Butterfly World

Paula accompanied Joel and his class on their first school trip today to Butterfly World in Paarl. He had an absolute ball - firstly riding in the car with one of his new friends, Pabatso, who is a Sotho speaker solely and yet manages to get by in an English speaking nursery - aren't kids amazing!! He was then treated to up close and personal experiences (a) with the butterflies themselves in a wonderfully humid and hot enclosed area, and then with a couple of snakes and (thankfully!) some enclosed tarantulas and other such "lovelies".

Valentines Day

Joel's school emailed this photo to us. For Valentines Day the kids were allowed to ditch the uniform and wear red & white (so some went in blue & white!). Joel doesn't look too chuffed by the whole thing. The kids are from both his nursery class and the reception class.

Sadly the reception class teacher wore a Man Ure shirt but luckily she's not in the photo, phew!

Picture Resizer

Here's a really useful utility from Microsoft. In fact, this is so useful that you can almost forgive Microsoft all their previous sins.

If you regularly post photos on a Blog or website this utility is for you!

Getting Fit - Mountain Biking

I've been making a serious effort to shake off a few kilos and get fit in the process, but I also want to have fun whilst doing this. That means the gym is a non starter! So I've been mountain biking on and off for a couple of years now and really enjoyed it, but late last year the group I was riding with let me down. I chased them for a while but had to concede defeat as they were all too busy with their own businesses to commit to regular riding.

Chris Nissen Update

We've not posted on the Blog for a few days as we never seem to find the time or when we do we're just too tired to say anything worth writing.

Family life continues to be great, both boys are blossoming at their respective nurseries. Joel astounds us by the day with what he's learning. He comes out with some real pearls of wisdom and often has us cracked up. Eli loves going to his nursery/crèche run by Leanne, a friend from church. He's supposed to be moving at Easter to the same nursery Joel went to but given how happy he is we're reconsidering the move.

Home Affairs - Residency

We started the process of applying for permanent residence this morning and so embarked upon a long and slow journey with Home affairs which could take up to 3 years to complete! Hopefully things will go a bit quicker than that as we're applying on kinship grounds and as such the paperwork we have to provide is very minimal.

Lazy Weekend

It's the weekend so that must mean it's time for the paddling pool - again! As is very evident, the boys adore the pool and have so much fun in there. Eli soon had enough and decided that he wanted to climb so had a go on the climbing frame. He struggled with the rope side but shinned straight up the ladder side much to our horror! Eli was immensely pleased with himself so there'll be no end of him climbing now.

Three of the best piccys can be seen at Finnie's in Focus