Ta Da!!!

I have to brag. My birthday present from my darling hubby is the most beautiful Yamaha upright piano. The kids and I are now having lessons (the teacher comes to the house - how awesome is that?). One day when I'm at concert level, I'll upload a video of me playing. Ha ha!

Here it is......

My Birthday

Firstly, I am going to stop apologising for the belated entries! It seems every entry (all five this year or something - actually last year now!!) have started with an apology. So, not more guilt, when I update, I update! I must add that a few snide remarks from a few people has motivated me. Right, where was I....

Yes, the dreaded big 4 -0 arrived on October 3 2011. Sigh!

I did not have a party, instead I opted to take my whole family River Rafting (excluding Heidi et al because they were in Doha, and in their place our almost family, the Bouwers). The weather was NOT very kind to us, although we had to be grateful for small mercies. It rained lightly on and off and the wind howled the whole way, nearly pushing us back upstream - it was such hard work!! But, once we were back in our cars heading home, the rain came down in force, as well as hectic thunder and lightning, so at least we got to finish the paddle.

We arrived there nice and early, and had a brekkie before we set off. Don't we all look sexy in our safety gear?After a bouncy half hour ride in an open truck, with raucous singing to take our minds off our sore bums, we got to the set-off point upstream.

We needed some instruction on how to drive the boats and then we were off. The paddle took a very long time - with both the strong head wind, and shallow water level counting against us. The break half way didn't come soon enough. We were all very relieved to reach the end of the paddle and be taken back to camp where, after changing out of our wet and cold gear, we enjoyed a warm lunch in front of a fire. And that, my dears, marks the start of my next decade.

Alistair's Birthday Party

This year, for Ali's big 10th birthday party, he chose the venue Jozi X. For those of you who don't live in Jozi, and wouldn't have heard of Jozi X, let me tell you more.

It is a on an open piece of land and consists of enormous inflatable activities (no, not jumping castles - how un-cool!!). Trapezes (small and big), tight ropes (low and high) climbing walls,a fighting pole thing

a maze, and a wobbly ladder. It also has a massive slip and slide (not inflatable - quite hard actually!) which was a Godsend because it was a scorcher of a day! We held the party from 11am - 3pm, and I think fun was had by all!

I have to add that I also joined in the fun (with Ali's permission - I didn't want to embarrass him!!) and I managed to tight rope walk on the high wire (about 3m high). As Bruce said, am I turning 40 soon or what??