Some days...

we would collect coral and build a coral fence, other days we would feed the fish. The water is crystal clear and the waves break far from shore, in the room you can't even hear the waves. Nate went with loren one day on one of those inner tubes but declined on water skiing.

Clear water, sunny days

Well our routine is something like this... 430am, ike wakes up, loren takes him for a long walk, nate wakes up at 6 and by 730 we go for breakfast, then hit the beach, ike goes for nap, nate may go to kiddies club and dada also nap!

The kids have lunch at kiddies club, if dada watches them then mom and I hit the gym or spa, if not loren gets to go. Dinner is at 430pm for the kids and porpor and then a 7pm sleep, why Ike wakes at 430?? I think he knows he can wake others up!

Food

Well the fish is quite fresh, there is a really yummy meaty fish called the Captain's fish. The first time we had it at the restaurant we thought what a good fish, later we find its served everywhere... they really should not have charged us exorbitantly! but it is still a delicious fish.

The kids and porpor had their dinner between 4 to 5 in the evenings, usually grilled fish and chips and later fish and cauliflower. Towards the last day, it was pasta. We did attempt to bring the kids out for one buffet night as a family but it was like eating fast food, they were restless and it was not enjoyable so they had only room dining after that.

Here is a really fancy chocolate dessert that we would not have picked off the menu but because it was the only item without nuts we got it by default and it was really really good. We didn't get to try much real authentic Mauritian food but on one day when we went to visit a Nokia distributor, his wife made us very good briyani chicken rice.

More pics of the kids at Kiddy club, we could leave nate there but had to accompany ike. I got to read "The Power of One" which is recommended reading. Very entertaining story of a small boy who like boxing and the life in S. Africa in the 1940s.

Mauritius

is an island further east of madagascar... its about a 4 hour flight from Joburg and surprisingly only another 5 hours to Perth, the northern worldmap view of the world sure distorts images of how far places are down south...

The resort we stayed in, Le Paradis is another hour bar car through small windier roads thru lots of sugar cane plantations. The inhabitants are all Indian but then they all speak french and seem to not have the head wobble movement that Indians usually do. The homes and coconut trees and small roads really do resemble Penang when I was growing up.

Here's a fruit seller on the beach and Nate with batman face painting at the kiddy club. When we got there it was rainy and muggy, luckily it cleared up by the second day and didn't rain again till the day we were to leave.

Kiddy's club has loads of activities for the kids, from making desserts to picking shells on the beach and the kids can have their lunch there with proper utensils, table setting... very civilised and in Ike's case, he got to play with real metal large clinking cutlery.

They also gave the kids a T-shirt and a beach bag (which loren took to the gym to store his stuff). The meals at this place is rather confusing, dinner is free but then you have to eat at the buffet, the a la carte is only a % off and wine is really expensive! we have now gotten really accustomed to the cheap wine prices in S. Africa that paying international prices again really felt painful.

The resort does have some very good restaurants and quite good facilities such as diving, water skiing, a gym, a spa, yoga and all sorts of classes (think aquarobics).

More pics from Bec's camera

So I got an Ipod for Mom's day and it was uploaded with lectures from the teaching company. Am really enjoying "From Yao to Mao, 5,000 years of Chinese History".

Nate today hit his head against a corner and has a big bruise across his right eye, I think it may turn blue black, if only he were more into pirate costumes, we could put a patch over that one.

Lightning storms in Joburg

Charmain's sister, Bec was here for 2 weeks, she is a photographer and here are some of the shots of a lightning storm in Joburg. Apparently KL and Singapore rank as the 3rd or 4th cities with most thunder and lightning but with the vast flatness of joburg you really get to see the whole sky and the thunderbolts!

Ike's favourite book

is Mr. Bump, he seems to be able to "feel" for Mr. Bump and his situation, everytime we get to the word "bump", Ike puts his hand on his forehead. He can say a few words but seems very enthusiastic about hand signals which I am running out of my basic ones to teach him.

I have about 4 or 5 short videos I want to post but something is strange with the blogger so it just doesn't seem to upload! Ike started wearing supersuits too and on saturday I bought him his own superman one, I now have 2 superboys zipping around... I just want to be invisible man.

Here's Ike happy to push a shopping cart, bottles of "BLATJANG" for those in Singapore and Malaysia... for a long while I stared at that word and its actually... BELACHAN... tho I doubt it tastes the same, it just looks so brown!

Nate is quite good at rock climbing, I was surprised at how strong he is and how easy he made it look. Ike on the other hand will try anything. Today at Col Cacchio there were 4 bottles of "sauce" he insisted on trying every bottle, the vinegrette, the salad sauce, the olive oil and one other. He's quite the taster, there's almost nothing he will not taste. Maybe I should make more of an effort to take them to the cooking class in Rivonia.

Ike's first haircut

Ike has very fine hair and is quite different from nate's there is no big curls either... on days after a bath the next morning its all frizzy like, nothing like I have ever seen before or dealt with, I have tried gelling it down (didn't work), I tried conditioning it after the hair is fry (didn't work...), I didn't try a blow dry tho, as he is already wary of the hand dryers in public toilets.

Anyway, loren took him to the hairdresser the other day. Apparently he is quite patient, he sat quietly with dada for 20 mins waiting for his turn then watched dada get a haircut but had to sit on dada's lap for his haircut (too scary?). Cried when he got spritzed with water and when they blew dry his hair.

Cold and cloudy weekend

am glad the sun is back, we had "april showers", it just rained and rained and rained non stop. There was a 4 day holiday from May 1 to May 4. We left for a night at the Magliesburg mountains (around 40km fm our home), it was like an english holiday place with english weather and nice fireplace. None of these pics are from "Valley Lodge" though.

Yay... 10 days to Mauritius! warm toasty weather!

These Supersuits

have taken over my son's wardrobe and dress sense, I wonder if i should expand his cupboard to include pirates and cowboys? As embarased as I am most days with his dress up... at least I can take comfort in that he is not like his other male friend that likes wearing a pink tutu, tho nate could pass of as a girl?

So Ike is starting to get into this suit stuff, I guess I will have to go buy the "S" size of these costumes soon. He started by pinching nate's cape... then nate's spidey suit (which is getting quite small on nate and he is quite generous in lending it). Will try to upload the video's later, seems to be a problem now...

Superman's first sleepover at Rileys

I hope this is a short super hero phase, porpor and I went to 2 toy stores looking for superman outfits, we got nate one but there is no size for ike, we did today find a suit his size but the store was closed, not sure he really knows the concept yet so am debating whether to buy a supersuit yet.

Nate has yet to wear anything else at this stage, he rotates between batman, spidey and superman. So superman was supposed to stay over at Riley's last night but I think he is still too young to understand the concept so he was delivered home at 7pm. Good thing too at 2am he woke up disoriented insisting he does not want to do a sleepover. At least he didn't wake Charmain up and that we would have to go over and fetch him!

Overheard this conversation today (Loren and Nate in the bubble bath, jacuzzi):
Loren: Do you know the name of superman's dog
Nate: Nope
Loren: Its Krypto and he is a white colored dog
Nate: and batman and superman did not like the choker (he means joker)
Loren: Yes and do you know what batman's sign is
Nate: It is a bat
Loren: and in his bat belt he has all sorts of tools...

and this conversation went on and on and on.... y a w n.