30 days of thanks: day 1

A few of my FB friends are taking the month of November to list things to be thankful for. I would like to join them; it is the 2nd today so I am already one behind, but I want to do 30 days so here goes.

Day one: I am thankful for my husband

 

Today it is 16 years, 2 months and 16 days since we started dating. There were some ups and downs in the first few years, but honestly marrying him is the best thing I have ever done. Here he is:

If I had to put together a list of characteristics of the ideal man, this awesome catch would not only have all of them, the list would not even cover all the things I admire about him. I will tell you about a few of the big ones:

1. He puts others first

I get coffee in bed every day of my life. Even when he's sick - he only tells me he is feeling ill when he puts the coffee down next to my bed. He quit a high paying job to work for a charity organisation and will probably stay there for life. Making a difference is a major drive for him, and I am honored to spend my life with someone who thinks like him.

2. He is an awesome dad

Our girls don't know how great they have it! Watching him play with them, and teach them, makes me so happy.

3. He cooks

Seriously. He describes cooking as a love language - and boy, I feel the love. I cook too, but I am more of a mac-and-cheese cook. He does beef fillet with blue cheese sauce and regards it as a quick, easy meal.

4. He listens

He is a really wise man, and often when I disagree with him he turns out to be right - and yet he will always take the time to understand what I say and then treats me so gently when I am wrong. I can ask him any stupid question or bring up any embarassing concept, because he will never laugh or dismiss me. I can be entirely myself with him,without fear of rejection.

5. He learns and grows

I am continually amazed not only at who he is, but at his lack of complacency. Being good is not good enough if you can be excellent; knowing a lot is not enough when you can learn more. He regards himself as a work in progress and he has very high expectations of himself - and yet such grace for others who fall short.

Next year in March we will celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary. What a blessing.

 

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Halloween reflections

Halloween has never been much of a tradition here, but in recent years it has gained some popularity. That is probably due to a combination of more international exposure (you can't switch on a kiddies channel on DSTV in October without coming across something Halloween related) and stores cashing in on a new "holiday".

In all honesty, if we're going to import an American holiday, I would much prefer Thanksgiving; the idea of getting together with loved ones for a few days and reflect on reasons to be thankful is awesome. I'll do a few posts about that later. But right now, I'd like to tell you about my first experience of trick or treating.

I didnt really plan to do anything for Halloween. Our house is still "broken", as the girls call it, so entertaining he was not an option, and in the last few years nothng much has happened in our area on the day. But friends who live in a small complex close to here invited the girls to trick or treat with them, so off we went

We had one 3 year old clown, and a very-nearly-6 year old bunny.

Yeah, my costume-making abilities are still well hidden.

So off we went to meet up with a small group of mostly dressed-in-black youngsters. I don't have good pics, but here is one:

 

There were mostly witches and cats (why do cat costumes always seem to lean towards sexy?!), and a quite convincing little pirate. The kids came home with enough sweets to last a month, even if they eat much more sweets than usual - I have selflessly decided to help them out. Can't let sweets go stale, after all.

By the way, that innocent little clown is quite the devious candy hunter. Her strategy is mostly patience: she holds out her little sweets bag for a candy-carrying adult to give her something, but she does not accept it and move on when they do. She just stays there, bag held aloft, best Oliver Twist pleading face, until they add more, and more, and more.

So all in all it was a lot of fun. I'll do it again next year, if the opportunity arises. And hopefully then with more planning!



 

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Renovation: halfway there!

So our renovations started beginning of August and is scheduled to end 30 November. I want to share some pics of the chaos, and hopefully give you a sense of the progress.

Here is what I came home to after the olympics trip:

Front garden (there used to be a wall, and large bushes and palm trees)

Front wall of the house, they removed a large window and half of the old kitchen.

View of the old kitchen through the hole in the outside wall. Two internal walls were removed, the window that you see in the back was in the domestic quarters which we're removing and replacing with a flatlet.

This shows you from another angle the removal of the internal walls. To the left of this picture is the other side of the old kitchen's back wall, and you can see the window from the previous pic on the left in the one below. This was take standing in the lounge, looking at the space for the new kitchen. Remember this picture, I'll refer back to it below:

Then slightly to the right, the existing patio. There used to be a bar counter with a mirror in the opening behind it, fridge and sink in that recess. The recess will get bricked up and turned into a storeroom at the back.

Same view of the patio, from a different angle:

 

On to a week later. More breaking at the front:

Foundations dug for the extention of the patio (since about half of the old patio will become the new kitchen):

Bricking up the bar recess:

New bay in the old kitchen (new playroom), and the room is split in 2 with a new interior wall to create a pantry:

Then chaos struck. The roof over the old patio, dining room and domestic quarters was horrid and not to code, so we had to remove it. Massive extra cost but no choice, so there you have it. The risk of renovating an older house, I suppose.

So here is the same view that I showed you before of the new kitchen space, but without a roof:

To the right of that, the patio space with bricked up recess and existing gas braai, but no roof. See the old extention that was done on this wall? The clay bricks are the originals, grey bricks done on top of that. This caused more problems which I'll tell you about in a moment.

Oh, I haven't yet showed you the new flatlet. Here it is, or at least the walls. At the left of the pic you see the back of the wall in the previous picture:

From the front of the house, flatlet to the left, looking through the open door to the kitchen/patio.

 

And of course the more chaos struck. The extention that was previously done (when the faulty roof was put over the old patio) was really poorly built, so much that the walls can't carry the new roof. So the patio now looks like this:

We are about 25% over budget, so the surprises have to stop soon or we'll be in deep trouble! Hopefully my next post will be about progress, not chaos.

 

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Pics from London 2012 - part 1

So just to show you that sometimes I do keep my promises to upload pictures, here are the first half of my pics from the olympics trip. They're mostly taken on my phone so not great quality, but at least you can get the sense of it. 

Packed and on our way to the airport!

                                               

The best husband in the world, on the way to the stadium for the athletics on 10 August:

Another one - terrible light, but it's the only picture I have of the actual stadium:

This gives you a sense of our seats. We were reasonably high up, and when you look at the pic the finish line for the athletics events is right at the top right of the photo. The amazing part was that the men's pole vault final, which was ongoing throughout the entire evening, was right in front of us. You can probably see the crossbar with the pink pit right behind the track in the front.

The olympic rings hanging in King's Cross / St Pancras station. They are HUGE!

The javelin train:

Now for just a random collection of pictures, I don't even think they're chronological!

Ben & Jerry's ice cream. It's a good thing these aren't available in South Africa. I would be bankrupt and obese.

Lunch at the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford. Geek points - this is where CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien used to hang out; they called it the Bird and Baby at the time. Awesome food too!

 These Manderville statues are distributed throughout London - this one is "Punk Manderville". We took a picture of me standing next to each one of these I could find, but the rest will follow in part 2 of this series.

Burrough Market. Seriously, this place tempted me to move to London full time. I could live like this.

Some standard touristy stuff:

Big Ben

The London Eye:

Winchester Abbey:

10 Downing Street:

Trafalgar Square:

More Trafalgar:

We had an AWESOME fish and chips lunch in Soho. Beautifully battered and fried cod with hand-cut chips.

And dinner that evening was at Meraz Cafe, just off Brick Lane. This little plate is a starter with tandoor lamb chops and tandoor chicken. The chicken was simply the best curry I have ever tasted. Unbelievable. And this was followed by naan bread, chicken tikka masala and a mango lassi. Yum.

A little bit of British humour on a sign outside an ice cream shop in Greenwich:

\

The natural history museum. We spent a morning there and it was WAY too little time.

Super-cool animated T-Rex. I think there is some sort of motion sensor involved in his programming, because he tends to look at where people are standing. It's pretty intimidating, even when you know it's fake!

We met up with some old friends in Kensington, and the pic below is one of the private gardens a la Notting Hill. It's gorgeous.

Inside Hamley's. Another reason I would be broke if I lived in London.

On our way to the closing ceremony - Royal barge with the Queen's seal on the river.

Aah, here's a better pic of the stadium, from the evening of the closing ceremony.

That's all folks. More to follow soon!

Renovations update

Yes. We're 3 weeks into the process!

So far, we're taking the whole thing pretty well. At least the house still feels liveable and all that. But the chaos has already started. Here are the things that have gone wrong already:

1. We started a week late, because the builder was late in supplying some documents that the bank needed.
2. We've discovered that the roof of one section of the house needs to be redone. That's expensive. Sigh. But I've seen the roof trusses, and oh my word. It needs fixing.
3. In addition, we have to change the layout of the existing sewer system, essentially reroute about 30 metres of sewage line that we weren't planning to do.
4. The electrician did not follow our instructions on where to place the electrical points, so those have to be redone.
5. A window was bricked up against our instructions, and had to be redone.
6. We've discovered that our electrical system is not up to code so the main DB board has to be mostly redone.
7. The removal of trees around the addition site was more expensive than expected.

This is 3 weeks in. Another 15 or so to go. This might end up being an expensive exercise.

I need to download an app that allows me to get pics from my iPad online without plugging it into a PC - then I can show you the chaos.

The big day is here

I am leaving for London today!

Watch this space for pictures. Athletics tomorrow night (Friday) and closing ceremony on Sunday.  I can't wait!

In other news, our home renovation started yesterday, after we left Johannesburg to bring the kids to grandma and grandpa in Port Elizabeth. I am super excited! The last 3 weeks have been devoted to packing up the house, moving everything into the bedroom half of the house and otherwise throwing/giving away clutter and selling a few. I need a holiday, and will get one just in time!