28 May 2010 - Chicken "pops"

So this afternoon I went to collect Michael from my mother-in-law (Andrew and I had been to a birthday party and Sue has looked after Michael for the afternoon) and I noticed a small blister-like mark on his neck. On closer inspection I found another 5 or 6 of these blisters on his back. My immediate thought was Chicken-pox and after a quick visit to the doctor this was confirmed.

I had to laugh at Andrew though. he kept saying to Michael that he must not come near him adn give him his "chicken pops" - every time I corrected him he just carried on with the pops instead of pox. Needless to sy the new buzz word in the Cross house is now chicken pops :).

Oh boy, so now I have a very contagious little boy who does not understand why he can't see his friends, can't go to school and can't scratch his very itchy skin.
Apparently the spots will get worse until about day 4/5 and then he can go back to "normal life" a few day after that. Wish us luck......

22 May 2010 - Super 14 rugby in Soweto

On Saturday Ed and I attended the Super 14 semi-final rugby match in Soweto - what an experience and a totally historic occassion. The game was between the Blue Bulls (from Pretoria) and the Crusaders (from New Zealand). This game would normally have been played at Loftus in Pretoria - the home-turf of the Bulls, but due to the stadium being used for the World Cup Soccer to be held in South Africa in a few week's time (starting on 11 June 2010), the stadium had already been handed over to FIFA and thus a new venue was required. The closest and best option was Orlando Stadium in Soweto, Johannesburg. Orlando Stadium is traditionally a soccer venue and this semi-final game was the first ever rugby game to be played there.

The vibe was amazing and it was SUCH a fun day!

Update - May 2010

Between my ADSL line not working and the access to my blog been removed at work it has not been a great month so far to do much blogging. Hopefully that can change now that I have my home internet working again.


We started off in May with mother's day - not a big deal for me really (luckily). Ed ended up working the day and I took Ouma out for breakfast with the kids and then we went to a birthday party. At Wimpy (the breakfast place) the kids got money boxes which they could paint themselves - here is the (very good) attempt that they made.


And then it was off to Khanyi's 6th birthday party - the kids had a ball here and I hardly saw them. Between the playing and eating cake there were also horse-rides and a tractor-ride.

The next weekend my mom, Ouma, myself and the kids went to Safari for a belated mother's day lunch. Once again it was a lovely afternoon. The kids played and my mom, Ouma and myself managed to have a lovely meal out. After lunch there was horse-rides and a train ride for the kids and us grown-ups walked around the nursery.


I had bought myself a back-pack the morning and Michael has decided to annex it and has foregone his ben 10 back-pack for this one. He 'wears' it at every and any opportunity :).

I just had to add this in aswell. We have had the most amazing sun-rises and sun-sets and I have not been able to resist photographing them - really spectacular.

30 April 2010 - Night away

A few weeks/months ago I won a competition which included a night's stay and extras at the 5-star Peermont D'Oreale Grande Hotel at the Emperor's Palace complex. So for the 2nd time in almost six years Ed and I slept out without the kids. My in-laws looked after them, which I am ever so grateful for.

So off we went to "see how the other half lives" and checked into our hotel room on Friday afternoon. After chilling out a bit we go ready for dinner, which was a fully-paid meal at Tribes, a fantastic "African" steakhouse. The meal was fabulous and it was so nice to just be able to sit and talk without any interuptions :). After dinner we tried our luck at the slots in the casino, but lady luck was not on our side and we gave up after R100.

On the Saturday, after a glorious lie-in, we made our way to breakfast. Now dinner was amazing, but breakfast was a total wow! Luckily we only had to be out of our room at 11am, so we rolled back there and relaxed until then.

The final part of the prize was a couples full-body Swedish massage. Off we then went to Octavia's Sensorium where we hung around in the roman baths until we were called for the massage. Another absolutely amazing experience - quite a nice for Ed too who was a massage virgin before this :). Swedish showers, sauna and steam room sessions ended our time and our break-away.

It was so lovely to reconnect with my husband again and relax a bit. Worst of all is we rushed home to the kids and ends up they did not even miss us - maybe we can try this again sometime.......

Our room

Ed

Me

The view from our room

The roman bath