So Proud of James

This morning at work I was making an important phonecall when I happened to glance at my emails and saw an email from James teacher and just the 1st few words

I would just like to let you know . . . .

at which point I had to concentrate really hard on my conversation for worrying about what the email was about, but I am pleased to say that it was good news. (see the message below)

James really has such a wonderful teacher, in fact every teacher at his school has been wonderful, we really are blessed to have such a wonderful school on our doorstep.

Hello Mr & Mrs Muller

I would just like to let you know that I was extremely impressed with the oral that James presented last week. It was a huge improvement since the last time. I could see that he was well prepared, calm and confident. I have always known that James has potential. Through constant encouragement and motivation, I am pleased to see the effort he has made and I know that this has boosted his confidence. I gave him a raving review and hope that this standard continues throughout. He stole my heart with his effort and input. I am so happy for him.

Thank you for your input at home.

Regards
RUTH KOOPMAN

MILK AND COOKIES

Simple. Just the way I like it. Found this wonderful blogsite www.bakerella.blogspot.com, which if you bake is an absolute must. I have merely copied and pasted her recipe and pictures [hence foreign ingredients] and WHEN I get around to making them, will post pics.

Here's the ingredients.No. No. We must have chips. And lots of them.Use an ice cream scoop and you can get your cookies to come out the same size when they bake.When they're done, let them cool slightly before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

What to do? What to do? Why eat them right off the tray while they're still warm and gooey and melty, of course. Continue until you are sick. It's the best way.

Whatever is left after the craving is satisfied, you can store for an hour later when you finish off the rest with a tall glass of milk.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups chocolate chips

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  
• In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda and salt with a wire whisk and set aside.
  
• With a mixer, beat butter and both sugars until well blended.
  
• Beat in eggs and vanilla.
  
• Add flour mixture in two additions until combined.
  
• Stir in 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips.
  
• Use a mini ice cream scoop to drop cookie dough on a parchment covered cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.
  
• Bake for 8-10 minutes.
  
• Tip: About half way through baking, sprinkle reserved chips on top of cookies. This is just to make them prettier so, some of the chips are seen on top.
  
• Makes about ??. (I ate too many before I counted. But a couple dozen for sure.)
  

It happens in 3's

The good old saying of it happens in 3's is too true in our household. Now that Gran and I are on the mend, the next set of hurdles (as my mom likes to call them) were placed before us.

Ingrid taught swimming on Saturday, but when she got into the pool, she nearly froze her ..... off, the water was soooooooo cold. It turns out the heat pump was on the blink and had obviously been like that since I last swam on Thursday. Of course being weekend, you can't get hold of anyone and Airquarius who do the servicing on the pump don't have an after hours telephone number - go figure! So this morning (Sunday) when I couldn't sleep for worrying about this, I got up surfed the net and came across a guy who used to work for them, but now has his own company - well its midday now and I am still waiting for him to come back to me.

Fortunately I decided to go outside and give it one more try (the last 5 had not worked) the pump had been off for more than 24hours now. so I switched it on and voila!! it works - now just got to go some more electricity [chomp chomp chomp goes the pump]

Last night Rob decided to go on patrol, but before he did that he had to pick up Chris from his girlfriend - all that was fine, until Chris got into the car and with the door still open, the gate began to close. Since Rob had parked quite close to the gate and doors are quite large, the gate caught the door and bent it backwards. So guess who is lucky one that now has to find a few hours in her day next week to take it to the panel beaters for a quote!!

And finally the tumble dryer has decided its time for summer! The power tripped and the only appliance running out of the norm was the tumble dryer, reset the plugs and it did it again. When we smelt the burning, we found the burnt out plug. So if you see us in dirty clothing you know its because the weather is still rainy and we haven't gotten anything dry on the lines.

Geraldine's party

The tutu's seemed to be a hit, and Elsie who has no stove, had to improvise with a cake, so she took a barbie doll and placed it in a swiss roll, very clever if you ask me.

Beautiful shot of Cape Town Soccer Stadium

Click on the picture to enlarge it, its beautiful.

Sore Foot, sick Gran and sick Chris

Its amazing how life has its own way of slowing us down. Going over on my foot as forced me to slow right down, but it is so frustrating hobbling around the house, relying on other people to do things for me etc etc.

Frances, my mom and Ingrid have been wonderful and of course my master chef and parents in training James has been wonderful.

Yesterday Chris went to school but by 11 I got an sms to please fetch him as he was feeling ill. Frances . . . He then still had to to go to Kuman Maths (Extra maths) www.kumon.co.za Mom . . . but then I thought I have to start driving at some stage so went to fetch him, driving extremely cautiously, but that was a bad idea as last night my foot was paining and pretty swollen again.

Whilst cooking supper I also bent down to get a bowl out the cupboard and nearly dropped it from the pain - but what can a mother do, life still goes on.

Gran gave me a bit of scare yesterday, when I went through to her flat, she was still in bed and said she was really not feeling well. Now those of you that know Gran know that she doesn't do bed during the day AT ALL!! anyways bottom line is she seems to just have flu, doctor says we must treat the symptoms and only if she gets a high temperature and shortness of breath that we must get her in to the doctor. I tell you what the people that make Corenza C and panado must be smiling all the way to the bank at the moment. Kind of makes you wonder about all the conspiracy theories out there as to how and why this virus was started . . .

Chris on the other hand seems to be fighting his way through his cold but that is driven more by the fact that he is due to go on school rugby tour next week and I think he thinks, that if he misses school he might not be able to go. As it is last night he got messages from his team members that the coach is concernced they may have to cancel the tour due to the number of children that are sick. In his class it was 9 kids off yesterday, some schools in Cape Town have less than half the kids at school and Gill's school Westerford has 5 cases of confirmed swine flu. There are so many variations of this flu going around and the kids all infecting each other over and over again, they should just close the schools for a week so everyone can recover and the classes are not so disrupted.

No Sewing Tutu

Isn't the internet just wonderful. Its Geraldine's birthday on Wednesday (she turns 3) and Ingrid bought some tule and bells to make her a tutu. But by Ingrid's own admission, she is not a sewer, so I went onto the internet and found this on the following blog sites.

The picture above is the one that I made - pretty impressed with it myself.

http://cuegly.blogspot.com http://designdazzle.blogspot.com/search/label/Kids%20Parties

NO SEW TUTUS!

***

MATERIALS NEEDED:
*4 yards TULLE
*Ribbon (length depending) OR you can use
an elastic waist band

I used an elastic for my first one. I measured my daughters waist and sewed the elastic ends together)

***

Fold up your TULLE as perfectly as you can, and then roll it up.

Barely cut off the ends of each side of your roll getting rid of the folds.

Cut the roll about every 3 inches.

Unroll them, and you should have really long 3" strips. (You're going to cut each into smaller strips now, these are most likely too long). You want to cut it into strips that are TWICE THE LENGTH you want your tutu. I ended up just cutting each long strip in half.

Here's one hanging over my thumb. It's one strip hanging the LENGTH I want my tutu.

Tie all the strips on and you're done! You can use as many colors of Tulle as you want, and use what ever pattern you want to tie them on! My daughter loved her fluff!

If you use a RIBBON, follow the same examples, except dont sew the ribbon together! Make the ribbon 40" longer than the waist size so that you have 20" on each side left over to tie it in a bow around the waist! Both are SO CUTE!

* * * *

Busy week

These last 2 weeks have been incredibly busy, Rob is away in Dubai and Bangladesh for 2 weeks, so I have been running around like a lunatic trying to get everything done.

Last night for example I was supposed to attend 3 meetings, first at 5pm (Chris to extra maths) 6pm - school meeting (Chris going on tour), 7pm neighbourhood watch meeting.

Well we only got to the first meeting, I managed to trip and have damaged my tendons in my foot. I was walking around the carpark that was extremely uneven, in high heels. I still went back to the car to check if I had flat shoes to change into, as I thought to myself, 'this is a disaster waiting to happen' and wouldn't you believe it, over I went. Had to phone Ingrid and Morten to come rescue me and drive my car back home. When I fell, I just felt myself go white and dizzy and thought here I go, I am going to faint. Fortunately I didn't. Thank goodness for friends and family. Frances took the kids to school for me and my mom is doing my shopping for bread and milk etc. James has also been wonderful, fussing over me like a mother hen, nothing has been too much trouble for him, from making Granny tea to fetching and carrying all my things.

On top of all this, poor gran is not feeling well. Hopefully she is not getting the same flu Jonty had when she was overseas. We are keeping her ploughed with Corenza C and will take her to the doctor if she's not better later.

This weekend, Rob was not here, so it was fun trying to split myself in 2 to get the boys to rugby matches. Fortunately my mom helped me by taking James to his rugby and Chris and I then raced through after his match just in time to see the start of James's match. James was playing for about 15 minutes when he had a good run with the ball, but was then tackled . When he fell, he did it in such a way that he bent his fingers back so came off the field and had a big plaster covering 3 fingers put on (which of course he loved)

With Rob away we spent most of the weekend doing projects and preparing for orals. We did go to Cavendish for the afternoon, as Chris wanted to buy new jeans and was trying very hard to convince me that he should get some skinny jeans -DEFINITELY NOT!!

Here's James cooking his Bobotie (recipe supplied by Grandpa)

Women and Childrens month

Apparently August is the month dedicated to Women and Children, we even have a public holiday on Monday to celebrate this . . .

But have a look at this below, I think its all so true.

Whatever you give a woman, she will make it greater. If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby. If you give her a house, she'll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her. So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit.