Week in a nutshell

My week in a nutshell

This has been a very slow week, even at work it hasn’t been as busy as it is usually, but I have a suspicion it might just get busier this coming week, since half of the staff will be on the road. I always look forward to those weeks. Why you might ask, because those are the weeks I get to prove that I want to be here and that I can handle stress. As you know I don’t have a permanent position this means that I have to prove myself, I just hope it will works out.

I hate to admit it, but we don’t go to church as much as we should, don’t get me wrong, we are Christians, I believe, it’s just since we have a channel that has a service on television every Sunday morning, in the same time as our regular church so we usually end up watching that. And lately we started liking the reverent of this particular program, sometimes it just feels like he is talking directly to you.

Anyway I got sidetracked, the reason why I brought this up, the one thing most people do every new year is make a new year’s resolution list, a small to large list, in my case a medium oneJ, the list usually comprises of things like lose weight, get a better job, etc. The one thing this reverent brought up was, most of the time you don’t put God on the top of your list, or worse don’t even make the list. I was ashamed that on my list of things God wasn’t on top. So I rearranged my list and have since been making time to do my personal time with God, and make it long and really experience Him. I have bought myself a notebook in which I write my prayers and this puts things into perspective. You can see what God does in your life.

This week I have also finally after a year finished paying of my student loan, I can’t wait to have that extra money next month, now it’s time to safe for a car, can’t wait to have my own car.

So I wish you all wonderful weekend, enjoy your time with your family, in one week I turn 24! I can’t believe it.

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Happy Birthday Annien!

Happy Birthday Annien!

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So on the 14^th of January my sister turned 21, the big 21. It was on the Saturday, so we decided to celebrate we would just go out as a family on the Friday and have fish and chips at one of the best seafood restaurants in the country. We always enjoy our fish and chips, but I must admit the platter for two with an assortment of seafood dishes on is still our al time favourite.

Annien and Roxy

Mom and Annien

Dad and Grandma

Mom and Dad

Roxy, Annien and I

Roxy, Annien and I

Just one thing to remember, Annien never wakes up before 8 on Saturdays, holidays and we struggle during the week to get her out of bed. So to our surprise that morning she was awake at 5:45! This ruined all our plans.

We planned on blowing up balloons and putting up banners in her room before she woke up. Needless to say, my mom had to send her back to bed, and our late Saturday morning was spoiled. So we got up and starting blowing up 21 big balloons, getting out the banner and setting everything up. We finally woke her up at 6:30. And she was really surprised.

 

My mom got her a pearl necklace, Annien is an old soul at heart and she just totally loved it. Now just to clarify its not one of those that has a bazillion pearls on a string, it is a beautiful fine gold chain with a pearl. She loves it and hasn’t stopped wearing it. I got her a great watch from American Swiss, if I didn’t get it for her, I would most likely have bought it for myself. That is one thing about us, we are not those girls who go out shoe shopping, we go out and stare at watches all day long if we can. We just adore watches.

I went to work for the morning, and when I got home we started setting up and prepping food for our guests who would arrive for a braai and some cake.

Probably the only bottle of champagne in the house

My dad giving the nicest toast

Annien showing off her 21 balloons

21 cupcakes with 21 on

This turned out to be one of the best birthday get together we had in a long time

I wish you all the best for your future, you are now a young lady and the best sister a girl can ask for. You always know when to cheer me up, you hold my hand when I am in pain, you laugh at my jokes and listen to all my stories. I love you so much

Random funny pictures

Funny Pictures

Thought on this sunny Friday some people might need a laugh so here are some funny pictures that have been doing the rounds in emails. Enjoy!

Book Review Sarah's Key

Sarah’s Key by Tatian de Rosnay

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I have been obsessed with all stories surrounding the holocaust and everything that went with it. Maybe it is because I grew up in a world of technology, maybe it’s because I am still young (only 23), but I still can’t figure out how one man got away with killing millions of people and other countries didn’t realise it in time, I know in some countries it still happens daily that such acts of inhumanity occur, I just don’t fathom how someone can get away with it. So it was no surprise that when I stumbled across this book and read it was set in 1942 that I set my heart on having this book and reading it. Sarah’s Key is a book by Tatiana de Rosnay and I recommend this book to anyone out there who enjoys reading a thrilling and compelling book.

Now the book has two separate parts, the story of Sarah in 1942 and Julia Jarmond in 2002.

The part of Sarah is set in Paris, July 1942 and starts where the police is banging on the doors of homes rounding up the Jewish families during the French police Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup. Sarah’s family was also round up and her father was hiding with other men, since rumour had it that the police will only be getting all the men in Paris. When the police came they took Sarah and her mother, but before she could be taken away she hides her brother in their secret cupboard promising him she will be back, she placed the key in her dress pocket and went with the police. When they got downstairs her mother started screaming for her father and he came out of his hiding place and went with them.

Now the thing is Sarah is a ten year-old girl, so she didn’t understand what was going on, she thought they will be back by the time the sun went down and she will get her brother out of the closet, she thought he was safe.

The story of Julia Jarmond is that she is an American who fell in love with a French man, she moved to Paris and they have a daughter together. Julia was responsible for writing a story for the newspaper, on the 60^th anniversary of the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup. And with her research she discovered shocking secrets in her husband’s family that connect her to Sarah. With Julia’s discoveries she feels compelled to trace Sarah’s steps all the way from the stadium where they were held to the concentration camps. With each new discovery Julia finds herself reassessing her marriage and her place in France.

This book is definitely one of the books that I recommend as a must read.

This is what my copy looks like

Total Randomness

Total Randomness

So today I decided to put up some total random photos, I also still need to do a post about my sisters 21^st the past Saturday.

First things first on Tuesday Nic and I went to the cricket, South Africa vs. Sri Lanka, at first I thought how can this sport that goes on and on be fun to watch live? For those of you that don’t know me, let me clue you in, when I watch Cricket on television, I watch for about 10 minutes then resume my normal programming, I have never watched a cricket program from the start to the finish, and yes I know that I might miss some action but that is okay by me. Well so now you know why I was so sceptical about watching the whole game live, well I was pleasantly surprised, there was music playing the whole time, people doing the wave that went around the stadium twice! Don’t forget my guilty pleasures, watching other people. It also gave me and Nic time to get to know each other better. I didn’t take that many pictures but got some of the action on my Blackberry.

Sri Lanka playing

South Africa playing

Tarps coming out when it started raining

I forgot to mention that it started pouring at about 22:00 and South Africa won thanks to the DL system



I also decided to post some of the funny things our cats do, we have a Main Coon that loves to hang out on our roof, and my mom’s cat (the black and white cat) loves to curl up in the most awkward places to sleep.

We call this lovely cat Seuntjie (meaning little boy in Afrikaans)

That's a bird bath incase you were wondering

This is princess Cassandra (Cassie for short) on the chimney

He loves you when you scratch his tummy

One of my other guilty pleasures is looking at Anne Geddes pictures, I just love them.

And of course looking at Jack Vettriano paintings, I have some prints of his in my room and just adore it.

I am still looking for a print of this one

My favourite breakfast is flapjacks, or I guess what they call pancakes in USA? The thing is just that in South Africa we know pancakes as something else, you pour the batter in the pan and spread it around the pan, until it paper thin and flip it, enjoyed with cinnamon sugar on it, wonderful stuff. So that is why it’s confusing to us. Any way pictured below is some flapjacks from a couple of weeks ago, loved how they turned out. Missing it already since we are now on an official diet, and going to lose lots of weight.

Yummy...

Christmas and New Year's Day

Christmas and New Year

So I just realised I never posted my Christmas and New Year story. As always it was incredibly warm here in South Africa. Luckily we are sort of used to it, but don’t judge me when I say I love winter time. Yesterday alone we had a high of 36 degrees Celsius.

So for the Christmas weekend we hooked up our caravan, and left Bloemfontein with two cars (my dad and I still had to work the Saturday). We went to a place a little out of Bloem about 25 km and pitched our tents and setup everything for a long 5 day weekend. We went with my dad’s cousin, so we were a lot of people. On Saturday morning (Christmas Eve) I went to work and after work bought some fresh bread and made sure everything was ready for that evening. We were going to have a fondue that night, which is a new thing for us since we usually just make finger snacks for Christmas Eve. So after loading everything in the car equipped with Christmas lights and these cool things I found, They look like candy canes and when you leave them in the sun during the day, at night they light up, no electricity or batteries needed. They were awesome.

So we started prepping for our fondue by cutting up meats, mushrooms, pieces of bread, and everything that works nicely with fondue, that was at about 5 in the afternoon, the funny part was when we wanted to light the burners of the fondue pots they started burning around the burners instead of inside (we haven’t used them in a while) so in my car I get and went home to get the electric pans and we did our fondue that way. It was wonderful; we all had a great time and ate too much.

We had a chocolate fountain running for dessert, memo to all people out there, when entertaining don’t test out a gadget for the first time. We were completely out of our depth with that thing, we didn’t have the right equipment to melt the chocolate, we threw in too much oil in the chocolate and it all came out blobby, but still it was hilarious and we enjoyed ourselves.

We then just sat around telling stories about Christmas’s past, and remember the people who aren’t there with us either because they were in other parts of the world or those who have left us to go to a better place. We talked a laughed and cried a little. We also listened to one of the local radio stations that lets people phone in wishing their relatives a happy Christmas. We laughed at all the drunken comments on the radio.

When it was past midnight we opened our presents, and went to bed. You might realise I don’t elaborate about the presents, it’s just that my parents taught us it’s not about the presents, it is about Jesus coming to earth to save us. That is what is the most important of Christmas, so we never got the big presents. We spend time with family and just realising how lucky we are to be able to practice our faith openly.

On Christmas day we all packed the Christmas lunch and made our way to Edinburg were my grandmother and uncle live. It’s about 100km from where we camped. We barely survived the potholed road, there were more potholes than tar but we had a great day with my gran and uncle. I must thank them for this was the best Christmas we had with them. You guys were wonderful, you opened your house to people who weren’t invited and changed your whole plan for Christmas lunch. I love you guys.

We went back to camp and just spend the rest of the day enjoying each other’s company and just being merry.

We had a storm on Boxing Day; we all huddled together under our big tent, and got soaked to the bone. Each time we had to run to the bathroom. We only went home on the Tuesday, thank you to all the people who got us an extra public holiday; we had to start working again on Wednesday.

We had a great New Year’s weekend as well. On the Saturday after work, we started making salads and preparing our finger snacks for that night. As you can see the finger snack thing is a Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve tradition. We also have a tradition of watching Dinner for One on New Year’s Eve. So we watched that while enjoying our snacks and then we watched a movie. We all stayed up until midnight, we just had a cowering Boerbul since people were shooting fireworks and crackers from about 19:00 that evening. The poor dog nearly went crazy. I think it’s really inconsiderate of some people.

We spent our New Year’s Day at home in the swimming pool and had a lovely turkey for lunch.  

So there is our Christmas and New Year’s I hope you enjoyed. Pictures will follow in the next blog

Christmas Decorations

Christmas Decoration Time

As I mentioned previously, I am a total sucker when it comes to Christmas decor, we usually have a small Christmas tree, one of those 90cm models that is hip high and you don’t need lots of decorations for it. Well last year it started to fall apart so on one of the specials at our local supermarket after Christmas, I bought another one on a huge special, we threw it in the closet since Christmas was already over and everyone was packing away all there decorations. Over the weekend while my parents were away I thought I will get our decorations up in hope of surprising them when they got back.

I started with our entry way, we have a wreath that always hangs over the door, but since it’s summer the door is always open and you don’t see the wreath, so I hanged it over the mirror, you might recognise the mirror from a previous blog. Our display cabinet is the perfect place for decorations so I threw all the telephones and post holders to the side (new home for them to be decided) and put all these things on there. The wreath with the candles will be lit on Sundays until Christmas, this Sunday we are at candle number 3.

And the lastly, the Christmas tree, remember how I mentioned we always have a small Christmas tree? Well I took out my brand new tree in a very small box, not noticing the manufacture sticker...

When I opened the box, the tree was in pieces and after assembly the tree was a whopping 1,8m tall! That’s twice the size of our normal tree, needless to say our decoration bubbles were not enough and I had to run to the store to get new ones, luckily I bought tree lights that usually wrapped a bunch of times around our small tree.

Sorry about the power cables and the dvd holder :) didn't think to clean before taking pics

Hope you enjoy the pictures.

All our windows were snow sprayed since we have summer here

I have these two signs outside our front door