Huckleberry Peet

Ah yes, our adventure on the river! We’d booked this holiday almost a year ago, and had trusted budget-getaways‘ recommendations alone, but what a glorious gamble! Peet se Plek in Bonnievale, near Robertson, exceeded all our expectations, and yielded a fantastic start to the new year.

Of the two cottages we booked, we took the one slightly away from the river for Jamie’s sake. As it turned out, Ou Waenhuis had appeal all of it’s own, and was really comfortable and set in a beautiful garden set amongst vineyards. The other house, the Peet se Plek, positioned right on the banks of the Breede River, provided a perfect setting for hammocks and general down-time.

Besides swimming/fishing/canoeing in the river, the endless vineyards and expansive fruit orchards (plums, peaches, pomegranates, including the interesting sharon-fruit) provided ideal walks and runs. I was even given ‘freedom of the farm’ to fly the heli. As you can imagine, this earned them 500 brownie-points automatically, and I really appreciated some great flights in a really beautiful setting.

After mucking around with 60′s songs, the 12 of us welcomed the New Year around the campfire in prayer and worship, and it felt so right giving 2007 to God from the outset. I always feel the gravity at the start of a new year – the new potential, new promise and new pressures to do it better than the last. This year it’s all-the-more daunting realising that in three months we’ll be returning to the cardiologist to assess Jamie’s heart, and along with that are all sorts of fears and anxieties. Also just realising how much happened in 2006, and how we’ve gone from being relatively baby-clueless to fully-fledged, been-there-changed-the-nappy parents, sets the tone for what lies ahead in 2007 – another 365 days of frantic learning-curve!

To those who’ve been following this blog, thanks for reading. Despite it being the middle of January already, welcome to 2007, and may it be fulfilling beyond your wildest expectations. God bless!

All’s well that ends well

Which I guess could be said of 2006. Our December leave was, on the whole, lots of fun. Invariably we needed a holiday from our holiday with all the Christmas exhaustion (see Tinsel Schminsel), but thankfully Jan had planned well ahead! (see Huckleberry Peet).

Other than Christmas, I flew my home-built plane twice, the inaugraul ‘flew’ being somewhat of an overstatement. Turns out that the crappy hobby shop which we’re more-or-less forced to use, sold the wrong propeller to me, which would account for the serious lack-of-power which I was battling with. In any event, the plane itself is very aerodynamically promising, and I look forward to tuning it further. (As an aside, it was most exhilerating being able to crash – a heli doesn’t work well after unscheduled landings, and with a very fortunate none of those to my name, it was quite a novel experience repeatedly smashing the plane into the ground, a tree, a pole and a sandpile.)

We spent most of our days with various friends/family who were visiting – Damo, Rach and Myla, Anton and Tandy, Al and Tess and my brother down from Edinburgh. All have since returned to their nether-regions, but it was excellent catching up. Anton introduced me to the late (and evidently great) Jeff Buckley (what rock have I been under, you might ask), and I’m thoroughly enjoying new, good music. I introduced my younger boet to sushi, and I thoroughly enjoyed his face while experiencing nori for the first time.

For the sake of a record, might I add that the weather has been about the best this summer that I can remember in recent seasons, with little wind to speak of.

Tinsel Schminsel

With our very hurriedly erected (but beautiful) Christmas tree, a burst of last-minute (retch-inducing) shopping and a tin of Christmas biscuits, we looked set for our first Christmas with Jamie-boy. Only complication was that we’d not yet prepared the chickens, and none of us managed any sleep on Christmas Eve. Doh!

For a change it didn’t rain, and so a perfectly nice morning was spent fussing around a hot oven. Thankfully, with some coaxing from Nigella, our de-feathered friends decided to be completely delicious, but we were bushed by the time we arrived at the Kommetjie Klan. After a marathon gift-unwrapping extravaganza, we tucked into said birds and a great meal, and it was terrific to have Adin with us for the first time in about 5 years. The grans were there too, and we had a nice family do.

Minutes after washing the trifle down, we were off again, this time to Jan’s family for tea. It was really nice, but we were both pipped. I ended up going home to work on the plane while Jan crashed at the baby-sitter’s house.

We will be boycotting shops and gifts next year!