Something crafty...

At last....

I made this layout a while ago. Pictures where taken while we were on holiday in France in April. I have a load of photos to scrap, but happy to say i have done quite a bit in the last week or so.


I made this word book for my mom as part of her birthday parcel. It has photos in it of my 2 babas from 2004 -2008. I hope the package makes it safely to SA and I hope my mom likes it. I have to say i was amazed at how much the 2 have changed over the years.

Mwah
Wx

Day trippers!!!

Hello!!!

We made a day trip out to Longleat Safari park on Sunday. That was our only planned destination... On the way there Lola, out satnav, had other ideas. We discovered that we will be going past Stonehenge.

I have been to Stonehenge before on my visit to the UK in 2003, but Pierre and the kids have not yet experienced it. I know that Pierre always wanted to see the stones, so this was a good call to make a stop on the way to Longleat. I think Stonehenge is just one of those places that have something mysterious and magical about and no matter how often you see it, it still remains so special. It was quite windy, just like I remember it. We even got some Japanese tourists asking us to take a photo of them, in their very limited English we understood what they wanted. Hey at least they tried, I wouldn't be able to speak even one word of Chinese. In return they also took a family photo of us. I think the 2 youngsters saw that Pierre was carrying around his Canon, just like theirs and thought this man would know how to operate the camera. All I can say is Stonehenge absolutely Rocks!!

On our way out of Stonehenge we decided to join the English heritage and invested in an annual pass. With over 400 sites to go and see free, it will really be worth our while. I think it will be £73 well spend.

About another 35min drive and we made it to Longleat Safari park. I have to say it is one thing that I really miss about SA, is the fact that you can go and see wildlife in their natural habitat. This was the closest that we could find and we had an absolute ball! We received a cd to play in the car, that tells you a bit about each section of the park. Very cute and entertaining!

We started off in the East African Game reserve. Spoilt for choice we saw so many Giraffes and there were quite a lot of young ones too! They are supper cute animals. You cant help but to love their posture. Pierre also took an amazing head shot of one of the Zebras.

Next up was the flamingo Valley, I really would have like to have been able to get out of the car to get a closer look at these birdies. They also had the African Spoonbill and Sacred Ibis.

From there you move onto the Venue which is home to the vultures. I wasn't totally blown away by this, but that is because we were actually inside a cage with vultures last year in SA. We saw so many different types of species then.

On to some monkey business! These little creatures were most entertaining! We all loved them. They are such curious little creatures. These ones were no exception, they would climb on top of cars, buses and vans! If it was moving, they were on it to hitch a ride.

Pierre took some great shots of one in particular. This little fellow got hold of a piece of a cardboard container and he was just munching away. It makes me angry to think that some ill informed idiot left his rubbish behind, but nevertheless this one acted like he was first surprised then hiding it and then the little fellow got caught red handed. Wasn't me, wasn't me, I promise!

It is now wonder that you are warned to keep you windows closed.

In this enclosure they also had the Water buffalo and the Black Buck.

On to the Big Game park! Here we saw our beloved White Rhino. They are just such incredible looking animals.
We also came across some Ankole. Now I have never seen these animals and they were most impressive. Ankole have the largest horns of any cattle which can reach nearly 2m across, they are also known as Watussi.

O Deer.... that was not a sp mistake tee hee. It was the Deer park.

The deers have been on the estate since the 16th century. This is also the only reserve where you can buy food to feed the deer. That was such an experience! Most of the party enjoyed it, Waldo was not impressed to let the deer lick his hand to eat.

We also saw some Bactrian Camel. Now, there are fewer than 1000 camels left in the wild.

The Scimitar Horned Oryx had such impressive horns. They are also listed as endangered. Bongo Bongo .... sounds like song doesn't it??
Tee hee, but actually these animals live in heavily forested areas which suits their personality. They are known to be quite shy but we were really lucky, they were just there next to the side of the road.

Our old time favourite... the Common Eland. What would a safari be without the pelican. They have been able to breed very successful in this park.

Tiger Territory.... I have never been this close to these incredible animals.
The Amur tigers are the largest of all the big cats and they are the only cats that like water. There was a tiny little incidence in the enclosure... a coach overheated! Can you imagine being stuck in the tiger enclosure. Eventually they got the coach out of the enclosure and i am sure that they had a couple of very tens tourists on that coach. The worse part wasn't over yet for them, because to get out of the park they still had to go through the wolf and 2 lion enclosures.

The lion country, well the lions as all cats do, were sleeping.
Well most of them anyways.
It looked like they were well adjusted and soaking up the sun rays.

Wolf wood... I don't know about you, but to me, the wolfs have always been a bit of a mysterious animal. Mystical creatures. The alpha male and the alpha female usually mate for life and form the nucleus of the pack. Subordinate females do not mate, they are the nannies of the pack.

Unfortunately we didn't get to do the water safari. We could have, but they only had one boat in operation. The ques were from here to Timbuktu.

We did get to experience the Longleat Manor house and gardens. Absolutely superb. The gardens were my favourite. The smell of the roses in the lovers maze garden was just so memorable. Its one of those moments that you wish you could just bottle the smell and then every once in while just open it and take it all in again.

A trip would not be trip without the 2 crazy daisies not pulling a funny face for a photo. Check out the cool dude. When did that happen???





We had such a wonderful day! It was a long day, but so worth it. We were absolutely knackered by the time we got home. It was a good tired.

Wx

Barcelona trip

Hello!!!

Its been a month since i have returned from Barcelona and i have only now found the time to try and put down the experience in writing. Due to the fact that it was a school trip and so many of my photos contained kids in them, i can only put in the bare minimum photos.

Well where do you start.....

The coach trip to Barcelona:

O my goodness, if i knew that the coach trip would be that bad i probably would have not gone on this trip. My feet swelled so much! Or like i called them: My Fugly kankles! My feet and ankles were just one big mass and it was really sore! It took our coach all of 26 hours to get to Spain. I suppose we could count ourselves lucky because the other coach wasn't as lucky. Poor things.

We were about an hour and a half into our trip when the other coach experienced some engine problems. Both coaches pulled off on the side of the motorway, not the safest place to be in rush hour traffic. The driver got out, they opened the back the of the engine and this huge puff of smoke came out! I mean it was huge!

They had to wait for a replacement coach to come and fetch them and our coach set off to Dover in hopes that we would make the ferry on time. Once we reached Dover we had a change of drivers. Well this is where the fun started with the coach driver. This extremely overweight man got on the bus. He introduced himself and his co-driver to us. He was Billy and the co-driver was Mick. Now, this is where it gets interesting. He lays down the law for the trip, goes through all the safety requirements etc etc. The he says: " For the next week I will be god on this coach" Well that didn't go down too well with me and some others. I found a comment like that very offending. This man from the word go, just irritated the living daylights out of me! Imagine being at his mercy for the next 24 hours!

In the meantime the other coach headed back to Heathrow with a replacement bus to collect their new coach that would take them to Spain. Eventually they make it into France and at that stage they were about 2 hours behind us. Not too bad taking everything into consideration.

Billy tell the boys that 11:30 it is lights out and everything must be quiet until 7 the next morning because he needs to get some sleep while Mick does the driving. I am thinking to myself, 7 is a bit ambitious for boys who are extremely excited about the trip, but never mind. As I thought, the boys were starting to move about 6 ish. I was awake too, but just tried to relax quietly. The boys were starting to whisper to one another, and only a few i might add. The usual suspects you know, the backseat divas. The next minute this man Billy jumps up, waddles his way to the back shouts at the boys at the top of his voice, wakes every sleeping soul on the coach. He then still expects everybody that he woke up to stay quiet. This was not going to happen. Then Billy in his wisdom decided to put on the most horrific horror movie classical music on full blast. I was so not impressed!

The day started with a bang!! Literally! Slowly the temperature started rising and it was a hot day! We stopped several times. The other coach stopped at one of the services, had a drink and meal. Got back on the coach and guess what??? The coach wouldn't start at all! They were then too far into France to get a coach from UK. Replacement coach had to be arranged from France. The poor boys and staff were stuck at the services for 3 hours in the boiling sun! They looked like little lobsters by the time they met up with us at the hotel. We arrived at the hotel about 5:30pm the other coach only got there close to about 10 pm!

The Hotel:

The Hotel was situated in a little town called Blanes. Cute little town.

Now when the name of the hotel is Hotel Esplendid, you just know it is not going to be very splendid at all! And it wasn't! I would be the last person to complain about bad accommodation or food for that matter, but this hotel was horrendous! I went through the whole week eating very little meat.
Added to the problem was the fact that at the time the hotel housed about 5 schools in total. It makes our job just so much harder. Boys and their hormones add to that a Girl school, well yes you can imagine.

Each room had its own little porch, but it was so easy to climb over onto the other rooms porches. They drove us bananas! Try keeping the boys in their own rooms away from friends, was just an absolute nightmare.

Day trip to Barcelona:

Barcelona was about an hour and a bits drive away from our hotel. We set off to Nou camp! The boys were very excited by this prospect. We saw very little of Barcelona it self, because our tour at Nou Camp took longer than expected. I would have loved to see a bit more of the City itself.

The tour finished we all grouped back together ready to enjoy our packed lunches from the hotel. Well its only then that we discovered that only 2 of the 3 crates with lunches made it onto the coaches. This translates into about a third of the boys not getting lunches. Sigh.... thank goodness for contingency money. Bought the boys meals and we were set. Not that they missed anything from the packed lunches, but never mind.

From there we went to spend the rest of the afternoon at a water park. First to find the water park was a mission on its own. Eventually found it and went in. We had an absolute ball!!! There were so many water rides. I had a whale of a time. I just love water rides and slides.
I made my way to the top of one of these rides. When you get to the top you can choose a tunnel. The boys tell me not to take the second one as it is quiet extreme. Bless them for trying to protect me, but i don't back down from things like this. The more extreme the better. It looked all ok to me from where i was standing, but every now and again i would here the person going down yelling so loudly.... My turn and i found out why! I went down and about 3m into the ride there is such sheer drop! It felt like my one leg went North and the other South. I must have been a dreadful sight when i got out of that one. We made our way to the wave pool. Some how everybody decided to join at the pool. The boys had such good spirits. They were seeing together and chanting, all in good fun. Some of the Spanish joined in, I don't know whether they understood it all, but they were having a ball with our boys.

Porta Aventura:

If you ever have the opportunity to visit this theme park you should definitely give it a go! It was just awesome! We spent most of the day here and had an absolute blast!

The evening we took the boys bowling.

A day of Water sport:

The next morning we had a free morning to do a bit of shopping in the town and then at noon we set off to a little beach resort where we could do all sorts of water sport. You could snorkel, sea kayak, boat trips and a banana boat ride. Me and 3 other staff members decided to try out the banana boat ride. Man this was fun being pulled on this inflatable banana behind an extremely powerful motorboat out in the deep blue sea. The driver tried her best to get us to fall off. She succeeded not once but twice for the girls and 3 times for men. Try getting back onto this very slippery device is not the easiest of tasks let me tell you. I was totally knackered by the time we got back.

The night before we came home:

This is preferably one that i don't want to remember. We all had our hall duties etc to do. While i am doing my area i hear this extremely loud bang! You know the kind of bang that you just know is not a good one! People shouting, me running down the passage trying to figure out from which room did this noise came from. Somebody shouts 280! I knock on the door and the boy opens the door.... What a gruesome bloody sight. He dashed through a sliding door. His mates where out on the porch they couldn't get to him, the door mas not made of shatterproof glass at all! Poor boy, the first thing he says: I am so sorry and i promise that i wasn't drinking. He looked extremely sober to me at that point. There was glass and blood every where. Paramedics took him away with his group leader. He was so lucky! He only got 6 stitches above his ear, 2 in his wrist and one on a finger. He had some smaller cuts on his chest, but nothing too serious! How lucky was he?

Going back home:

Another coach trip! We made our way back and on the way our coach was involved in a minor accident. A car with a caravan pulled in in front of us. The bloke was driving as if there was no caravan! Driver to our coach slams on breaks just in a nick of time! At that moment the co-driver was making his way down the stairs and landed head over heals at the bottom of the stairs. The caravan clipped our coaches wing mirror and didn't stop either. Our coach driver then thinks it is a good idea to try and force the bloke to stop! It was just nerve wrecking! Eventually we tell the driver to rather just stop at the border post and report it, the other car couldn't turn off any where. Another hour at the border post and we were off! Going back home at last!

I have never seen my family that glad to see me. The kids jumped on me! Kayla looked like a little monkey, bless her. It was o so good to be back home!

Will i do this again??? I would say i had fun about 90% of the time, but i wouldn't venture out that far again with a coach. I will put this down as an experience and probably the longest road trip ever!

Mwah
Wx

Its carnival time!

On Saturday we had the Crowthorne Carnival. Its a bi-annual event, where all the different schools, pre-schools, youth clubs etc design a float around a theme. This year Hatch Ride had a Secret Garden theme.

The kids where all dressed up. Little girls where flowers and fairies. The boys where gnomes. My son reaching an age where these type of things are no longer cool actually did quite well. He did try to dodge the headteacher and her face painting. He needs to work on the dodging skills, because she did get hold of him and he had 2 nice shiny red cheeks once she was done with him. Kayla being a girly girl, did mind the fuss at all.

The Reading Scottish Bagpipe band walked in front of us. Stunning outfits and gorgeous music!

It was a great day out and even i managed to get snap shot with a clown.

Happy days!
Wx

Beauty in our back garden

Sometimes beauty is right in front of you, you just need to look closer. Pierre took these photos early one morning . The firs one is a spider web that collected the raindrops.
My beautiful lilies in the back garden. All clean and sparkly after the rain.Wx

Its my Life!!!!

I am slowly but surely trying to catch up with the latest happenings in my life, not that it is that exciting...

Since we have moved to the UK, Pierre and I made a decision that we would see at least 1 life concert a year. Its just such a nice way to spend the day together, just the 2 of us enjoying good music and good company.

The first year 2006, we went to see Westlife. My poor hubby was the token male there. Guilty as charged, that was all my fault. Then last year we went to see the legend Rod Stewart and it was just bucketing down with rain. We were in stands and stayed dry, but the trip home was an absolute nightmare.

This year it was Bon Jovi!
These are unfortunately the best shots we took. Pierre couldn't take the biggest lens with, so he had to make do with the other one. The security already uhmd and ahhd at the gate about what we brought with.

It was truly spectacular. They are just such a talented bunch of men. Needless to say, Jon is very easy on the eyes too. Yummeee. The are many songs that stood out, but my favourite moment was when the crowds just all joined in "Its my life..." I have to say, I am a rock chick at heart.

It was the last concert in his tour and a great time was had by all. The beer was nice too. Nothing like good music and a nice beer on a hot summers day. We took this photo with Pierre's phone camera. I look a bit tipsy in this one. We had such a laugh.

Although I dreaded the trip home, it was pretty painless this time around. We got home just after 12. Not too bad.

Mwah
Chat soon.
Wx

Something small

I made this little minibook for my mom in South Africa. It shows some sweet moments in my son's life from one birthday to the next.
We celebrated his 8th birthday in South Africa with my mom and i thought it would be a great idea to share with her small things to remember in the last year up until his 9th birthday. She really misses her grand kids, so i hope this helps.

She has loved all the other things i have made and posted to her. She says she feels like a child before Christmas when she knows there is a parcel on its way. Bless her.
C ya later.
Wx