Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Roll on Christmas


Henry

It's 1 December in sunny Gauteng (actually cool and overcast today) and I am in sole charge of our Harry who turned 2 last week. Lily is in pre-school and Marcela has gone shopping with my Australian cousin Misty, who is visiting us this week. Work emails are coming through slowly, although there is still not the end of year lassitude I'd been bargaining on. One good thing is that it looks like I am done travelling for the year - apart, of course, from our Christmas sojourn to Maritzburg when we will join the Great Annual Gauteng Lemming stampede to the seaside. Still, work looms in Dubai, Istanbul, Abuja, Lagos and Addis early in the New Year and I am also looking at an internal project which will have time in Germany and the USA.. 
Lily checking if this was a real spider!

Our last trip to PMB was pretty good - Kim and I got to spend time together and the kids got to play with various of their cousins. Just up the road from where we were staying is Cordwalles School - which has a decent play area for kiddies although some of the decorations verge on the macabre, as can be seen..

We had a great and relaxing time and look forward to visiting our Natal relatives again soon. It's good to be there and no great challenge to put our watches back 20 years for the time difference :)

Otherwise we're all setting in pretty well. It has already been six months since I collected the family in Istanbul and brought them to our rented townhouse in Midrand. Lily and Henry are doing well, thriving on being able to play outdoors pretty much every day and I must say it's good to see them doing so. They get on well as siblings - although Lily tends to boss her little brother a bit there's very little fighting and he even sat still for her art class.. 




Before official cleanup


After cleanup for family photos