10 posts tagged “friends”
Gina, Aaron, Jared and I had a picnic at the Johannesburg Botanical Gardens today. Sam and Lawrence were supposed to join us but they ditched us in favour of some stuff they had to do so we went ahead, just the 4 of us and had a pretty good time there. The park/gardens is in Emmarentia (I usually refer to them it as the Emmarentia Dam) a nd I usually go to the dam side. Jared took us up to the botanical gardens themselves and I was impressed with them. They are beautiful and there are a number of spots under trees (and in the open) where people can settle down for a nice picnic or just a general social thing with friends and family. We will definitely be going back there for another picnic.
Anyway, we picked a spot under a big tree on the corner of one of the levels (the section of the gardens we were at is made up of a series of gardens on different levels and you climb a couple steps to get to the next one. Each one has a few rose gardens and a water feature of some kind.
No picnic would be a real picnic without some tasty treats from Woolworths so Gina popped out before we headed out to the gardens and bought us some chicken salad sandwiches, koeksisters, chips and some very tasty litchis. Jared brought with him a slab of Lindt dark chocolate with chili (a very interesting combination).
Gina and Jared took out some decks of cards after we had fed and changed Aaron so I put him into the Moby wrap Gina bought a couple weeks ago and went for a walk around with my camera. He fell asleep almost straight away and seemed to be perfectly comfortable in the wrap. It settles him and it has the huge benefit of enabling us to keep our hands free to do what we need to do. I have started using the wrap at home when he doesn't settle so I can work or do what I need to do. I am actually wearing it now, he gets a bit niggly when he is home (not sure why he does that mainly when he is home and not when he is out or at my mother in law). Anyway, I just took a whole lot of photos of the gardens and a couple photos of some weddings that were going on. There must have been 4 separate weddings happening at the same time on the grounds. Jared says this is pretty common there.
We visited my friend Di and her kids yesterday afternoon. We hadn't seen them for quite a long time and with Christmas next week we had gifts to give them too. I couldn't believe how big Andrew and Simone have gotten. Di's eldest daughter, Cassie, wasn't there. She has become a voracious reader at 14 and is working through Jane Austen's books so we gave her Sense and Sensibility for Christmas.
Simone and her mom are really into scrapbooking so we gave her Christmas themed pages and other stuff so she can put together a Christmas special to chronicle their holiday season. Di showed us what she has been doing in her scrapbook and the thought I had was that scrapbooking is pretty much analogue blogging. The formats are pretty similar actually. Her current pages are about her dad and have photos of him throughout his life. She has also been taking lessons and they do seem to make a difference to things like layout and design.
Andrew is 4 already. It really is a pity we don't see him that often. I am his godfather and it would be great to get to know him a bit better. Like most boys he is very physical and in the time we were at Di he walked in with a tennis racket and ball and the soccer ball we gave him for Christmas. He also showed me how fast he runs and put on a bit of a performance which I captured on my phone (there is no sound because it would have been Di's conversation with Gina in the background):
I was going through my home movies and also found this video from last year. It was pretty much the same type of visit and you can see Andrew opening his Christmas gift for that year.
We just had breakfast with Shirley at Aromas in Killarney. It was packed and the food was pretty good. We sat next to a door that some rude people didn't close when they walked through it, letting a cold draft in.
We're at the Woolies cafe in Hyde Park for tea with Tina and William. We're a little early and we grabbed a table near the front of the store where the couches used to be. Woolies does a great cheesecake and I plan on having some.
We haven't seen Tina and William for a few weeks. I think the last time we actually saw them was Tina's birthday party in January/February this year.
Well, we're at the Doppio Zero in Greenside again for breakfast. I just had a really good French toast with syrup and cream. Gina is having a salmon, cream cheese and scrambled egg thing that looks quite nice.
This spot is pretty popular with cyclists. There were quite a few people here when we arrived and it seems to have calmed down quite a bit now.
We're having a very laid back lunch at La Concorde in Norwood today. It is pretty hot today so we picked a table upstairs where we have a really nice breeze coming in from the open windows.
Well, we had some friends and family over for supper last night. We don't celebrate Christmas but it seemed like a good evening to have a bunch of people over, so we did.
Gina made a lemon chicken dish which practically fell apart when she cut the chickens (I have no idea how to cut chickens). She made roast potatoes and veggies with the chicken and it all went down very very well. You can see from the photo that our friend Jonathan was here from Port Elizabeth, my brother Asher and his girlfriend Megan (sitting in front), Gina's friend Sam and her boyfriend Lawrence (standing) and my lovely wife (far right). I was, of course, behind the camera although Sam and Gina also took photos of the group revealing me:
We had coffee and doughnuts with our friends, the Alexanders, last night to celebrate Hannukah. I always enjoy visiting their apartment because they are antique nuts and have all this really interesting stuff in their home.
There are masks from Tanzania (I think that is where they are from), pieces from Morocco, a collection of antique cabinets and a fortune of music. He is a music publisher and his company works with some fantastic local artists.
A whopper of a storm was brewing when we headed out for supper and then on to the Alexanders. I was expecting this torrent of water we saw come down the night before and all there really was, was a lot of wind and lightening. I tried to take a photo of the lightening and couldn't really capture it. My camera is a little limited when it comes to night landscapes. I did manage to shoot a video but you can't really see much on it and the most prominent feature is a discussion about work stuff in the background. The rain eventually came early this morning. At some point I surfaced enough to realise it was pouring and then went straight back to sleep.
We took ourselves off to visit some friends and their kids this last weekend. We visited Di and her kids on Saturday afternoon. It was a long overdue visit. I haven't seen my godson, Andrew, for a few months. The only reason I have seen Di more recently is because of some work she is doing for me. Anyway, we piled a few Christmas prezzies in my car and took them off to her house for her, Andrew and her girls, Cassie and Simone.
We bought Andrew a sort of work bench toy. It is very educational and very retro if you see all the toys kids get these days. This toy basically consisted of a little work bench, plastic screw driver and hammer and a bunch of nuts and bolts that fit into slots in the work bench. He can then basically dismantle the work bench by undoing all the nuts and bolts and then put it all together again in different configurations.
He took to it immediately and started trying to take it all apart. Di commented that even though he grows up in a house filled with women (Di is a single mom), Andrew still acts very much like a boy. Little more for the nurture vs nature theorists! What we didn't count on was that Simone also wanted to play with the work bench! Next time we'll get her some a little less girly!
Anyway, yesterday we went off to visit our friends, Craig and Taryn. They had a little baby girl on the 6th of December and her name is Leia. She was born a couple weeks early so she is really small. Craig's dad was there and his grandfather arrived just after we did so Craig suggested that we take photos of the 4 generations of the family represented at Craig and Taryn's new house.
It was like the paparazzi was in that bedroom and Leia slept through it all. Nothing brings home the realisation that we are growing up quite like seeing friends the same age as me with a baby.
Actually, it is almost lunchtime on Monday. We had a pretty good weekend this last weekend. I know I have been a little scarce here but between my hassles posting updates and everything else, I got a little sidetracked.
We had a braai on Saturday which was a lot of fun. We decided to have some friends and family over and the weather worked out really nicely. As I hoped, it was around 26 degrees (centigrade) and I even got a bit burnt. I jumped in the pool, my brother wound up doing the meat and everyone seemed to have had a lot of fun. I have posted photos to Flickr.
The puppies had a quite an experience. They were around so many people, got to swim (often not when they wanted to) and had to contend with a little girl, Jessie, who was there with Sam and Lawrence.
They behaved a bit better with Jessie although they did get a little too aggressive at one point. It is a difficult one, we want them to adjust to children and the only real way we can achieve that is to expose them to more children. We didn't socialise them as well as we should have to we'll have to keep working on them in the coming months and years. I'm sure they'll be just fine in time though.
