Easter Weekend

We've had a really good weekend so far, enjoying some great family time and sharing it with friends too. On Friday we went to Betty's Bay to see the penguins but unfortunately the wind was too strong and we had to give up. So we ended up in Pringle Bay where the boys had strawberry milkshakes and tormented the fish (see left) whilst we chilled out and pretended they were someone else's children. We also took the boys to meet Peter & Gloria who run the Wild Olive, a guest house we sneak off to occasionally.

On Saturday we had a braai and a potjie (if you don't know what they are you'll just have to come and experience them) with some good friends joining us for the afternoon and evening. In fact we were all so relaxed that we lost track of time and the kids all went to be very late!

Easter & The Silly Season

Easter is the most important of festivals for Christians and as such we celebrate Easter in a low-key but meaningful way, taking time to remember that by giving up His life, Jesus opened the way for us to have life and a genuine relationship with the Father. For us this is a very important time of year, much more so than Christmas or any other festival.

Moved!

This blog has moved!

Our new address is: www.dpfinnie.com

The move will be complete by Wednesday and Blogger will redirect you to the new address for a while but please update your bookmarks to save a bit of time.

Birthday Boy!

Would you believe that the letter of the week in Joel's class is 'B' so for show & tell today he stood up and announced that he was the 'Birthday Boy' and told the class all about himself and his birthday. What a star!

Joel opened his presents after school (not sure we'll get away with that in years to come) and was thoroughly delighted by them. The four favourites are Victoria from Underground Ernie, Tom & Helicopter from Fireman Sam, a Zorro action figure and a set of Charlie & Lola DVDs.

This evening we went to Primi's for pizza and pasta which is always a huge hit with our boys. Joel invariably chooses Primi's when he can and the food is excellent.

So we've had a really good fun day with lots of laughs and some really great presents for Joel. Thankfully they're both in bed now so we can chill with a film.

5th Birthday Party

After a whole year of waiting (we're not joking!)Joel finally had his Zorro party with 15 of his little friends, mostly from school. He was thrilled to dress up as Zorro and couldn't believe his eyes when he saw his cake!! All in all lots of fun was had by everyone, including Eli, who got away with scavenging from the party food table all afternoon while the bigger children were playing games!!

Mum and dad were pretty pleased when all the kids, siblings and parents finally left though - it's exhausting hosting a kid's birthday party! Now we're looking forward to the big day tomorrow (Wednesday). Joel has been counting the sleeps for the last 3 weeks and is telling everyone that he is having his dinner at Primi Piatti's, his favourite pizza place! We wonder how long before conversation swings to what theme his party will be next year?

Random Post

These photos have been sitting in the 'draft' box of our Blogger account for a while so thought we might as well just post them.

Joel is delighted that Eli can join him on the swing at last

Weekend

We've had a really fun weekend which started with breakfast in the Nature Reserve with some friends from church. We're getting to know Dawid & Petra as their Daughter Iza is the same age as Eli and the both go to the same nursery. They adore each other! It's great to build some new friendships, we've been a bit starved of good friends so hopefully the kids will be a good catalyst. Over breakfast we agreed to go camping next weekend in Wellington, so we had to sort out a tent and borrowing some stuff to make it all a bit more comfortable. Hopefully we'll do a bit better than my good mate Roger (see here).

Most of the rest of the weekend was spent playing in and around the tent in the garden. Joel was really upset that we couldn't sleep in it for the last two nights, but tomorrow we're planning to get the mattresses and sleep out, but we'll see!

Cape Argus

So here are my official stats for the Cape Argus yesterday:

Time: 3:31:02
Ave Speed: 30.99
Overall Position:6925/28669
Group Position: 7/422
Age Position: 1096/3366

Recent News & Events

This weekend and last have been extremely busy but full of fun! Last weekend the boys had a Thomas birthday party on the Saturday morning, complete with little sit-on train for them all! Eli was very scared of the noise and Joel wouldn't go near it - that worked well!!! The party was amazing as the mum had really gone to town with Thomas accessories!! Eli was in 7th heaven - the biggest decision being what shall I eat next?

Cape Argus

I rode the Cape Argus on my road bike this morning and cracked a respectable time of 3:30. In truth I'm a little disappointed as I know I could have gone better but circumstance and my legs conspired against me. At least I know what I need to do next year to crack a sub 3hour.

Unnecessary Quotation Marks

Bethany at The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks has posted one of my pictures: How Personal?

Do pay her a visit and enjoy more silliness of a similar ilk.

Health Care

Paula had a real eye-opener experience of the South African health service last Friday. One of her friends in CNP, who also happens to be a home based care patient, has been really struggling to get information, test results etc. etc. Finally fed up with all the fobbing off that seemed to have been occurring, Paula bundled her friend, 1 of the carers and another friend into the car and drove to the local clinic for some action. After 3 hours (a miracle in itself!), we had finally found the right healthcare professional who could help; established that the patient has got TB; received the first TB counselling session and 2 days's worth of drugs and made an appointment for the AntiRetroViral clinic the following week - it turns out that our friend had been taking vitamin pills thinking that they were ARV's!!

On Sunday morning I rode the Boschendal 55k MTB race and finished in 3:18 which wasn't too bad for the first MTB race of the season. The course was very fast and easy with only one hill of note two thirds of the way into it. The course was also very sandy which made for some challenging riding at times. All in all this is the easiest of the MTB classics but a nice prelude the real race season which starts shortly.

Next Sunday morning I'll be riding in the Cape Argus
which is the 109k road race. Last year's post is here.

Absurdity Of Bureaucracy

How crazy is this?...

Tiny Bubbles Créche was set up in CNP about 2 years ago in the containers, so they have electricity but no water or sanitation facilities. The municipality agreed to provide these services for the créche but to date has failed to do so.

So late last week the municipality sent a health inspector to Tiny Bubbles to assess the situation. The conclusion being that the créche may have to close if they don't get water and sanitation sorted out.

Answer To Prayer

For the last three years I've tried many times to help Peter get an ID document but without success. Peter was born many moons ago on a farm back in the days when such births were not registered. For most of his life, Peter's got away without needing an ID, but now that he's sick he needs one to enable him to access the social grant. Peter and I have been to Home Affairs, the police, the magistrates court, the local social services office and a few other places in our attempts to get him an ID. Recently we sent him off to Caledon to stay with family so they could help him, but he returned after two very frustrating weeks with no joy.

Helderberg In Cloud

The weather has dramatically turned here today, having gone from 35°C yesterday to about 28°C raining and thundery today. Needless to say this creates some spectacular views locally.

Look what We Can Buy...

This is bizzare! Paula was in a local shop (bearing in mind we're over 6000miles from Blighty) and came across a variety of tins from Tesco of all places. Just to prove she did buy them here, look closely at the label on the top and you'll see it's priced at R3, which is about 20p in UK money.

Quite why anyone in South Africa would want to import oranges from the UK is a bit lost on me. It's a bit like shipping coals to Newcastle or ice to Iceland!

Just to top it off, the oranges were produced in Swaziland which is a tiny land-locked nation within the borders of South Africa.

The world is truly a strange place.

Weekend

We've had a lot of fun this weekend mostly chillin' out at home. Dean went riding on Saturday morning so Paula took the boys to the gym for an hour and then onto the Nature Reserve so they could watch the emergency helicopter loading up with water before heading onto the fire on the Helderberg again. The helicopter filled up every 7 or 8 minutes so the boys were in paradise watching it coming in so closely. Sadly Dean had the camera with him so no photos of that.

Sign Of The Times

Saw this sign in a shop window in Gordon's Bay and have been left wondering just what 'circumstance' led to the closure of the shop.

We'll leave the spelling mistake for you to spot.

See more of this kind of silliness at Signs Of The Times.

Mountain Biking

It's now just over a year since I made the commitment to ride my mountain bike three times a week regardless of the weather or whether or not I had anyone else to ride with. Early on in my new endeavour I would end up riding quite a bit on my own, but I soon found a good crowd to ride with and ride regularly with Paul (on the left in the photo) who has become a good friend and cycling buddy.

A Typical Week?

This week has been a 'classic Chris Nissen week' for Paula. It started with confirmation of the bad news of drinking starting again amongst our church members - a none too auspicious start! I then had the great privilege of buying monthly food again for the very needy thanks to 2 wonderful gifts we received in the UK for this purpose. Thanks to these, we can continue the feeding programme for another 10 months - praise God! This month it was hard to decide who should receive the food as so many folk are struggling, but we had to make the difficult decisions. It was also a privilege to deliver quite a stack of dry food goods to the CNP créche.