Life In Perspective

It's so great to live with a 4 year old!! Not only are they the boss, they know it all and they live in a fantasy world - how brilliant. Whilst we run around worrying about life, the rent, what to eat, cars breaking down etc. Joel is fighting imaginary battles with Captain Hook and watching at every twist and turn for the crocodile. He will not go out without his sword and would in fact prefer to be in full Peter Pan costume no matter how hot it is. He will relent and wear school uniform only because he knows that his little Peter Pan and Captain Hook figures are in his school bag all morning just outside the classroom window! He is never happier than when he plays with his pirate ship whilst watching Peter Pan the movie. When playing outside he is always flying and changes his happy thought daily.

CNP Stuff

A strange old week in Chris Nissen Park last week typified by the complete absence of members from my bible study and only two ladies from CNP at Paula's cell group. Part of the problem is the plethora of public holidays just now, as folk get into holiday mode and find it hard to get back into a normal routine. This coming weekend is another long weekend with public holidays on Friday and Tuesday, so Monday is also a write off for many. Whilst it's great to have some time off it can get a bit frustrating from a continuity point of view so this week and next will probably be no different.

Holiday

What a wonderful two week break we had on Rietvlei farm outside Montagu on ‘Route 62’ just off the Garden Route. The farm was a fully functioning wine and fruit farm with peppers on the side. The pepper harvest was well under way whilst we were there and each day we got to throw the spoilt harvest to the pigs and goats. Needless to say Joel & Eli thought this was great. In fact, Eli got so into it that he took to throwing all his food to the pigs which became a bit of a problem!

Health & Fitness

Here's the first installment of holiday photos and stuff. One of the joys of the farm and the Montagu area is that there are lots of mountain bike trails, so there's much fun waiting to be had. I did several small rides around the farm as sadly the website had oversold their '3 Mountain Bike Trails' which turned out to be almost non-existent.

I was able to ride over a few hills and into the neighbouring farm in the next valley but apart from that most of my rides were spent trying to hack a way through the fynbos, which is only fun for a few minutes until your legs are gashed open.

Match The Picture..

Here's an excellent post from Ben Witherington's Blog: You Look Tired-- Exegeting Proverbs. Match the Picture with the Scripture.

Ben's Blog is always worth reading but this post is very good. Enjoy..

In Need Of A Laugh - Pt3

Following the success of the 'Flow Chart', here's a Pie Chart for you:

In Need Of A Laugh - Pt2

Not funny for me but might raise a laugh for you. There's this great website locally on which you can view your traffic indiscretions, cool! Not sure what the driver of our bakkie was doing here?

In Need Of A Laugh - Pt1

A brilliant recent local advertising campaign. Their TV ads are also quite funny.

Jacques Funeral

I attended Jacques' funeral this morning, or at least the first part of it! Chris Nissen funerals rarely run to time and this one was massive so there was no way it would stick to time. I've never seen so many Rastas in one place and they just kept coming long after the cortège should have moved from the house to the marquee. By the time the cortège did move I had a banging headache from the 'dagga' (pot) so started to excuse myself. I don't do drugs but smoked so much dagga vicariously that I had to drive carefully on my way home!

Clowns - A Flow Chart

Ever wondered what is the point of clowns? Hopefully this flowchart will help to explain..

Rastafarian Death

We're safely back from holiday and we'll post about it tomorrow with some photos.

We arrived home to hear that Jacques one of the Rastas in Chris Nissen has been murdered whilst working away from the community. He had picked up some hitch hikers and whilst dropping two off he was carjacked and murdered. The funeral is on Saturday so Dean will attend.

Jacques was a really nice guy and it was quite typical of him to be giving lifts to strangers, being keen to help folk out. He was a gifted musician too, playing the flute in a Rasta band.

Please pray about this as it could be a great opportunity to witness to the Rasta community in Chris Nissen. This murder will also have knocked the community quite badly so please remember them in your prayers.

Holiday

We're off to a family friendly farm near Montagu in the morning for two weeks, so we'll be too busy having fun to worry about Blogging anything. Have fun whilst we're gone - we will! :)

IE Bug Fixed - For Now..

I was made aware that the new Blog template had a bug in Internet Explorer, basically the family photo embedded in the template was obstructed by the content wrapper, so I fiddled for a while last night trying to sort it out but had to concede that the only real answer to the problem was to switch to Firefox which is far superior anyway. However, some folk seem to fear change and cling onto IE regardless, so just for them I've spent a bit more time and fixed the bug. The template is now fixed, or at least it is in IE6, I presume it works in IE7 but if not you'll just have to use Firefox ;)

Family Fun

We had a great weekend with Joel's birthday party on Saturday morning and on Sunday afternoon we met up with some friends in the Nature Reserve for a picnic tea. Eli is a real fan of picnics as he gets to graze non-stop with everyone thinking he's really cute (which he is!) and he certainly knows how to play to his adoring fans.

Joel was pleased to be able to play with Natty and together they got themselves plastered in mud as only little boys can (sadly no photos). Eli tried to keep up with them both and put in a valiant effort, managing to get mud just about everywhere.

Blog Relaunch

I've been working on a new template for this Blog for quite a while as I wanted to be able to use some of the cool new features in the 'New Blogger'.

However, the choice of Blogger templates has always been naff and so requiring a lot of hacking to get them into shape.

So here it is.. a long overdue photo of Dean on his bike in the Cape Argus. This photo was taken somewhere in the last 10km's of the race which would explain the lack of a smile on the face having done around 100km's at the time.

As you can see the scenery was truly stunning and the weather was perfect for the race. Some more stats from the race: I finished comfortably in the top half of all the 28748 riders who completed the race and I was 54th in the starting group of 420 riders, not bad!

PlayBall Birthday Party

On Saturday Joel had his birthday party. This year he had a 'PlayBall' party which was fantastic as we only had to provide the food, all the entertainment was done by the PlayBall team, highly recommended! Most of Joel's classmates came as well as his best friend Matthew and our old neighbours Bradley & Timmy. All the kids had fun and went home very tired - Excellent!

The PlayBall team get things underway

Vissy

Vissy died on Monday, after a long battle against ill health. Vissy had suffered from TB for a very long time and we suspect she had a form of cancer but will never know. She was a dear friend in Chris Nissen and was always ready for a laugh, however she never really got over the death of her husband two years ago.

Vissy has been an amazing battler throughout and on a number of occasions it looked like she would die, but each time she pulled through. We are so grateful to God for the witness she was in the community.

The funeral is tomorrow morning and Paula will attend on our behalf.

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Joel's 4th Birthday

4 Today!

Wow, where did those brief years go? Joel's been very excited about his birthday and has been asking for a bike for a while. We had thought to get him a trampoline but when asked he said he wanted a bike and has been asking ever since. So, having sought some professional advice we got said bike and he was delighted. We had a slight panic on Saturday when he told someone that he was getting a blue bike, but the colour issue seems to be irrelevant now, phew!

Politically Correct Madness

Proof that some folk in the UK really don't grasp what it means to be 'multicultural' by applying some very skewed logic to the timeless children's fairy tale; The Three Little Pigs.