Thursday, December 28, 2006

Merry Christmas Everyone












Well, can you believe that Christmas has come and gone already? And after all the preparation and work? We had a lovely day, and I'm proud to say that I cooked a turkey for the first time (it wasn't such a big ordeal! thank goodness) with the onion and sage stuffing, made my own cranberry sauce (I'll never buy store made again) AND made Brussel sprouts edible! Which I think was my biggest achievement - I used a Delia recipe for Caramelised Brussel Sprouts with Shallots and Pancetta. They were lovely. Now that you've had a run down of the menu I can get onto the more important stuff - Ben LOVED Christmas... He had a ball opening his presents, and we had such a lovely morning playing around. It was one of my best Christmases... We got him a Smartville Train set which has lots of different animal characters that fit into different parts of the set and talk and teach - he's really spending quite a lot of time with it which is great. He got a plane that you can put things into from Riaan and Cathy and that was another favourite of the day - he spent ages putting things in and taking them out again. I also got him is own mobile phone, which I hope would take some of the attraction away from mine, but it is definitely only a stop gap until he gets the real thing.

The pregnancy is going well too now, after a bit of a rocky start... I'm starting to get my energy back now thank goodness, but for those of you in any doubt, pregnancy forgetfulness is a very real condition - I think this child will be a genius, as it is sapping all of my intelligence... I won't even launch into the litany of stupid things I've done over the past couple of weeks! ...

We hope that you have had a really good holiday, and that you've enjoyed spending time with friends and family, and for those of you we were far away from know that you were never that far as you are always in our thoughts...

Merry Christmas Everyone :)

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Long Awaited Pictures

Hi Everyone,

I can't even begin to explain how hectic things have been here on our side... And while I have every intention of updating Ben's blog regularly, finding the time is becoming a challenge. We are all really well, Ben is just getting bigger and bigger.... and it is wonderful watching him develop into his own little person...

So here we are facing the last week before Christmas 2006 - and thankfully I have most all the shopping done... Admittedly, I only started and finished on Saturday, but it's done! The Kents are coming over for Christmas this year and I am looking forward to the day. I've put a lot into the planning to make sure that I'm not running around on the day... I really want to enjoy the day with Ben and Bob and not be a slave to the kitchen...

I hope that you all have a wonderful, merry and stress free run up to Christmas... Enjoy the holidays :) We send love to you all...




Saturday, December 02, 2006

24 Days to Christmas and Counting


I haven't been neglecting my blog lately, but between computer problems, single parenting and full time work I've been a little busy. Robin was away in SA for a week on business and I took on morning, noon and evening duty ... It would have been okay except for the fact that Ben got conjunctivitus again which basically put us in quarrentine for the weekend and we nearly drove each other bananas. He was really bored and I didn't have the energy to entertain him 24 hours a day... It wasn't the best weekend I've had... Thank goodness Bob is back and we're back to a two parent family.

We've been looking forward to our trip to London for about 3 months now and finally on Friday the day came for us to fly out... Except that Robin left his passport and drivers licence in the office and Ryanair wouldn't let him on the plane... So our trip to London was suddenly cut short!

We are looking very forward to Bob's aunt, Linda coming to visit next weekend. We had such a lovely stay with them when we went to LA and I'm looking forward to returning the hospitality...

I hope you are all keeping well, and there is only a few more weeks until we come down to visit you...

Here are a few shots of the boy...