Whale Watching & Chillin' Out

We've had a wonderful day whale watching in Hermanus this morning, followed by a casual Birthday party with some friends around the corner followed by our boys toddling off to bed without complaint after a couple of stories from Mummy. Bliss!

Gravity Adventure Festival

On Sunday I missed church (sinner!) and joined a friend for a 35k mountain bike race as part of the Gravity Adventure Festival. I have no intention of posting my time simply because I was riding to keep my friend company and have some fun along the way. The route was very easy with a gentle 4km climb at the start followed by a lot of flat and downhill. The route was through the Kogelberg Nature Reserve and followed part of the 2007 Cape Epic route. The scenery was stunning and the weather was perfect so all in all a good fun morning with excellent company.

Off To The Principal's Office..

Joel had a 'proud moment' on Friday as he had to walk with 'Aunty Zonkie' to the Principal's office to receive the Principal's Special Award sticker for excellent behaviour!! All the children in the class are gradually moved from number 1 to 10 for doing good things/excelling in some way and when they reach 10 they have to go and see the Principal. Joel's 9 to 10 moment came today as a result of willingly sharing the Batman costume with a classmate - something we have all been working on for weeks!

MTB Race Photos

A couple of photos from the Stellenbosch mtb race:

Positives & Negatives (that title will annoy John Humphrys)

Sometimes we stop posting on the Blog for the simple reason that we don't have much to write about but sometimes the silence is due to the frustrations we're experiencing. Our recent silence falls into the latter category (except for the Palace Results!).

For fear of being overly negative, we'll not bore you with the details of our frustrations, but if you've been reading this Blog for any length of time you can probably figure it out.

Stellenbosch MTB Challenge

On Saturday my friend Paul and me went to Stellenbosch for the annual Stellenbosch MTB Challenge. We entered the 60km race and didn't disgrace ourselves! We had a lot of fun but cracked fairly decent times. I've never seen so much mud! Everyboy was havin problems with the mud in their gears which made for some interesting moments.

Harry Potter - Mania Madness

Sometimes you just have to laugh. The hysteria over Harry Potter is just as bad here in South Africa as it is elsewhere, with some bookshops staying open until midnight or whatever ungodly hour it was decided the book could be sold. We know this because our regular babysitter was off to join the queues.

The problem here is that South Africa generally doesn't have a book culture in the way the UK does and so books are very expensive. Harry Potter was going on sale at launch for the usual R240ish (£17). However, Paula happened to see a small notice at our local supermarket saying they would be selling the book for R149 (£10). We knew Paula would be at the supermarket around lunchtime but certainly didn't expect to find any copies left, but lo and behold, there were loads!