We had many opportunities to go for walks, often to playgrounds. Neil likes swings and really really likes slides. Miekie and Pieter like roundabouts most. Marisa and I serve mostly as sources of energy that, once steady states have been reached, compensate for frictional losses in the hinges of swings and aerodynamic drag losses. We also increase the potential energy of Neil at a frequency of about once a minute while at the slide, enabling him to transform this into kinetic energy with the help of the slide. However, we act as lateral stability controls and descent-velocity controls too, expending more of our own energy this way, but still finding it strangely relaxing.
At the "train park" in Langebaan
On part of the "pirate ship" close to Club Mykonos
While providing greater stability, the four chains make movement a little more restrictive
In Hermanus; potential energy just having been transferred to Neil
Neil was somewhere in there, making his way to the slide
We set off on our Easter holiday on Sunday 22 March. Having booked rather late, one of the few remaining good options for getting to the Cape turned out to be flying on a new airline called Blue Crane. They fly the main Johannesburg-to-Cape Town route but stop over in Bloemfontein or Kimberley. We stopped over in Kimberley on our way down. The great thing is that we get to fly in one of my favourite aeroplanes, which is a narrow little tube called an Embraer ERJ 145. There were many open seats on our way down and it's quite a nippy plane. The stop in Kimberley is only a few minutes long.
'n Noue buis
Pieter and Miekie sat next to each other one row in front of Marisa, Neil and me. Being younger than two, wriggly Neil is still a bargain on-the-lap passenger.
Displaying our combined three-and-a-bit maxillary central incisors
More detail on the rest of the holiday is to follow in subsequent posts.
I've had several very busy and stressful weeks that have culminated in me becoming sick this weekend with what appears to be flu. So now I'm taking things a little bit slower today and thus have time to put up some long-overdue pictures here.
Last weekend we went to Rietvlei for a drive and a picnic.
Our obligatory family selfie when in Rietvlei Nature Reserve; the previous one in Rietvlei was before Neil's birth
Bits of Land Rover in nature photos always improve photos in my opinion...
... The alternative is to add some animation
The only pity with Rietvlei is the significant visibility of power lines and a pipeline
Rhinos
Hartebeeste
Miekie and Pieter spent this past weekend at Ouma and Oupa. They went to the zoo and were very spoilt! Neil, Marisa and (sick) I went to the shops and relaxed a little.
We're really looking forward to our Easter holiday in Langebaan, coming up in a few days' time!
Marisa made us a wonderful Valentine's Day lunch today! Salad with berries, cheese, salmon, little burgers (for those not having salmon), nuts, and other salad ingredients.
In retrospect, five seconds were too few and thus the motion blur betrays the one who set the timer
Berries have decorative uses too
Miekie gave us chocolates, bought using her own pocket money!
I spent two days in Antwerp last week but didn't get many opportunities for taking photos. In fact the only semi-reasonable one is this one showing the impressive interior of the Antwerp Central Station:
One of my return flights, from Zurich to Johannesburg, was cancelled, so I had to stay a night in the five-star (but not-really-so-five-star) Hilton in Zurich. When I finally arrived back home on Friday night everyone was pleased that we were all back together again. And they were especially pleased about the heap of nice presents that I brought from Dornbin...
Pieter assembling his first Lego Technic set, under supervision of Caramel the bunny
Later on Saturday we went to have supper at the Spur where I suppose the concrete cow serves as a portend to what gets served in the restaurant...
On the Sunday Neil found more concrete, this time of the non-bovine variety, to amuse himself in...
And later that day we were caught on camera while visiting Coillard and Mariska for Dawid's birthday.
Miekie is still very actively swimming in galas, and being back home I was able to attend a practice session during the week and a gala on Friday.
And in between everything I spent two days in Botswana.
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:
