More Flora

I tried very hard to take more pics of buildings and surroundings to give people a view of the landscape here but it is still the flora that makes me want to whip out my phone (actually carry it at all). These are all plants we (ike and I see) on our walk.

The cactuses here are all going into bloom and they pop out from many multiple points. The red one is really nice, it reminds me of a design my cousin wanted to submit as a debeers jewelry design, he described exactly this flower but as he described the final product and the way the diamonds will shine and move at the ends of the stems, he suddenly burst out laughing saying it would look like a huge inverted toilet brush. I must send him this flower pic.

Finally after 10 months of hunting, I have found a company that will come to pick up anytrash that is not organic (no need since I have my worms) and that is recyclable, for about an annual fee of US$50 but that is great, they will recycle it and this thought actually makes me very happy.

I also found a whole bunch of books that are reading for vermiculture... I think its a bit late to order them now for marcia to bring over as her bags already weigh a tonne!

Halloween more pics

Here is the chalk image we did on our wall, next year we'll paint with real paint and redo the house, maybe marcia should consider coming around halloween or staying till halloween? Less than 30 days and bubbi will be here... I have booked lion king tickets and cut out many activities to do.

The pumpkin carving is my first attempt ever, I took the image in the dark (mine is the one on the right) as there are still marker pen lines, I like shelley's, no lines and a really innocent face, michelles was really good too, she did a cat that was frightened. Needless to say, mine was not the one stolen!

Loren is back from Rwanda tomorrow, he says its like Singapore, no crime, no beggars, very clean streets. The gorrillas were very interesting to see as well tho erik described a big trek up and down and high elevation. We will go when mom is here to watch the kids. We are off to mozambique on weds, quite excited, hope the kids will last through the drive. Then mid december we are off to cape town for nearly 3 weeks, we rented a house by the beach and will be there over Xmas and new years. Oded and family will be coming so will a few friends from the UK.

Halloween

Friday was wet and so was saturday, today was nice and lovely again. So we found out that halloween here, no one does up the outside of the house, except us... everyone does up their... golf carts. Here is a pic of one that came by our house for trick or treats. We found out why no one does the outside... three out of four pumpkins were gone the next day tho none of my decorations are missing. My big spider is a big wet and soggy.

We had a good time trick or treating and eating all sort of creepy eepy food. Next year we need to find a golf cart in order to cover more ground on the compound!

Walks with Ike

Instead of pushing the stroller and taking more or less the same routes, I have decided to back pack Ike and take the nature routes, I get some weight training for bone density (though not as intense as taipei and up those stairs). He seems to quite like it, here's a shot of the red birds that are back and then i did not adjust the zoom and when I took a pic of him behind me, his face got blown up, this is as close as you get to his cheeky weekies.

Its cold again here, with the rain and wind and clouds, we are back down to 11 degrees in the day time. Brrrr.

I quite like the new routine with nate not napping, I leave him in school till 2, sometimes I manage a mini 15 min nap. I get more time with Ike and then in the pm, time with nate, today when I picked him up from school we zipped off to buy a new pair of rain boots, his old spidey one has holes. Yesterday we dropped Ike with Nomsa to Clamber club and nate and I went to have tea and scones at the little country, english type cafe on top of crabtree and evelyn. He even got his own mini teacup.

By 630pm both of them have crashed out. Not sure why Ike has moved his waking times to 430am and Nate wakes up several times at night, maybe he is lacking some sleep as with the nap he would total 12 hours, without the nap he is doing 11 hours or is it the age for nightmares?

Run up to halloween

Here's our house with some halloween deco, nate helped me put up a number of these items, while ike watched and chewed on the plastic spider.

We will be celebrating on saturday in our own little neighbourhood (roundabout cul de sac). Loren is however away in Rwanda and will be making a trip to see the gorillas in the wild. The kids will be digging out the pumpkins at 3pm, christine and charmaine will be making food (actually christine just needs to make chinese chicken feet and some chinese gut stew, forget the icky look alike food, go for the real fear factor!), shelley is in charge of drinks, michelle will be doing up our garage as the haunted garage.

I have bought a pumpkin costume and a spiderman costume, nate still has his zulu boy costume, tho the only spears I could find were more like forks.

Today I had coffee with a friend that is HIV positive, she has now taken her diploma exam and awaiting results. Trying to find work to make ends meet, even cleaning jobs. Many jobs now require email submission and internet access is expensive for her. I wonder if my pep talk for her to be more aggresive was too much.

I have also found that there is very little affordable housing for lower income, interest rates are high (1 year FD is 11%). This is the first country where I feel the gap of the rich and poor gets alot bigger and at a fast pace. Unemployment sticks stubbornly at 25%.

Bakerman II

Nate is bakerman again, here he is helping me stir the cream cheese with icing sugar and then melting the white chocolate, we are making eyeballs for bakermans halloween, it was that or booger dip.

Today we also put up part of the halloween decorations. Will post those pics later in the week, he seemed ot have a great time pulling the web for the spider. I will be hanging a big surry black spider off my tree or maybe I should have it tacked on climbing up the tree... I wonder if it would scare those chirpy birds that start singing at 4:30am?

Here's pistol in a little outfit, VIP, very important pet. Nate passed out as i take ike ot a pm make up class. I sat in the car for an hour as he napped the whole time and even ice cream did not entice him awake, also I did not bring reading material so I read the map of joburg.

Nate and Ike at the post office, I did not have enough brown paper and string to post them off, also with their weight I would probably have to lick 300 stamps. This is the only country I know where they do not have fixed denomination stamps to different global areas to make a person's life easier. I have to stick 5 different stamps to get to 4.65 rand to send a letter to Asia. Price of postage depends on size of envelope so sometimes I can barely fit the stamps, the return address and the address and the airmail sticker on the envelope. The stamps are pretty though...

For those who have asked me what I am investing in recently... well I am tempted to say what my portfolio holds but as we all know, when housewives or grandma's give advice on the market, it is time to sell.

Nate's concert

Nate's concert was very entertaining and he did really well. I have ordered the DVD and will get it in about 4 weeks time, I will learn to do postings on YouTube so those who really want to watch can do so, or I can send out DVDs as well.

So the program went like this...

All the kids walked onto the stage to their tune as the headmistress played the piano, there was a game ranger, 2 elephants, 1 monkey, 0 tiger (who has mumps and we are to expect more kids getting mumps now), 2 mammas, 1 crocodile, 4 zulu boys, 1 miss muffet and 1 spider, 3 ants and 3 twinkle stars.

They all sang, hello mom's and dads... and helped out with each other's songs. There was the game ranger song, elephant song, monkey monkey (the monkey had a great costume and did the song well too), tiger tiger, down by the river, crocodile song (the croc was also very cute, great costume and good performance), three little zulu boys (one boy got shy and stayed off stage), little miss muffet, incy wincy spider, ants go marching (the boys wore helmets with fuzzy feelers) and twinkle twinkle little star (as the last ones they were so scared? that 2 stars started crying, only kelly did her star song).

Nate did the pick up spear action, the spear went zip thru the air, hit a "springblock" and the took the springbok back to the village.

At the end Phedre (the headmistress) said, "you should let kids watch less TV and at school we try to get them to listen" and then she played their songs randomly and that was their listening cue to leave the stage.

Nate said he really likes singing and he does from time to time sing the tunes at home, at the concert you could actually hear his voice. Those Speech and Drama classes are paying off.

Tonight is the finals for rugby world cup, go bokkes go!!!

Worm Farm

For those who have asked for shots, here are some pics of my two worm farms, they are really neat, after having them for several months, I have graduated to tray 2 of both systems and in tray 1 there is a rich, dark moist compost.

In that white tiny bucket, worm pee or worm tea is collected, added with 100 parts of water, it is my main source of fertilizer for the garden. We toss all organic stuff in and I tossed in rose petals to make the pictures more palatable for those who are squirmish. I see many tiny baby worms and some days loads of large squiggly ones. The pumpkin seeds that we threw out are also sprouting in the units but won't survive because of the lack of light.

There smell coming out is like an earthy rainforest smell which is quite nice except that it reminds me of the leeches that lurk in the rainforest. I am now quite confident about the farms that I want to order the larger industrial unit. I take ike to look at the farm everyday.

The large purple tree is a jacaranda, they are in full bloom now and purple trees dot the landscape of Joburg. The sun now rises at 5ish, the birds however like to greet each other in the morning and are chirping lourly at 430am, so I now wake at 430 and can't get back to sleep. I need to sleep at 9pm to get in 8 hours... the last few nights I have slept at 10 and 11 and it is just torture for the chirpy birds to do 430 and the the hardeedars to squak at 5. I think SA wake up early because of these creatures and not the weather and if awake might as well go excercise?

Its 7pm, all is quite, one more post and I am off to bed.

Brooms and balls

Nate was obsessed with balls, he would point to balls, pick balls up etc... he is now obsessed with cars. Ike at the same age (ie now) is obsessed with..... brooms or anything with a handle. So I will be getting him a witch's broom for halloween.

Ike has now decided to drop his am nap and naps only once a day, nate has decided not to nap and so my day seems to never end. I now need to reschedule Ike's activities. In yoga this week we explored themes, mine seem to say lack of time or I am obsessed with time (you think?? considering I love making timetables). So apparently I should stop being so time oriented, ie let go (I shall smash my watch?) and flow.... hmmm....

Here are some left over pics, the big fire engine from the Dainfern Fun Day on Sunday. The big mulberry tree in nate's school is really producing yummy fruit, we pick some when we get there and pick some before coming home, here is nate on the car bonnet so he can reach. They are probably not commercially viable tho as they stain clothes and fingers, I look like I perpetually have dirt under my nails. The rose bushes in our front have EXPLODED. There is a lovely faint smell of rose petals when one walks pass, in some homes where they have different colored ones and huge ones, they are just spectacular.

Next week I plan to have william go harvestl the mulberries into containers so moms can take them home, its such a waste as they now just fall to the ground, wonder why no birds eat them? or its just too much. But where else will we get freshly picked fruit when all the nutrients and antioxidants are intact?

I took nate to see Ratatouille on monday, well we lasted about 40 mins into the movie and left. Now I have to watch movies in sections too... and some movies like cars, I have the script in my head, speeed, I am speeeeed.

Trial halloween eyeballs

Nate is bakerman again on halloween and we are having a halloween street party. Today I thought I'll have a quick trial of the white chocolate truffle eyeball dish that nate will help me make. I didn't spend too much time carefully painting the eyes, just experimenting and I must remember to make green ones too, maybe even yellow ones.

Nate has already ate one without a second thought to its goryness.

Today he asked me if I will be at his concert, he sings these tunes of songs that I don't even know. For halloween, I still need to get him a costume, I can't seem to find the tiger costume for ike and decorate the outside of our house. I have been picking up stuff like big hairy spiders (which was just in time for nate's school project this week - bugs, am eagerly awaiting the project worms).

Ike took a big morning nap and did not nap in the pm. hmmmmm.

Here are some pics of a garden place near our home where we can go for tea and enjoy the outdoors.

Nate the pirate

Friday was dress up day at nate's school, here he is in part of his pirate outfit, I think the school may have gotten better pics. Another pic of him passed out in the car on saturday as he did not nap and fell asleep to the dinner venue.

Today was nice, both boys napped long naps and I even got to nap! Ike is exerting himself alot with his cruising, trying out new things and experiences. He still has quite severe separation anxiety though.