Lounge picnic with the girls

Iraina was still learning to sit. Aislyn is such a great big sister and making sure that her landing is soft and supported.;)

Reilly Logan – Our Nephew

We’re proud to welcome a new member of our broader family. My sister – Cezanne and her hubby, Quinton, had their second baby boy on the 18th of July. She was a champion and did really well and the labour was quick and she’s recovering well. Reilly is as cute as the pictures and a really good baby.

Here he is

Reilly Logan Viret – 18 July 2010 – 2.6kg’s Proud Parents – and grandparents

Seth (his big brother) wasn’t there as it was a busy day for him too. Will get pics of him soon.

Soccer Coach

Tim is getting really busy with all of his ministry responsibilities. Which is great. One of the things that he is getting into is being a Soccer coach to the School of Hope boys. He’s really fired up about it and it’s wonderful to see the little bit of an impact he’s making into those boys lives.

As a family we go with him to the practices to support him as well as for the girls to see what Daddy does and enjoy the outdoors. We’ll get pics of the boys, but here’s the field that they were playing on. What a view hey?

 

Girls play

These are just pics of the girls loving each other. Aislyn gets a bit carried away sometimes.

Actually – Aislyn was sitting with Gran-d and she calls from across the room, “Mommy picture, mommy picture” I then had to take a pic of her loving Iraina. What a sweetie.

Iraina’s hairstyle

So cute!!! Iraina can now have her hair tied up. it’s so cute and she’s looking like a little girl now. her afro left her looking a little unisex, so now there’s no shadow of a doubt that she’s all female.

We’ve moved from the two ponies and now have just one (you’ll see in later blogs) and her nickname is “Pebbles” from the Flinstones. She’s a cutie ;)

Feder’s at Moyo’s - Blouberg

Today we took the time to spend some time with Lindiwe (a lady from the HP N1 band) at Moyo’s. We were saying farewell to her as she is moving to Durban to be with her Fiancee and planning on staying there to get married.

It was great to have the girls with us and it turned out to be a lovely time with friends. Aislyn was thrilled to have her face painted and got a flower (her favourite) on her cheek. Iraina sat still for half of her flower and as you can see it’s a bit blurred on the bottom. Tim and I got paw prints on our cheeks.

The food was great – can you believe it, you can get gormet boerewors rolls there.  Tim had a crumbed mussel Gatsby – which he said wasn’t as great as the ones from Golden Dish.

 

Aislyn had a meal that was called Izinduku. It was two chicken  drumsticks, a potato pattie and a mealie. For the first time in Aislyn’s whole life, she ate everything at this restaurant – normally, we would order safe things like chips or chicken wings, mac and cheese. But we’ve always taken a doggie bag for her. She polished everything – It great to see her enjoy it so much.

 

 

Iraina didn’t lose out either. She screamed for bread and so we let her gum a little piece and she thoroughly enjoyed it!  We’ve  got her this little gum sack thing that allows us to put food in a gauze sack (that has a handle) and she can gum at it without choking. So she had bread and ice. 

 

I had just desert (as my mom would appreciate) It was the almond and nut ice cream topped with caramel sauce and  the Koeksisters. Divine!

They’ve got the most amazing set up there. It’s on the big bay beach and is fully enclosed (especially in weather like we’re having). they’ve set up a deck with surf board benches at tables, over pools of water. I can’t wait until summer, because I am so going to go there and try that out.

[Iraina liked Stet’s head – so shiney ;)]

Lastly Tim was pulled into the festivities at Moyo. The staff danced to the world cup song by Shakira – Tim was pulled into dancing with them. I tried to get the video online but the format is out - Aislyn cried because it totally freaked her out that her dad left her alone.

After that we went home as Iraina was due to have supper and as it goes with littlies we had to go home.

 

It was a really great afternoon – hope to go there again sometime soon. (and it was affordable – we had small meals instead of the main courses, which were basically the same as big meals)

Bye Bye Dummy

This week has marked a very big achievement in Aislyn's life. She has given up her dummy. It was a week of prep and it proved to work wonders and she is now dummy free.

What happened was that about a week ago (16 June 2010) I asked her if she would like to give her dummy away to the "Bin Men". She thought about it for about two seconds and then said "yes Mommy". I immediately took the opportunity to start the mental prep for the "Dummy Give away"

Through the next week I gentely reminded her that she was going to give her dummy away to the "Bin Men" on Wednesday and she said "Ok" every time and didn't put up a fight or showed any stress about it.

When the Tuesday came before the big day, I reminded her and made sure she understood that the dummy would be gone forever and not coming back if she gave it away. She assured me that she understood.

What really helped the situation, was that she bumped her upper lip on the the Tuesday afternoon and it was hurt in a place that made it sore for her to suck her dummy. That night was the first night that she went without it and it was great - but I thought that it might change if the dummy was really gone and there were no other options.

On the Wednesday, we couldn't wait for the "Bin Men" so I proceeded to move to option two. I normally take Aislyn with me to the recycling station just down the road from us and she mentioned during our one visit that she would be bringing her dummy to the recycling station - I said "no" at the time, but then realised that on the day of "Dummy give away" that would be best as a plan B.

So I took her there and she then took her Dummy and put it into the plastic recycling section. We waved goodbye and have never looked back.

She didn't moan for it during the night, and there has been no drama for it at all.

We are so grateful that it has been stress free and that she has been able to move on without her Dummy and is now a "Big Girl"

We're really proud of her.

Cape Tour Bus trip

As a family we went on a trip with the Eldership team. It was really fun to do a touristy thing together. We went well prepared and dressed really warmly for the trip. The trip took us from the V&A Waterfront, through Cape Town CBD [up long street] going past the Mount Neslon hotel onto the M3 and we stopped off at the Kirstenbosch gardens for tea.
We had muffins and coffee. It was quite a brisk morning, but once we were still and sitting in the sun it was quite warm. We all sat on the second level of the double decker bus as to see the view and enjoy the atmosphere of the whole touristy thing.

Iraina slept most of the time in the wrap - the gentle rocking of the bus was great to keep her asleep. Aislyn thoroughly enjoyed being with her friend Rachel and they got to have little goodie bags with colouring stuff and stickers. There were little head phones that we listened to as the bus went along that informed us of all the history and information along the route.
Anyway, after stopping at Kirstenbosch we hopped back onto the bus and proceeded to go through Constantia [Aislyn had her nap on this part of the journey]

and then through to Hout bay. Here we stopped to have fish and chips together. It was a great family time together.



We then took a walk along the small harbour there and spotted a few seals. There was a really old rickety boat that sounded rather creepy. After that we jumped back onto the bus and went over the suikerbossie pass and down to camps bay - it was really weird having the 'locals' shout at us calling "hey tourists". we decided not to stop there as the air was still quite cool and the wind had picked up. The bus went through to seapoint where we stopped and let the kids play in the park. Here we ended our journey and it was a lots of fun for the kids to see each other and for us as a team to get to know each other a little more.

Well Aislyn is soon approaching 3 years old. We can't believe how fast time is flying. She's really doing well as a big sister to Iraina [who is our bubbly 6.5 month old] She just taught Iraina how to dance and it's the cutest thing. All Iraina does is bob her head like a little head banger.
Amongst other things, Aislyn has really been helpful with Iraina. Whenever there are tears, she gets her bottle or a toy and gives it to her. So Sweet. Iraina is also idolising her big sister - gotta love it.
Anyway, that's our first blog and I'll put more on soon.