Holidays!!

Wow, its just over 2 weeks and then WE ARE OUTA HERE!! Yup the time is fast approaching and we will all be on the plane headed for England, yea ha!!

Its quite scary to think how relaxed I am about this, as usual have left everything up to Rob to plan and organise, I will just supervise packing and then help spend the money when we get there, what fun.

The blogging bug has not bitten the boys who have started their own blogs

www.cheesballslife.blogspot.com and www.lifeofspeedoboy.blogspot.com

Hope they keep it up . . .

This morning was rugby, as it usually is on a Saturday and Chris's team was absolutely annihilated with a score of 69 - 0 (OUCH).

James played yesterday afternoon and although they lost by a very small margin, they were playing the A-team (he is in the B-team) and the opponents had 13year olds in their team as they don't have enough 12 yr olds to make up a team, so they played really well considering.

Rob and I decided to sponsor the boys rugby teams with waterbottles & carrier, since neither of them had. In my shopping around I managed to find a set and carrier of 10 bottles for R200, but not after being shocked that someone like Sportsmans Warehouse could ask R269 for the carrier alone and then it was branded with their name all over it. UHHHH no, I don't think so, it doesn't work that way that I should have to pay them to advertise their product, they should be giving it to me?????

Anyways, one more rugby match next week, which unfortunately Rob will miss as he will still be in Kenya and 2 more weeks of swimming for me and then holidays - how divine, not getting wet, my hair just might be able to regain some strength and my skin can rehydrate.

Time to start making lists and making sure we have covered everything from what's happening here at home to what me must take with us - pray for me!!

HAVE YOU EVER!!!

This from the website www.news24.co.za about the people that are destroying the toilets they had built for them.

Vandalism reports lies - ANCYL

Cape Town - The ANCYL national office has rejected as "lies" reports that its Dullah Omar branch plans to vandalise the City of Cape Town.

"Do you call yourself a journalist?" ANCYL spokesperson Floyd Shivambu asked a Sapa reporter. "How can you tell such lies."

Earlier on Tuesday, the ANCYL's Dullah Omar branch, in the Western Cape, called on the youth to vandalise the City of Cape Town over poor service delivery.

The ANCYL secretary of the Dullah Omar region Loyiso Nkohle said: "We are going to destroy everything and make the city ungovernable.

"We are calling on all youth to do this (vandalise the city), especially those living in informal settlements."

Nkohle's deputy Chumile Sali said the Dullah Omar branch was doing this to expose those parts of the city where the Democratic Alliance had failed to deliver services.

"The people residing in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, are not incapable of closing the N2 Highway and vandalising city council property," he said.

Intervene

On Monday, ANCYL members and community leaders led residents in the destruction of toilet enclosures the city council had erected hours earlier.
They taunted mayor Dan Plato to arrest them.

"The African people's dignity has been undermined by the DA. It is time to take action," said Sali.

While he denied that the ANCYL was promoting violence, the regional treasurer of the Dullah Omar branch, Andile Lili, said the ANCYL did not intend being violent, but was being forced to by the city.

"Anything with the city emblem on it will be destroyed," he said, adding: "The youth league will be vandalising the city."

The ANCYL Dullah Omar branch had written an open letter to Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale" asking him to intervene in the toilet debacle.

"Our complaint is based on the reality that African people residing in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, are forced to shit in full view of the public," it wrote.

"This satanic action by the city council is tantamount to gross human rights violations and undermines the people's right for their dignity to be protected as stipulated in section 10 of the Constitution."

The Dullah Omar branch said it had lodged a complaint against the city with the South African Human Rights Commission in January, but had not yet received a response.

It would not wait for Sexwale's response to proceed with its plan of action.

It was unhappy with the corrugated metal sheets the city had used to build enclosures around the toilets and wanted concrete instead.

New structures

In 2007 the city built a toilet for each household in the Makhaza area which each household agreed to enclose. However, since 2008, about 50 Makhaza families had been relieving themselves in full view of the public.

Plato told the Cape Times on Monday that he had recently met the ANCYL and community leaders and they had agreed to tell residents that open toilets would be enclosed.

He said the corrugated metal sheets used to enclose them were not inferior to the material people had used to build the homes they were living in and that if people wanted to destroy new structures he would "walk away".

On Tuesday, DA leader Helen Zille described the destruction of the toilet enclosures as part of an ANC campaign of violence and intimidation against the opposition in the Western Cape.

She would ask for a meeting with President Jacob Zuma to bring the incidents of intimidation against the DA to his attention, Zille said at a media conference in Cape Town on Tuesday.

"He must speak out against the culture of violence in the ANC, rein in the members of his party and take action against those who try to intimidate other political parties," she said.

SAPA

Catch Up

Shew, with just over 2 weeks to go and we are out of here!! We are off to England for 4 weeks, and its going to be so nice, no cell phones, computers or work. Time for us as a family to regroup.

One of the things we would like to do whilst over there is visit a school that is in the Afritwin system with James school, basically they share ideas with each other and I have approached his school about him going there for a day as an ambassador for his school - could be fun. www.christleton.org.uk.

So much has been happening in our lives and we thought we would be a little calmer now that Waterpolo was over, well were we mistaken. Rugby has taken even more of our time on the weekends.

Chris made the B team, but each Saturday lands up benching for the A team as well, so we get there early in the morning and pretty much hang around the entire day, as he has to stay to watch the 1st team play as well.

James has suddenly developed a huge love of sport and is now doing Hockey, Rugby, Swimming and Club Rugby, so he pretty spends most days at school until about 5 as well.

Makes my life easier for fetching and carrying as I can fetch them both when I am done with swimming.

This weekend Rob and I really need to sit down and finalise plans for when we are away, drawing up lists of how things work, making sure there is enough electricity whilst we are gone etc etc.

I have to say, I can't wait till we leave, just got to shake a few more kilo's between now and then (easier said than done!) and go and buy some basics e.g. eyeliner and mascara, clothes etc etc.

Chris and his Waterpolo Team

Shew the season is finally over, but what fun for the parents, the boys had to work really hard though - they trained 3 times a week, played matches on the 4th day, giving them one day off a week, but that in the last 3 weeks has been taken up by Rugby practices.

Their team did exceptionally well this term, being undefeated except for one match and made it through to the semi-finals of interschools tournament. The semi's were against SACS, Rondebosch and Reddam.

Wynberg drew with SACS only to loose in the penalty shootout, but we are all still very proud of them.

Bikes have been stolen

Can you believe it, but we have had yet another break-in and they have stolen Rob's, Chris and Morten (my brother's) bikes.

Here is a copy of my letter I sent to our local newspaper.

On Monday afternoon my youngest son came to ask me where the bikes have gone? After realising he was not joking we discovered that 3 adult bikes were stolen from our property. The bicycle's were mounted against a wall, chained and padlocked together.

We have 3 dogs on the property that bark at anything that moves outside our walls and we can only assume that since we are on a corner plot, the thieves must have distracted the dogs at one side oft he property whilst the remaining thieves jumped the wall, took their time to negotiate through a huge mountain of things in front of the bicycles (we had just emptied out our house to have our floors done), taken bolt cutters to cut the chain, removed the chain threaded through 5 bikes (imagine the noise), each attached to hooks on the wall, then lifted the bikes off their hooks and carried them over the wall.

The bikes are insured so that is not the problem, what makes me so ANGRY is the invasion of my personal space, the fact that my youngest child last night was worried about them coming back and spent the evening creating his own booby trap to catch the 'bad buys' On top of all this we have visitors from overseas (people that left the country because of amongst other things, crime) that have had to experience this.

Although we have a highly sophisticated alarm system, intruder proof glass, burglar bars etc, we are now going to install beams across our property at huge, unexpected and unbudgeted for cost, for peace of mind and to create one more layer between us and THEM!!. The inconvenience and time taken to resolve this issue with having to take time off work to go and report it tot he police, contact the insurance company and get quotes for replacement of the bikes is able to be quantified, but the emotional damage to my children and myself is unable to be quantified, let alone my husband who is overseas and having to deal with this remotely, worrying that his family are safe, all it does is fuel my anger towards criminals in this country. Why is it that we the public are made to continuously pay and pay and pay, yet our country cannot even provide us consistently with 2 SAPS vans per sector as they are allegedly supposed to do.

This incident - my 5th in the past 6 years has made me suspicious of any person walking around our neighbourhood that doesn't look as though he belongs, as this was clearly a planned theft, in that they must have had spotters checking out the lay of the land and planned how they were going to do it. We often have people ring our bell, offering to sell us stuff, begging, looking for work etc. THIS IS THE REASON WE PATROL AND ARE INVOLVED WITH OUR NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH.

I personally will be doing everything I can to support the proposed Constantiaberg CID as this is the only way to create a 'Virtual Fence' around our suburbs with monitored cameras, adding one more layer to the security of my family.

Message from Rob in India [Calcutta]

I am looking forward to going to Dubai tomorrow as it is quite a bit more civilized than this place, but it has been interesting here, and I think we have got some good possibilities. It is just such a big market that we almost don't know where to start.

It is really backward as well and we should send some of our 'folkes' here to see what real poverty is. The amount of people living on the streets is shocking. You also just do not see fat people here apart from int he high end business areas, which are very much like what we are used to, but the rest is just one big slum.

I have also never seen so many taxis in my life. They are everywhere - in Calcutta, they use a car called a Hindustani ambassador, which is basically an Austin from the late 1950's, that when it went out of production in the UK, the plant was s hipped here and it is apparently still being made 60 years later. They must have been really good cars, because I think some of the ones that we have ridden in are 30 or 40 years old and although they are completely battered and *(^&(&(&*, they still go without puffing out loads of smoke.

In Mumbai they also use such an old car, but it is a Fiat from the same era- imagine being subjected to being transported in this when the temperature is 40C and there is no aircon, and the average speed of the traffic is about 12km/h wherever you go.

The hotel that I am staying in is only about a year old and although basic clean and suits my requirements and has 24hr room service, so we were able to get supper at 00h30 this am when we got back from Mumbai.

I have taken some pictures with my cellphone, so you can get an idea. [to follow]

The cricket at Eden Gardens was fantastic on Tuesday Evening.

Drinking our daily dose of Fruit and Veg

Cannot believe I did not know about this before, but you can drink your fruit and veggies . . .

Brent and Eloise are staying with us from England and have very kindly bought us our very own juicer. Our first jungle juice had spinach, beetroot, lemon, oranges, apples and cucumbers and tasted wonderful. Both boys drank it as well, just think of all that goodness!!!

Then last night I am driving home from fetching Chris and James phones to ask if he can make some apple juice for himself - WHAT A PLEASURE!!! Finally my child that doesn't often eat fruit is wanting to make it for himself.

THANK YOU BRENT AND ELOISE!!!

ADOPTION ANYONE?

We have the most beautiful little puppy Scamp, that if anyone is keen, she is looking for a home [just kidding].


When we got her (rescued from a farmer who wanted to drown her), we were told she was a border collie, well she has a border collie face, but the hind quarters . . . hmmmm I don't know.


So far she has managed to destroy my flat iron, 2 cell phone chargers, 2 pairs of shoes, a belt, numerous pens and pencils and a couple of my swimming toys.


That on top of the craters she is excavating in our garden . . . [ view the evidence below]




Our biggest problem with her is she still fits through the damn cat flap, which means when I feed her at night with the other dogs OUTSIDE, she runs around playing with them for about half an hour and then barrels herself through the catflap and sleeps in James's room.


Although saying that, there are not many days left as she is getting too big to fit through anymore. As for her breed, who knows, she has ears that are too big for her head and her back legs look like a township dog (or KD as we call them here). Generally however her nature is pretty sweet though - and she is a fast learner, I mean its only taken about 10 swipes from all the cats for her to realise that she is better off harassing the other dogs than the cats.

New School = happy child

[ Chris, Hylton and Sean]

Chris has settled in so extremely well to his new school, its almost too good to be true.

The other day he came home and told me he went to the library before waterpolo. That was the point where I nearly feinted, I didn't think Chris even knew what the library was, let alone set foot in one.

His life is extremely hectic most days getting home from school after 6pm, bearing in mind we leave for school at 07h10 every morning. But he is loving it and asks to wait at school, even though he could come home earlier, he chooses to stay.

He has jumped into the sport and school work boots and all, he has made the B team for waterpolo and was elected as the captain. He also plays as a reserve for the A Team.

They have also started rugby fitness so twice a week its waterpolo practice, twice a week rugby fitness and every Tuesday morning at 06h30 swimming training - all this leaves no time for TV, so that is really great.

On top of all that its matches on a Friday / Saturday.

The school itself is really great, they send out a weekly newsletter which outlines the entire program for the upcoming week, including the test dates and EXACTLY what the test is about. They also provide the boys with diaries at the beginning of the year which also has all these items outlined in it, along with the test dates and subjects.

Chris has also made the most amazing friends at school and they also have the most amazing set of moms that network so well with each other and a lot of them are single moms as well. It is so nice to have a support system at the school, within the first week of being there.

I really hope this is a sign of things to come for the rest of his high school career, as he seem so happy.

HECTIC HECTIC HECTIC

This year has started with bang and we have all the hit the ground sprinting. Rob is back to his travels around the world and we are back to school and work.

The puppy is keeping us busy, but she has settled in so beautifully with all the animals.

Chris has started at his new school and is loving it. On the first day he came home and told me he was amazed because everyone in the classroom is so quiet and they don't back chat the teacher DUHHHH!!!! The way it should be.

Anyways, he has settled in so nicely, he made the B team for waterpolo and at their first practice was elected team captain by the boys in the team. It is going to be really good for him, because now for once he will get to play most of the match, as apposed to spending most of the time on the bench as the reserve for the A.

James has also settled right into school, maybe a little too much though has in the first 2 weeks he managed to get 2 break DT's, he has now been warned one more and 3rd strike you are out - his pocket money will rapidly deplete at that rate.

He has also in the last 2 weeks managed to loose 2 teeth and can you believe it, has put them out for the tooth mouse - who was caught a bit off guard (thought he was past this) with insufficient money in his wallet.

Ingrid the good aunty took James off to the museum and a photography exhibition in Town the week before school started, which he absolutely loved. The photo's above are the ones that Lisa took of him. (thanks Lisa)