CELEBRATING WITH THE NEXT GENERATION!!

Last year I scanned photos of my children all decorating the christmas tree, and remembered the excitement of decorating the tree, the excitement of going to bed the night before Christmas day, and the excitement that belongs only to children when celebrating the birth of Christ.
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Above we see Kerry's children, JP, Tessni and baby Shanni decorating the tree in their home in Middleburg, and under that Shanni with some shiney balls for the tree.


We travel half across Africa to Cape Town where we find Natalia, Lisa's daughter, (above) who is decorating the tree with her cousins. They have always celebrated Christmas together and the cousins have decorated the tree.

Above is Dad Trevor, Shirley,and Jessie with cousin Natalia, and below are Vicky {right} and Jessie {left}

This is a bitter sweet christmas for this little group of cousins and sisters as it will be the last time that they decorate the tree and celebrate the day together. Trevor and Shirley are leaving Africa for England in January.

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I will be in Middleburg with my daughter Kerry, Johan her husband and children Tessnie, JP, and Shanni featured at the top of this page, for Christmas. I will also meet my son Brian's son, Nathan for the first time. He is already 6 months old!

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Thank you girls for posting these pics on your blogs for me to steal for my blog!

WHAT BIG EARS THEY HAVE!!!!

"PHONES RINGING!" Ever noticed that the moment the telephone rings, no matter where the children are, they will appear from no where, whether they have been playing indoors or out, near or far, they stop dead in their tracks and make a bee line for the phone! Have you also noticed that when you speak they study you in silence without interrupting, almost as though they do not want to miss a word!

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"Stop counting teeth while I am on the phone" I hiss to them, as my mom in her turn hissed to me all those years ago, and I remember clearly doing the exact same thing to her! It is a universal phenomena and proves if nothing else, that gossip is irresistable and most humans are drawn to listen to that which is forbidden!

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Above is Natalia when she lived with her mom and dad in London. She is living with her mom in Cape Town now and she is 7 years old. Seen here is a telephone she received for her first birthday and she is speaking to "me"!

There are those who can conquer the world, they are invincible, or think they are, they have no fear, they are DRAWN to danger. They are the ones who give mothers grey hairs and ulcers, they are terrifying to live with at times. Here is Brian at 6, he climbed a tree which had branches the size of twigs, and when he reached the top, he lost his balance and slid down the tree, snapping all the twigs on his journey to planet earth! Hence the plaster of paris on his left arm!

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"For my birthday I want SUPERMAN clothes!" aaaaahhhhh no........here we go again. With a very bad feeling we buy him the superman clothes, they were designed by a man who had no children of that I am sure as I found my son on the roof with complete faith in his cape to enable him to fly off and not drop like a rock.

Children are playing, out of my way, perfect time to get out the vacuum cleaner and give the lounge a good clean. Well, you can see how well that turned out. As soon as the vacuum cleaner was turned on, my three daughters all bound into the lounge and, of course, the only place to tackle one another was on the carpet. Oh well, at least the thought was there, I DID get the vacuum cleaner out with good intentions, I'll just get the cord out of the way so this bundle of humanity can carry on. yes..... there ARE 3 children in there!


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''DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT BRIAN!"

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Despite all the exasperating moments that were mine during the years I raised my children, they were far outweighed by joy and happiness, of loving and being loved.
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I now watch my daughters and son raise their children and see them experience the same exasperation and joy that I did, and so it will go on and on.......

ALEX

This is ALEX. isn't he super gorgeous. He belongs to Shirley my eldest daughter and her family and I became very fond of him during my visits to Cape Town.

He has an enormous capacity to love and bound!

As Shirley, Trevor, Vicky and Jessie leave South African shores soon, they have to find homes for their pets, and dear Alex needs a home too. My daughter is heartsore to be leaving him behind but there is a possibility of a home for him.

They will be lucky to have him, he truly is mans best friend!

Thanks for the picture Shirley love, I have wanted one for the longest time - he is SUCH a comical character!

DON'T JUDGE A BOOK BY IT'S COVER!!!

They came in all colours, shapes and sizes, the dogs that my children grew up with. But one particular dog, Jess, comes to mind for many reasons.
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My first husband had always been particularly fond of bull terriers, but I had heard all the horror stories against them, they are vicious, unpredictable, their jaws lock when they bite, the whole 9 yards of reasons for not getting one. The girls were young but not babies and Jess was 3 months old. I jumped in and made the decision, and Jess came home with us. I never regretted it. In true bull fashion, she tore in to the house having no regard for anything, it appeared that all she was was muscle. As a pup she shredded all foam rubber, she was
OBSESSED with foam rubber, she even sniffed it out of the settee. Jess was hard work. She brought us many gifts, the most memorable were our neighbours prize chickens, I looked out of the window and there, to my horror, were chickens and feathers from one side of the garden to the other. We were not asked to replace the chickens but to control our dog. The fence was made higher.
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She adored children, a trait of this breed I learned, and was very protective of our children. When I gave them birthday parties I would have to ensure that Jess was locked away as she would chase and bite onto the clothes of the children chasing my children! Read below why we did this!


It was during one of these parties that a guest of ours who was staying with us, came into the house covered in grass and sand, it was a frightening sight, I thought he had met with some awful accident. "Why didn't you tell me that your dog is vicious" he asked,"were you playing catches with the children" I asked, "yes" came the reply, "I was crawling around chasing the children and your dog attacked me". "Oh," I told him, "NEVER chase the children, she thinks you will do them harm and is only protecting them!" He stayed indoors after that. As I said, that was the end of Jess's party days.

Then we found out one day we were to have a new addition to the family (human) and I worried all over again as Jess had never known babies, and babies are too inquisitive for their own goods some times, and while I knew that Jess would not purposely hurt the baby, the baby might not purposely hurt her, but she would retaliate - I knew I could not take the risk.

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The baby arrived, Jess showed little interest, and while he was still in his pram he was safe, then he started to roll and crawl. I left him on a blanket on the floor one day and Jess was asleep some distance away. When I returned to the lounge, Brian had had rolled to Jess, his finger so far in her eye, the finger could not be seen, Jess did not budge, open her eyes, jump away, growl or eat my baby! I did however, run over and snatch him up, but it gave me food for thought, I watched closely after that, and the two became firm friends.

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Brian is 18 months old in the 3 pics above, the first one he climbed on top of her and lay down, the second he slowly starts sliding off, and the third one he has come to a sitting position. What fun he had.

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Look at Jess, she did not bat an eyelid, and today Brian is as fond of bullterriers as his father was before him.

PRIMA BALLERINA!

Many little girls have dreams of becoming prima ballerinas', my three were no different.

My initiation into the wonderful, exhausting and expensive world of ballet was when Shirley, my eldest daughter, was 3 years old and still in nursery school.

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"I want to do ballet, ALL the girls in my class are doing ballet". I think "You have just learned to walk" , but say nothing." Have you noticed that your child is ALWAYS the ONLY child not doing something great and are therefore deprived children?

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I duly met with her teacher who referred me to the ballet teacher.

That was the first of many years filled with ballet exams, concerts and practice runs which involved all three of my girls at once.

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As the years went by, each was at a different stage and doing different things in different studios, and this also involved many different colourful and exotic outfits!

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To keep up with their times and places I made a list of who had to be where when!

However, this was my first ballerina. And in the picture she was a chocolate sweet. The leotard was a stretch material, the icing is thin foam rubber cut to look like icing and the red ball on top of the hat is polystyrene and is a CHERRY.

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The outfit was carefully brought home and put in a safe place, we thought. My second baby girl was crawling, saw the cherry ....."WOW, she must have thought (baby thoughts of course!) " WHATS TO EAT!" As babies do, she put it in her mouth and took a bite.

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Shirley had a major melt down, this was a CRISES, and was hysterical with grief at the sight of her bitten cherry. Kerry cried because Shirley was crying.

Paint, I need paint, I will flatten the bite and paint over it. Good idea.

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Bad idea.

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As soon as the paint touched the polystyrene, a huge hole appeared. There must have been an ingredient in the paint that ate certain things, like polystyrene. I should have left the bite. There were no more cherries.

The day of the concert arrived. The dance was of a little group of chocolates dancing out of a box (seen in the background) around the stage in a circle and then back into the box.

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The lady on the left was to keep the chocolates dancing in the same direction and in something resembling a circle and executing a successful entrance back into the chocolate box!

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I don't remember what happened to the cherry.

THERE ONCE WAS AN UGLY DUCKLING

A few weeks ago I posted some pics of Widget at 2 and a half months. Well, here you will see what he looked like when I picked him up at the pet shop. I thought he was GORGUSS!
His undercarriage was bare and his neck was pencil thin and also bare, with feathers on his wings and a little orange on his head. He could not walk well and slept on his tummy with his head turned to the side.

The back drop here are my neighbours (who took these pics) plants outside her flat. Note his stubby little blue tail. It is much longer now and the blue is only on the ends of it.

Oh my Widg., I am so glad that you are now a swan, with your sonic schriek and all!

He was so dependant and only 3 weeks old, I fed him baby parrot cereal from a bent spoon. I now cannot get him off cereal and eat seeds as he should do, he gets hysterically excited when he sees his dish and bent spoon, the pet shop folk have told me he is spoilt.

Any ideas on how to wean him properly without him having tantrums? There must be some experts out there somewhere!

He is a real joy and is very comical, a lovely pet to have!

THIS LAND IS MY LAND! DURBAN, KWA ZULU NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA!

Durban is noisy, colourful, cosmopolitan, a colour blind nation where black, white, coloured Indian, Moslem and any other person of any nationality is welcome and all work together, play together, and yes, argue and sometimes fight together. But I would live no where else.

I am speaking of the here and now, memories of my past at least are all that they are now, memories.

Above you will see a pic of revellers at the world during the Soccer World Cup. Note the vuvuzela bottom right, it is green in case you


are unfamiliar with them.

A gentleman was quoted as saying that he had been to many Soccer World Cups and this had been the noisiest!


Here is a picture of our local policemen and women, patroling on horseback along the beach front. a common sight.

I will post more sights of Durban over the next few weeks, and you will see that we work together, play together, pray together and stay together.

THE WHEEL, DURBAN NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA

This is Gillespie Street, two blocks from the beachfront.

The yellow building across the road, used to have an enormous wheel on the outside of it, and folk used to cue up to ride on this wheel. It was one of the most popular shopping malls in Durban during the 1980's. The wheel itself has now been dismantled. Not only has the wheel been dismantled but the name of the building has changed. But to all Durbanites, it will always remain The Wheel!.

MY FEARLESS SON!

Brian, my son has been fearless all his life. When he was 7 we went on a church picnic when we lived in Mandini, on the Natal North Coast.

After we had had our picnic (there were many of us), one little boy ran up to me and said (Brian climbed into the crocodile cage to get his cap!

He surely has a guardian angel that boy. There was a sign on the enclosure "DANGER - KEEP AWAY FROM FENCE". Well, that didn't work!

I was angry and he thought he was very clever to have outsmarted the crocodile!

I think the one above is an allegator though!

LIKE A SPRING GARDEN

At long last! here are a few previews as promised. My neighbour who lives in Pioneer Lodge with us has very kindly taken these photos so that you can see Widget for the first time. Since birth he has learned many tricks, the first one was walking!

He had a bare under carriage, few feathers on his wings and couple of orange feathers on his head, when he first came to us.

He slept in a shoe box with wood shavings in it to keep him warm due to his lack of covering. He slept on his tummy with his head to the side as he could not stand. During the day he slept between our continental pillows for hours at a time. He is still on baby parrot cereal, what a drama, wings flapping and if he is very hungry he manages to get the spoon out of my hand and I have to wrestle it back! He is pecking a few seeds when the mood gets him!

I play the sounds on the cellphone to him, bullfrog, cackle, you know the sort of thing, and of all the sounds, I now have a bullfrog in my flat!

I will show you a pic of him when he is very young as soon as a friend of mine can have it developed, but I was very fortunate to discover a resident who takes pics and could do this for me.

A PIGEON PAIR

I couldn't resist sharing this photo with you.
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My two youngest grandchildren, they truly are a pigeon pair of cousins!*
Shanni on the right is 2 years old and is the youngest daughter of my 2nd daughter Kerry, and Nathan is the son of my son who is the "baby" of my 4 children, and he is almost 4 months old.
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They do not live far from one another, Shanni lives in Middleburg and Nathan lives in Ermelo, both town are near each other in Mphumhalanga, South Africa. Ermelo is very cold and has had snow in the past and minus 0 temperatures are often the norm in winter. Middleburg is marginally warmer. My hope is that these young cousins will become friends as they are close in age.
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Shanni's older brother and sister are 10 and 12 years.
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In Cape Town, South Africa, 3 cousins growing up with one another are Shirley's two daughters Vicky 12 and Jessie 10, together with Lisa's daughter of 7.
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My 4 children have recently undertaken to see more of each other, and it was brought home to them recently when their dad was tragically killed in a car accident, and we all took stock of our lives and now see the importance of visiting often, call, a short sms or email a week at least, and never forget to say "I love you" as often as they can.
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We can never go back and change things, so lets just do it right the first time round.

... A BLESSING CAME IN THREE'S....

Lets take a peek into a small part of Andy's life. As those of you who follow my blog will know Andy is my second husband, so he, as I, had lives with others and raised children before we met one another. Above he is as he was just over a year ago, fit, healthy and able to work. In july last year he suffered a stroke which changed our lives completely. He is progressing, but whether he will ever be the person he was we do not know, even the doctors cannot tell us.
This little chap is Chrisvien aka Junior. In this picture he is 14 months old, Andy and I took care of him for a large part of his second year and grew very fond of him. He is 5 years old now, small, but what he lacks in size he makes up for in other ways! He is the 3rd child of my stepson Chris.

And here is Megan, the first daughter of Andy's youngest daughter (he has 3 children). She is 10 years old now and unfortunately we do not know her very well, but then all the grandchildren, his and mine, which we refer to as "ours" live far from us.


Things come in 3's! When Megan was 3 years old, Sharon had triplet girls, I would still be running if it were me! they are Leanda, Samantha and Dominique.

Here they are, mom, dad and sister are all holding one!

Four years old! As you see they are now identical but with this little crowd one would have to have eyes at the back of ones head!*

Andy has 8 grandchildren, unfortunately we do not have pictures of half of them. I am working on it so that ALL the grandchildren, 15 in all, will have been properly introduced!

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Love you children so that they learn to love theirs in turn, our children will do what we do not what we say, parents have an enormous responsibility to future generations.

PETS OF YESTERYEAR

Hmmm... what pets do I have in the box of the photos my children grew up with. Well, here is the first one, if this guinea pig had still been alive he would be at least 33 years old! His name was Hannibal, named after Hannibal the Hamster (I know I know our Hannibal was a guinea pig).

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He was given his name from the Hannibal the Hamster books my small children so loved as they grew up. THIS Hannibal however, did not ferret around in the wild, but lived a very privledged life. He was quite tame and would run about the lounge for short periods of time, and was put back in this cage for HIS safety! Small children love to chase any moving creature with shrieks of delight. Hannibal used to lie on my lap, on his back, for ages. I loved his furry tummy!

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The only disadvantage was that dad was so allergic to him that if he simply picked him up he would sneeze uncontrollably (dad, not Hannibal). We moved during his time with us from Salisbury to Triangle, the magical place we lived in on a Rhodesian sugar estate when the girls were 2, 3 and almost 5. The pets traveled via Pet Travel, we simply collected them all at the Buffalo Range Airport, which is 10 kms from the Mozambique border. When we left Zimbabwe as it had become, he had to go to another home. He was too old to travel to South Africa by then.

We ended up in Pretoria, and we became the proud owners of Jess the bull terrier. She was a birthday present to my childrens' dad from us all. If I could have seen into the future, I am not so sure that Jess would have become a part of the family! She was like a bulldozer, so pleased to see us each morning that when let in by the children we would hear her galloping down the passage, for self preservation we would quickly pull the blankets over our heads because she would take a flying leap from the door and land directly on us, squealing with joy and licking us with wet slobbery "kisses"! Schrieking laughing kids close behind her, it seemed it was a treat for all!

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She used to bring us presents too, our neighbours prize curly feathered chickens, and she would dismember them on the lawn, and there were enough feathers strewn about to stuff a mattress. We had MANY warnings from neighbours to control her. We did the best we could anyway, watching her like a hawk so that she did not bring home any more prized pets belonging to others.

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We eventually had her put to sleep at the ripe old age of 14. She had trouble moving about and it was the kindest but sadest thing to do, the hard part of owning pets. In my next post you will see how patient this bull in a china shop was with a new baby, and despite her toughness, she had a very gentle heart.

Well, what do you know, PANDA. We did not have children when he joined us. He was the kitten of a ferral cat who lived in the surrounding bush of our flats in Salisbury. The gardener caught him for us. This particular mommy cat continually had kittens this minky colour and I loved it. We came home from work one day and heard spitting from the bathroom, and there, behind the loo, was this very tiny fierce kitten.

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We put a shoe box into the bathroom, and he eventually slept in that. He was so small that he only took up a quarter of it!

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When we were in the bathroom we ignored all his angry hisses and spitting, which was so cute coming from such a small creature who was going to "take on the world".

For 2 days we could not get near him with gloves. We decided to leave him and feed him where he was as he was obviously very afraid.

We woke one morning to find this wee creature curled up at the end of our bed. From then on he never looked back. He grew into the hughest, laziest cat we were ever to own. When he was 2 years old I had Shirley, my first daughter, a mom herself now. Panda immigrated with us to South Africa when we left Zimbabwe, taking only our caravan, all we had in the world apart from one another.

I still see the faces of the pets who immigrated with us staring at us through the caravan window, for they had been sedated before we started our historic immigration from the country we loved so, we had lost so much, we were not about to lose the pet family too.

Shirley was 16 when we had him put to sleep, and Panda was 18, good innings for a cat who would never have survived the wild! I was devastated when he went as he had been our 1st "baby".

Here we are in Pretoria at last, with the animal kingdom no less. We have Panda, Jess and Caesar, an Alsatian cross, who also immigrated with us in the caravan!

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Caesar was a timid soul, but he loved my mom and he was one of her favourites. He lived to the ripe old age of 15 years. His back legs started to give way. He joined the family when the girls were babies and their dad was gone most of the time on border duties. Caesar was timid as I have said, loved digging holes all over the garden and stealing other dogs food dishes! We were always trying to find the owners of all the dishes he collected! He could clear 5 foot fences too and would disappear for hours, how he made old bones I will never know!




Hey Shirley, look what I have here! Ice Baby and 3 of her 4 pups! I am not sure whether you ever saw the puppies. The first one was stillborn, he was enormous and would have been the pick of the litter.
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Shirley shared a flat with her best friend Ingrid in Johannesburg where they attended college. Ingrid had a pet rat, Elvis, who ran about the apartment freely. Guess who became their owners when the girls moved on and could not take their pets with them. No prizes for guessing me.

Ice Baby was passed around the family for a while, Kerry had her on the farm in Ermelo, she came back to us and when Shirley married, she took Ice Baby back. So Ice Baby just loved everybody! Read Shirley's blog, link is on the right hand side of this post. http://www.shirleyathome.blogspot.com/.


Well family and friends, there are the tales of most of the animals who are part of the tapestry of our lives.
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There were many others though, and if your read "He links my worlds" you will read of crunchie the tortoise, who came into my life when my son was 5 and he followed me into the present where he lives with Andy and me, my second husband of 15 years to this day.

Ours is a life of tortoise and parrots. As soon as our new baby parrot arrives, you shall be introduced!
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All these memories we have, and they are special as no one can take them from us, and they are to be shared!
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Love your pets and treat them well, and your reward will be great.

KRAZI KIDS PART IV -BRIAN

YES! MOM'S DRESSINGTABLE, NO MOM IN SIGHT! This is a dream come TRUE!



"Lipstick, where is the lipstick, that's the best, goes far, lots of mess, it is also BANNED from me!



Oh well, if folks don't take care of their things, I will, that's for sure!



Just look, I can paint my face with it, my clothes with it, stick it in my hair. UH OH....here comes MOM and she is yelling..."....."WHAT HAVE YOU GOT' she shrieks, I have told you to leave that (she comes up for air) alone! TO THE BATHROOM!"



I did forget this part.



The face scrub, the hair wash, mom's mad face, maybe it wasn't worth it after all.



Oh WHEN will I grow up and find something less forbidden.



He is squeaky clean now, my lipstick ruined, my blood pressure going down.



Time passes and one day I find the photo, I smile and think "I wish such small things could bring you pleasure now, but you are grown and have a baby son of your own, and soon the cycle will repeat itself.



AND HE WILL GET YOU BACK!

THE ALPHA AND OMEGA OF MY GRANDCHILDREN

This was a very special occasion. My daughter in law Louiza went to Cape Town and took Nathan - remember the post "and along came Nathan" in which he was just born. Well, that was 2 months ago now, and just look how he has grown!

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Holding him is my eldest granddaughter Victoria-Leigh, Nathan is the last grandchild born, there are 5 grandchildren in between, and this photo has significance for me as I remember Shirley (Vicky's mom) in her matric year, holding the hand of Brian (Nathan's dad) at the begining of his first school year at the age of 6.

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Here is to all the cousins knowing and growing together always!

KRAZI KIDS PART lll - LISA

My bug eyed dummy sucker. That is how she was then, as a toddler living in Rhodesia, on a sugar estate in Triangle. Although she has now lost the bug eyes and the dummy she hasn't lost her rather wacky sense of humour! Although it can wears thin as she lives her life in Cape Town as a single mom holding down a demanding job.

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Lisa was 2 in this photo and her dummy, which was her new best friend from the time of her birth, was a fixture day and night and I wondered whether she would ever be friends with anyone or anything else. When she reached the age of 4 I thought I had better do something about it. I believed and still do, that a small child will give up their comforts when it was good a ready, as they will potty train more easily when they are ready to do so. I was one of THOSE. But by 4 and 6, a little encouragement did not harm!

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I would say "only at night" - or try and hide them altogether but I could never stand the heartbreaking sobs this caused and always caved very quickly. I started to have visions of her walking down the isle one day with her dummy pinned where her corsage should be.

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Then one day I thought I little psychology might do the trick without causing pain. I told her that I would buy her an extra large lunch box, for all the dummies as well as her sandwich. She was fine with that.

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1 failure to my name so far.

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But I did some more brainstorming and came up with THIS. I think I should have patented it for I truly had a lightbulb moment!

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I tied a dummy to her bed, not too long, just long enough to reach her mouth. "You can suck that thing all day, BUT you have to lie on your bed to do it. I think she just heard "all day" and thought she had worn me right DOWN ... ha ha, I LOVED letting them think they had won! It always made them so HAPPY, and a happy child has a happy mom!

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"ok" my little tot beamed in agreement. As the day progressed, this undersized, skinny little babe would race through the house, dive onto her bed, grab the dummy, have a few sucks, jumped up and was off outside again. It was actually quite a funny sight to witness, still brings back smiley moments when I look at the old photos.

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As the days wore on, and also as I predicted, the bedroom dashes decreased, maybe they were becoming more trouble than they were worth and she had to always stop what she was doing? Exhaustion took over? Her dummy became less and less important to her?

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And then one night I looked in on the sleeping children .... "whose strange child is that in the bed...? good grief! It's mine!" Dummyless no less.

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And just a small part of me felt a little sad that one of my children had taken another small step from babyhood on her journey into the difficult years that lay ahead before she would be one day be a mom of her own.

KRAZI KIDS - PART II - KERRY

I am her mother, therefore I can read her mind.

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Exams, tests, homework, work, work. Teachers are trained to torture. Mothers are trained to back them up. What do I need to know all this for, I don't even know what I want to do with my life yet. (therein lies the answer). This is travelling through the mind of this disenchanted teen.

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Then I put in my two cents worth of course - WRONG MOVE.

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"Is your homework done, have you started learning for the exams, they are just around the corner you know, you cannot waste too much time". At this point she does that thing they do with their eyes, you know, toss them about in their sockets.

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"Mom, you are so PREDICTABLE." I think 'O reign over me drama.'

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I will bet my bottom dollar that before she fell asleep, hard at studying of course, this is what she was thinking, sure looks like it huh?

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On this particular day it had been quiet for some time, too long. No attacks on the kitchen for coffee and food, the Roxettes were not blaring forth from her sound system. That 'better check this out' instinct kicked in, I went to check and found - THE ABOVE SCENE.

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At that moment I was grateful for my choice to teach pre school children, when children are still keen to show everyone how clever they are and are always willing to please!

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Kerry had a reading problem similar to dyslexia, so reading did not come easily to her. But I am proud to say that she aced her matric, and today holds down a well paid job with most of her work being done on computers. She lives with her husband and children in Middleburg which is in a rural area where farmers are always needing parts for their machinery. She knows all these parts and knows exactly what to order.

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I believe these stolen 40 winks did her no harm after all, and it certainly did not have any adverse influence on who she became or what she was eventually capable of doing once school days were left behind her.

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I am reminded of this pray I taught them when they were 5 and started their school years.

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ANGELS NORTH ANGELS WEST,

SOUTH AND EAST JUST DO YOUR BEST

KRAZI KIDS - PART I - SHIRLEY

"I am going to be a nurse, like aunty Brenda" - this from my 10 year old first born.

Shirley was particularly close to her aunty Brenda, who sadly passed away earlier this year due to ovarian cancer. She had never had a check up in her life, despite bearing 4 sons.

Some early history first would be good, here it is and I do remember it WELL.

Every year, from the childrens infancy, we would make the long journey from Salisbury to my in laws Angora goat farm not far from East London. First. We would travel by, wait for it, steam train most of the way, through the Rhodesian countryside, through the Karoo as far as Alice Springs in the Cape, where we would unload 3 tots, all our bedding and a camp cot in order to catch the connecting train which would take us to East London. We spent 3 nights and 2 days on the train. The youngest "kid" was 9 months old and spend most of the journey in her camp cot which was assembled and put onto the top bunk. Quite safe and well wedged in. When she was not in the cot she was crawling around the floor. You know how clean trains are? So you get some kind of picture of what they looked like most of the time. It was pointless changing clothes so I would give them a splash in the tiny compartment sink, put clean under clothes on and over this the sooty overall would go.

For many years after that my sister in law laughed at the memory of picking us up and the only white part of them were there eyes!

Years went by and Shirley dearly wanted to be like her aunt, whose first vocation in life had been nursing before she married a farmer.

So from standard 7 upward all her school reports were sent to Greys Training Hospital, the best training hospital in Natal. She was accepted in her matric year. For the Christmas of her matric year we even bought her a fob watch used by nurses. That is how close she realised her dream. She never got there though, and just maybe I know why.

What she wanted to do and who she was meant to be were two different things entirely.

One day I went through my candid camera photos and found THE ABOVE PICTURE.

Now does this look like an aspiring nurse to you? nooooooo, that is a very eeuuww expression I see on her face. She is helping her Aunt stitich the leg of a R3 000 ram. Notice she cannot even look at it!

Today? Shirley is in a happy marriage and home schools her two daughters. Who woulda thought?

I learned two things from this story, firstly, it may take many years before we fall into the roll God planned for our lives. It does not mean that we cannot dream and plan, for that is a good thing, we must be prepared in our hearts and minds that when we are at the threshold of our dreams and goals, we may discover that it was for the wrong reasons we wanted what we wanted in the first place.

Secondly, Never neglect your body, for it is the temple of God and is given to us to take care of. Have your checkups when you should, many lives are saved by doing this and too many lose their lives too soon as Shirley's aunt did by thinking that nothing would happen to her.

Happy dreaming!

GO WELL, BOKKIE

Yesterday afternoon, we lost our beloved Bokkie.

She was sitting on top of the window rail and simply dropped like a rock, hitting her head on the way down.

A light went out for us, our ray of sunshine. Our funny, lovable, territorial, and often bad tempered little parrot was dead.

The four eggs she had laid, see 2nd last blog, still in the soup bowl.

Andy, my husband came to me (I was working downstairs) with tears in his eyes and said "we will have to bury Bokkie". But I had shared my toast with her only that morning, she was on the eggs not two hours prior to this, it was not possible.

Whether she had a heart attack we will never know, but all we have left of her now are these feathers and we have kept 1 egg.

I will save slowly for another parakeet, as they are wonderful pets to have, but it will be a while to do that, and although we cannot ever replace Bokkie and her strange little ways that always made us laugh so, hopefully we will find joy one day sharing our lives with another little creature such as she.

We so missed the morning routine this morning.

PRESSIES, BALLOONS, SWEETS AND GAMES

128. Yes, that is the official number of birthdays my children have had, combined that is, and the number of parties I have prepared, baked for and games I have organised during my childrens' growing up years. The tot in the picture above is Lisa, my third and youngest daughter on her 1st birthday in Salisbury, Rhodesia as it was known then.
Lisa sent me photos of HER daughter Natalia's 7th birthday party. They look as though they are well pleased with their efforts, don't they, lets look at a couple more...

Here is the cake, all about the sea and mermaids. Did you make this Lisa?
Here is the table all set to catch the eyes of excited children who are drawn to sparkling and edible things!

All these photos stirred my memory and she dragged me with her long fingers once again, out of my comfortable place in front the the computer and took me on a journey back into the past to another lifetime that seems so long ago and yet at the same time only yesterday.

Dad is appointed the job of blowing up the balloons, fathers are very good at this I discovered as they are normally full of hot air! (joke) Couldn't resist that one, sorry!

The little celebrity has chosen her cake from the "book of children's birthday cakes" and with my sleeves rolled up I attack it and pray that it will turn out to look just a little like the one in the photo. I always took a photo of the cakes, and look at them now and can't help but marvel at my genius! (another joke).

GAMES. Oh dear. What an exhausting task. We had pin the tail on the donkey, oranges and lemons, blind mans buff, musical chairs (a favourite always), ring 'o roses, this was grans favourite, she participated in all the games and kept order as well. The girls would wait for her to come and then they would all run out and leap on her at once! Many years later Brian did the same thing but I bet she was glad there was only one then!

THE MOMS mmmmmmmmmm. They had to be there as the children were very young.

THE DADS - well, no surprises there, they were all out the back with their beers and talking about their jobs, some things don't change.

Their dad was in the police force and all the children were the offspring of policemen, it was a very close community, were a clan to be sure. We did Moses and the children of Israel proud back then!

AT LAST it was 5pm and everyone started drifting of. There were always some die hards who would stay half the night, but that seemed to be the way of things in Rhodesia. Lunch braais would end at midnight after everyone had eaten every morsel of food that was left, danced all night to 60's and 70's music....it was great!!!

I took my little tribe of sticky, dirty and tired little girls to bath them. And the the best part. After they got their second wind and we were all on our own, they went through the presents one by one again, examining them all more closely, any new books, always a hit, would be the bedtime story for that night.

And as another party came to an end, I inspected the 'damage' to the house, but those were the times when I reflected back on the day, and the happiness many little children had had, and it lightened the chore by far!!!

BOKKIE HAS 4 EGGS IN THE SOUP DISH!!!

It is that time of the year again! The parrot above is not our Bokkie. Bokkie (who has featured in this space before under pets) our bokkie - I need you to use your imagination here, is bright yellow, has a very long tail, a ring around her neck and her beak is, apart from being extremely sharp, bright yellow, and her claws are the longest I have ever seen. We cut her nails twice a year.

She dominates our little flat and thinks we are hers to command. Unfortunately we have made a rod for our own backs and she does command us!

Once a year she lays 4 perfect little white eggs. It takes her a week to finish this exercise. Before the first one is laid, there are signs, and we know that we are in for a month of trying to protect our wooden furniture as, for some reason - anything wooden must be chewed to shreds. So everything is covered or taped down. However, there is none as stubborn as a parrot who is on a mission and I am left to repair some handles of an old chest of drawers I have!

She also chews her calcium block often, particularly at night. I think she does this to keep us awake, not only to harden the shells of her perfect eggs!

The last egg was laid last night - and now that they are all laid for the season, she will sit on them, not, we have noticed, before then. She has a special soup bowl, burgundy in colour and just the right shape that we use every year, and for one month we have relative peace as she tends these eggs and lovingly enfolds them with her wings. After a month, because they have not been fertilized, her instinct is to give up on them and one by one she puts them into her food bowl for us to throw away.

Last year she only nursed 3 eggs because she was sitting on the curtain rail when she laid the first of her 4 eggs and it came to a messy and untimely end on the tray of her stand, she has no cage, and probably no clue of gravity!

I have been encouraged to let a man into her life so that she will have the opportunity of caring for young and not only eggs. There are a number of reasons I have not done this. It would mean parting with her, something she is not used to, or bringing in a male which she may not like, into her space. There is also the problem that I have no idea as to the mating habits of parrots or when she would need to be with her man.

The noise would probably be unbearable as she herself can be heard throughout our complex which is vast. So I still have not come to any decision on that one but am leaning towards just leaving things as they are and letting her have the pleasure of coddling her eggs for a month and be done with it. No decision was made this year.

However, I will buy a book on the mating habits of parrots and see if it is even possible that she would accept a man as her life is so cushy. She may not want all the complications a man would bring into her life after all!

If anyone has any comments on my dilemma, I would be pleased to hear them.

As for Crunchie the tortouise, "He links my worlds" has once again gone into hibernation and I have not seen him for a month. I will let you know around October when he comes out from his "place" to rejoin the world of the animal kingdom!

May you all enjoy your pets as much as we do!

DRAGONS, TEARS AND GENTLE HEARTS

"That is so sad," wept the small boy as tears ran down his cheeks, "sing it again."

So for the 3rd time that hour and almost every day for the past month, I picked up my guitar and launched into my rendition of "puff the magic dragon" - knowing it would bring distress once again to the small boy who was my son. But there was never any talking him out of it, he was adamant.

It was the last verse that did it. Tearfully my child told me how SAD (with great emphasis) that the little boy had grown up and the dragon had lost his best friend, as he did not need the little boy any more in his dreams. How the dragon must have missed his friend.

My small son had learned of loss, and he had learned to feel someone else's pain.

I knew then with my mothers heart that he would have his heart broken many times in his lifetime, and I would not be able to protect him against it. He was on his own. And he grew into a sensitive young man who asked for little but hurt much.

And I watched as the years went by as his gentle heart often bled for others, and for animals who were mistreated and, even insects that were stomped on. My eldest daughter, Shirley, invented "pet heaven" and to lessen the pain, that is where all our pets went. That helped. It even helped me sometimes with our make believe "pet heaven"!

I thought back to a story I told entitled "It's in the eyes" - where I observed that the eyes were truly the windows to the soul, and when looking into the eyes of pictures of my 4 children, I could see there the people they would become. And they became those people.

Now I remember personalities of little children before they learned to bluff, but were natural and knew to be no other way but themselves. I realised that in my humaness God was giving me a head start!

I knew who my children were going to be from their earliest days.

I just needed to pay attention.