Miekie starts planning her birthday parties months in advance, so yesterday, when the day finally arrived, it was the culmination of a huge amount of thinking, planning and effort.
Starting off the day in bed...
Pieter made a card for her from him and Neil
They gave her a backpack for school
One present was too big for traditional wrapping; curtains had to do that job
She's never had a bike with gears before
Gearing up for the first ride...
Approval
After school a load of friends came over for Miekie's spa party. Marisa did a lot of research on what one can do for such a party...
Poring over presents
Chocolate faces
Marisa only realised last night that she'd omitted something... our next few salads will no doubt contain a disproportionately large number of cucumbers
Petronel also enjoyed some pampering (not in the nappy sense for a change)
Cleansed and ready to shift some ice-cream and waffles!
Yesterday was Neil's actual birthday, which was a more subdued affair than his party last Saturday. We woke up slightly earlier than usual so that we could give him his presents. He likes getting presents!
Neil enjoyed Miekie and Pieter reading their cards to him
Nice toys!
Having fun on his new wheels
Later in the afternoon he got some more presents from Oupa and Ouma
Neil has a penchant for sneaking away to eat some soil
Later yesterday Miekie had her first swimming gala at Midstream College (the previous one was at Orca). She took part in the 25 metre freestyle and 25 metre butterfly events. I managed to attend the freestyle event. She did well in both (Marisa attended the butterfly event too) but her energy fizzled out a little towards the end each time, due to being a little unfit. She's very keen that she and I embark on a fitness program together so that she'll be in good shape next time there's a gala (or any other sporting activity, particularly where she's competing as an individual I think). We're planning on starting on Saturday morning with a light jog (I'm in Botswana at the moment).
A nervous Miekie, second from the left
A merged panoramic showing various stages of the freestyle race; Miekie is in the second-closest lane (click the photo to enlarge it)
Neil started walking last Thursday, just five days before his first birthday, which will be tomorrow. As bad luck would have it, I was in Botswana but luckily Marisa had the camera rolling. Here's the snippet she sent me:
Yesterday we held Neil's first birthday party. His actual birthday will be on Tuesday 19 January. Marisa went to a lot of trouble making the cake and doing all the other preparations. I think it was a beautiful cake!
Alexander and Misha were the first to arrive, bringing presents for Neil and also for Miekie and Pieter, which were their Christmas presents from Austria!
Extremely delighted and excited!
Neil received a great set of presents from everyone who came, and he enjoyed opening and playing with each one!
Discovering the fun of solving puzzles and problems
They looked excited to be eaten!
There were girls of Miekie's age; they spent some time playing Monopoly in her room
After some careful dissecting...
Neil with the only other child within 1% of Neil's age; (she was also the only one within about 500% of his age actually)
Pieter and Dawid
Miekie wearing her new dress from Austria when we went on a walk that afternoon
After we left Cape Town we drove to Onrus along the scenic route.
On the Onrus beach
Our time in Onrus was spent going to the beach, lazing around at the house, going to Hermanus for shopping (pre-Christmas mostly), coffee, and sometimes ice cream...
Neil seems to like ice cream
Usefully, Neil liked this little playpen, so spent lots of time amusing himself in it:
In Onrus at the tiny church
Swimming was always pleasant with water temperatures around 18 degrees at least.
At Grotto Beach in Hermanus
On one day we went to the Space Agency in Hermanus where they mostly keep track of solar activity and its effects on the earth. They have an educational room with more general science exhibition aimed at children.
Miekie didn't like such a projection of herself so refused to be photographed
One of Neil's newly discovered great pleasures in life is flushing toilets...
Marisa and I bought a painting in Hermanus by Louis Ströh van der Walt which we immediately liked when we saw it:
Besides Marisa's parents, our time in Onrus overlapped with Hannes and family and Paul and family.
Presents!
Pieter wearing his new hat
Matching brothers
The kiddies table on the 25th
One of Pieter's presents was a robot kit. He and I built some of them. Here he is explaining how the infrared-triggered one works (this was taken close to the kitchen while the blender was in use, so sorry about the background noise):
We had mostly excellent weather, with only some evenings getting a little chilly.
On one of our walks
At a late lunch at The Tasting Room in Stanford
Here are some more photos taken during our time in Onrus and surrounding areas:
Neil speeding around in the lagoon
An odd ornament in Oskar's in Hermanus; subtle reflections like those here add some extra stereographic texture
New Year's eve
Miekie and I at the beach at around midnight on 31 December
We awoke on the first of January to the sounds of a helicopter coming and going and when we walked down to the lagoon we saw that it kept returning to collect water which it then dumped on the mountain which was burning. It was nice to see how effective this was in stopping the fire.
Burning the remaining sparklers on the evening of 1 January
Miekie, Pieter and I drove back home on 2 January and fetched Marisa and Neil at the airport on 3 January. On the drive Miekie and Pieter were again very well behaved, playing on their tablets. I had a wifi network set up in the car so they could play against each other. I spent most of the drive listening to a narrated book that I'd bought for the trip.
At the airport
This video was auto-created by Google Photos and I think shows a nice set of highlights of our holiday:
