyes for my mom and we couln't get her to giggle again.

The kids are studying hard and Rob managed to catch up on some long overdue sleep. He has finally gotten some medication that is helping him with his skipped heart beat that keeps him awake and stressed.

Its our Anniversary - 16 years

Can you believe it - 16 years of marriage and we have not yet killed each other. In true Muller fashion it started off with a bang.

At about 12h15 Rob who has been sleeping really badly of late, woke up and woke me up asking me to put on the light, thinking something was wrong I fumbled around for the remote, but guess what WE HAD RUN OUT OF ELECTRICITY!!!, so there we were at 12h30 this morning logging onto the internet via cell phone connection which didn't want to work, so that we could purchase the damn electricity.

Rob and I usually forget our anniversary and it takes my mom to phone and congratulate us for us to normally remember, so this year I think I did pretty well, wishing him at 00h30 in the morning!!

Chris is off to the school this morning to start his exams (oops sorry, they call them test week now - don't want to stress the kids out). Can't believe this is the last time he will be doing tests in junior school. James starts on Monday and they both then write for the whole week.

Lets see what the rest of the day holds for us, hopefully completely uneventful - what's the bet that by making that statement, Jess our pregnant fairy is going to pop her babies tonight . . .

Cheese Scone Recipe

Had a request from my mom for the recipe for my cheese scones. These are so incredibly easy and delicious that I thought I would share it with everyone.

400 ml flour
15 ml baking powder
5 ml salt
5 ml mustard powder or plain English mustard)
2 cups of cheese
2 eggs
200 ml milk

Oven at 180 for 20 minutes

Sift dry ingredients together and add cheese. Mix together eggs, milk and mustard and fold into dry ingredients. Pour into well greased muffin tray and bake until done.

ENJOY!

Family Traditions

In this day and age we all seem to lack any kind of family traditions. When I was growing up every year at Christmas time, my dad would climb up on the ladder and clean the chandeliers. Today I decided it was time to clean our chandelier again since all the sanding of the floors and the dust that flew around, it was filthy. Good ol James helped me, the Chris saw us and got involved and finally Rob got involved as well, fixing the light bits and bobs that were falling off.

Now remember the bit about a bandage and how it can fix anything, well James managed to 'hurt' his arm and this was the result where he bandaged himself up - poor thing, gets no sympathy from his parents.

Chris has gone off to a party in Polsmoor Prison - one of his friends from schools Zwele, lives on the premises, his dad is a prison warden. Dad's name is Temba, which of course had Rob in stitches of laughter since that was our ex-garden boys name, the one he fired for being drunk at work. In order for Chris to go to the party, he had to put in extra hard study hours, as you can see by the picture, he welcomed the excuse of Jess sitting on his books as a reason to stop studying for while.

On Saturday Rob and I both went for Body Stress Relief and the kids were with. James kept popping in to see what it was about, Mary then offered to give him a once over which he thoroughly enjoyed. She said he had a small amount of stress in his shoulders and warned us that he would either be a bit grumpy tomorrow or very tired - hopefully its the latter.

This weekend we had a total ban on TV for the kids, because of various issues but mostly from a study point of view. As a result, the studying was great, but the best was how much time the kids spent OUTSIDE playing. I have attached this video of them up the tree and what they were doing with themselves and the punching bag. When they come home today, they tackled it again, and some of my clients had their hearts in their throats, I can just imagine what they must talk about with their friends, telling them about this swimming teacher whose kids are competely mad!!




Rob spent most of Sunday completing the study. He found that the desk had initially been mounted too high, so that had to be lowered. As you can see from the photo's before and after, it has not taken us long to fill the shelves.

This evening Chris and I went off to visit his new school for an orientation evening - lets put it this way, it was a bit of an eye opener . . . also managed to drop R520 buying stationery for school, but now at least its done.

The insurance company sent around contractors who finished, supposedly, replacing Christopher's bedroom ceiling and repainting his entire room in 2 hours this morning. Whilst they definitely have painted (we can smell it) I am clueless as to whether they have replaced, or merely fixed the ceiling, so we will have to wait for Rob to come home and inspect it. In the meantime, the contractor wants his excess of R1200 to be paid to him IN CASH. Now of course the question springs to mind, what about the other 2 contractors, i.e the one doing the roof tiles and the one doing the floor, do each of them get an excess amount, as the way we understand it is the whole claim carries an excess of R1000 - so we await an answer from the insurance company on this one.

James and his friend Nic decided to act like clowns today and decided to create their gallery of photo's and here are some of the results.

this last one, shew Nic, not sure what is going on here?

Well off to a new restaurant in Noordhoek tomorrow morning for a business meeting, so looking forward to getting out of the office, but for now, its off to bed.

The week that was

So I have this friend Mary who does Body Stress Release - WELL!!!!! this last week I have been struggling with my back. It got so bad that I finally asked Mary if I could come and see her, she very kindly agreed to come here at 8pm at night. After she finished with me I felt fine, but the next day it felt as though she had taken a 10pound hammer and beaten me up on my back. But you know the saying, no pain no gain, well its definitely getting better now. She said there was a lot of compression in my back and that is caused by one of 3 things, chemical, emotional of physical stress. the first 2 are definitely the cause of all this, but now that I have had my freak outs etc, I feel so much better and more in control again. I have also taken this week and worked from home which makes an ENORMOUS difference. Gran has also been wonderful in that she cooked supper a couple of times this week, when I just could not face it. THANKS GRAN My mom and Frances have also been great by fetching kids from school, because can you believe it, its been peeing with rain down here this week and FREEZING COLD!!!! Where is Summer????

Thursday morning the flooring contractor arrived and I thought, yay, he is here to do the skirting's, but no he had arrived to lift Christopher's floors for our other insurance claim. The problem with this was, 1) we have not yet chosen the new floor colour, 2) no-one told us he was coming, so all the stuff was still in the room and 3) the building contractor has to do the ceiling and painting BEFORE the floors go down. So now added to my other jobs, I am playing project coordinator getting paint colours and floor colours finalised.

Chris on the other hand thinks this is wonderful and thinks of himself as a bit of designer as he chooses the colour he likes for the floors (Walnut I'll have you know), with James giving his 2c worth as well.

This week, with all the rain, the boys were supposed to have an end of year swimming party at school, but it was so miserable, they cancelled it - the school pool is an indoor facility - gives you an idea of how awful the weather has been.

James has this week been going to school with a bandage around his thumb, not sure what he did to it, but anyone whose a parent know that a bandage can fix anything. I'm not saying it wasn't sore, just that it was probably milked for a little longer than necessary.

James has now also found the perfect 'nest' for Jess, who has still not popped, we are all hoping it happens over a weekend so that Rob is here as well. He took at huge big box and stuck it in our room, even cut a little door into it for her, and she seems to like it AND Mirriam hasn't packed it away, I think only because she doesn't know where to put it. Jess in her new little home.

Speaking of Mirriam, I found out that she pays R450 one way to travel by taxi to Queenstown at the end of the year. On top of that she has to pay R100 per suitcase she takes along and then her 4 year old grandson pays R250 and he has to sit on her lap!!! So off I went into cyberworld and found that she can for R260 take a city to city bus one way, or for R350 a translux bus which has aircon and a toilet. When I asked her why she doesn't use this, it was quite simple, they have to wait for their bonus to buy their tickets and then its toooooo late, so you can all guess what I am going to do, yup, buy the damn ticket - GOOD IDEA FRANCES!!

Frances phoned me this morning to say the school librarian has asked Frances and myself to come in and assist her with the audit of the library books, this will be the 3rd year we are being suckered into it.

Sucker I think is my middle name, I am organising a water safety clinic for domestic workers in our community. One of the issues I teach is the dangers of sun, so I thought it might be nice to give each lady attending a free sample of sunscreen and so my dilemma began, what product do very dark skinned people use? When I asked Mirriam, she said they use calamine lotion (you know for chicken pox - sorry Peter and Mandy, you know me and spelling), so I got a friend of mine who works at a cosmetics company to investigate and she will get back to me as she doesn't know - hmmmm . .

As I sit here typing this, I am waiting for poor Rob, whose flight was once again delayed, and smelling wonderful sausage jumbeli (sorry Peter and Mandy) that Gran is cooking for us tonight. We are so blessed to have her staying here. The animals also feel that way, it was so sweet because Titch has now realised there is a good thing going in Gran's house with milk and food on tap, so much so that he climbed onto Gran's lap the other day when it was so cold, WELL . . . Mickey was not impressed and promptly muscled his way onto her lap, trying to push Titch off and ever since then Mickey has realised sitting on laps is actually quite nice.

Here is poor gran being invaded by Splash, Titch, Mickey, Rob and myself.

The boys are playing, yes playing outside with cars and Mario men and scratching around in their old toyboxes - how wonderful, it's amazing what a BAN on TV can produce? James forgot a book at school, yet again, so he is on no TV for the weekend and Chris starts exams next week. How refreshing James has also been madly beading, not quite sure what he plans to do with all his lizards that his made, but its so good for his fine motor skills, so we'll just leave him to it.

I have decided I am giving up trying and worrying, it is just truly not worth the effort. Just two examples are trying to transfer funds from FNB 3 times, and of course my luck, it just does not work, whether the website is down or what I don't know. I tried to phone my mom and of course she was not there, so have not yet had a chance to speak to her this weekend. Trying to satisfy everyone all the time is just not possible so now I am only able to do what I am able to do!!!!

My weekend started off with the most wonderful facial that I had, compliments of my mom for my birthday. It was so stunning and relaxing that I have in fact booked another one for next month. THANK YOU MOM!!

This morning Rob was up first and I had specially bought him bacon and eggs for breakfast, so he started cooking the bacon whilst the kids were still asleep. Needless to say the smell wafting down the passage woke them up and they both came stumbling through.

Even the animals for hanging around for breakfast and James started playing with Mickey and Jess with a piece of grass and Jess, even though she is heavily pregnant was pouncing around like an agile kitten.

Rob spent the weekend building our new study desk and shelves. It took a little longer than he expected since the walls when plastered where plastered skew, meaning the wood he had had cut to specific size, didn't fit, so after much sweat and tears and breaking the wall, he forced it to fit.

Unfortunately the guy that is supposed to come and fit our skirting boards, has still not pitched up, although he has cut them all to size already. Only once he has done the skirting, can we start to pack everything back into the cupboards, so will have to follow up with him tomorrow.

This has been the weekend of roast dinners, we have had roast chicken, roast lamb and roast beef this weekend, trying to get Rob filled up on home cooked meals and the boys would probably have shot me if I served them just plain chicken and vegetables again.

Well we still wait for Jess, who is getting not much bigger, just her belly is getting harder and harder, her nipples are huge already, so it must be soon that she is going to pop. James has been making her little nests all over the house, but as fast as he makes them, Mirriam comes along and cleans everything up. The latest one was taking all Rob's jerseys out of his drawer and chucking them on the floor, lining the drawer with blankets and plonking Jess in it. But tonight he has found a huge big box from the study chair that he is going to create as a nest.

Chris has started studying for his exams this weekend, not sure that it was highly productive, as he kept getting pulled away by Rob to help him with the study since I have done something to my back and was not able to help him lift things today.

The gardener was today supposed to have worked for free as payment for the washing machine that he got from Gran, but they arrived at work and at about 12h30 came to Rob and told him they had to leave early as they had a wedding to attend. As you can imagine, Rob went ape at them.

As you can see here, he was having a little think time in front of the PC. He also had to do a project on democracy and chose to do it on the Suffragette's - now for those of you that don't know what those are, Gran was able to help us out there. They are the group of ladies that fought for the right for women to vote in the late 1800's. He did it in the form of a newspaper and it looks really good.

Gran has now had the cataract op on both her eyes so now looks like quite the glamour girl as you can see here in her 'silk' gown. Can you imagine, if she can look this good at 11am in the morning (yes 11am and she is still wondering around in her gown) THE LIFE OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS!!! She looks amazing when she's dressed.

Rob and Gran (and of course Mickey) after our roast chicken.