I’ve been swimming with the boys almost every afternoon, and it’s made such a difference with Connor.  At the beginning of summer, he was too scared to even go into the pool without me.  Now he’s doing so well!! Well, as long as he has his wings on… and his latest trick is a pair of Bradley’s old goggles.

He also reached a milestone this afternoon, he was swimming under water!! How cool!

We spent the afternoon at my parent‘s house, and the kids had a ball on Erin’s waterslide that she got from Father Christmas… and then the pool

Jackie was too funny.  She’s never been interested when the kids are in the pool, but today she actually came to ask to get splashed.

See the full set of 2010 photo-a-day photos on my Project 365 Flickr Set.

It was a scorcher of a day today… and much of it was spent in the pool.

At the moment, I’m listening to crickets and frogs in the neighbourhood gardens, and the kids are chomping at the bit, waiting for me to finish my blog post so they can carry on tracking Santa on the Norad site.  Then it’s time to put cookies and milk out for Santa and his reindeer… and bedtime.

We’re set for a perfect African Christmas

To all who read my blog, have a fantastic Christmas with your loved ones

We went to Fiona’s house this afternoon for their annual friends Christmas gettogether.  Luckily the rain stopped about half an hour before we left home, and we packed swimming cozzies for the kids… just in case. It turns out they spent a lot of the afternoon in the freezing water while we had Fiona’s homemade sangria and ate homemade chicken liver pate and salmon mousse and vetkoek, amongst the other goodies that everyone brought to eat.

One of the highlights was seeing our friend Sarah again… she lives in Uganda, and is in town for Christmas )

Another highlight was seeing how the boys played together.  Normally when Ethan, Josh and Bradley get together, one of them gets left out of the equation somewhere along the line… and today they all gel’ed.

It was a fantastic way to spend a public holiday…

I was the second shooter at a wedding yesterday (photos to be posted in a few days), so I didn’t book anything for today because I knew I was going to be exhausted.  I was right! I did however have an extremely full day, filled with friends!

This morning I met up with a few online moms forum friends at River Cafe for a “quiet” morning.  We had a fabulous chat, and some good food, and the kids had a ball!! I haven’t been on that forum very much lately, and it was great catching up with everyone (and meeting some faces for the first time in real life).

The service however, left a lot to be desired.  One of the orders never arrived at all, yet we were charged for it.  The worst part of the whole morning, was when some dude arrived at the table telling us that we had to move because there was a party booked for that spot, and we had to be out of there within 10m minutes!! Colleen had booked the table six weeks before and no mention was made of the fact that there was a time limit to our reservation! Needless to say, we refused to move, mostly because they’d actually only just brought some of the kids food!! Then the dude threatened to move the shade covering if we didn’t move.  Well, you can imagine how irate we all got then. Nice way to treat your customers!

But anyhoo, here are a few photos…

After that drama, Madelein and her kids went and collected Pierre, and they came to our house for a braai and a swim (first swim of the season)… and we had a really awesome afternoon. After the boys played cricket with the dads, the kids all went swimming… not for long however, their teeth were chattering within no time because of the temperature of the water!

What the dogs thought of this swimming idea… Kimo nested on the pool net, and Kitara just didn’t get it!

It was a great day with friends… just the kind of day that I needed