Not that I ever get much time to play on the computer anymore, I have created this blog to brag about the things that mean the most to me in life, firstly my husband, David and then close runners up are my daughters Jade that is 10 years old and Amber who is 4. This is just a way for all our family and friends in South Africa to keep up to date with our lives over here in the States. Hope you enjoy it.
Decided to go with the Tinkerbell theme since I couldn't find a back to school theme while quickly looking and I knew Jade would appreciate this one :-)
So we are back to school, first day of a new year and this year she is in First grade, wow time has flown and she has grown up so quickly, as most people know I am so not a baby person so I cannot wait till Amber gets to this age or well ... you know preschool age :-)
So when I walked into Jades room this morning at 6am, her big light was on already so I asked her what was up with that, she said that we went potty in the night at like 1am, saw a spider in the toilet, which was true coz Dave killed one and put it in the toilet but the idiot ... sorry Dave, didn't flush and that scared Jade half to death so she left her big light on all night ... and golly now I don't know how much sleep she got with that light on, poor thing, anyway she seemed fine this morning, I guess she is running on the excitement :-)
We had picked out her clothing last night to wear but after reading some of the stuff we got from orientation yesterday, it said no halter tops :-( Jade and I love halter tops and that is what she chose to wear today so change of plan, she was not happy with that. She did say though that Nana would be happy coz she got to wear the top that Nana bought her when she was out here visiting :-) Anyway here are three pics of her in what she was wearing and her new backpack or bookbag as they call it here.
Me not being a morning person at all, Dave walked Jade to the bus stop, with Amber's morning feed and me having to get done for work three mornings a week, I would love nothing more than to walk Jade to the bus stop and get chatty with all the moms there but I need to get done to get out of here :-( So Dave got to do that this morning and well obviously I get to do the afternoons but we will see how that goes coz it's right in the middle of Amber's naptime so ... oh well we will see.
Anyway below you can see all the kids that live around our house at this bus pick up point :-) more than at our old house right ?
Last but no least, here is Jade getting on the bus, I am sure she was so excited, she missed that so much when she had to be a car rider for the last few months of the last school year. I hope she got a good seat and was happy, not that the school is a long drive, but I don't know how many pick ups are on route. The bus was a little late today but it is suppose to come at 6h44 and it drops her the afternoon at 2h25 so it's a long day. You can can from the pics that from when I took the pics before she left home till when she got on the bus, it's about 25 mins and you can see how light it got in that time, come daylight savings though she will be in the dark at the bus stop.
So that's that for now, another school year has started. Good luck babygirl, do well and make mommy, daddy and Amber proud, we love you.
We have just started putting Amber in her exersaucer and well we have to jam her in there coz she is still a little bubble head LOL so needs some support. I think she likes it, for short periods of time that is but in time, I know, like Jade this will become one of her favorite toys, if not her favorite.
As you can see she still tilts to the one side, some days I think she is really doing well and other days I just think we regress ... taking her to physio again this week, let's see what they say.
Big sister getting in on the action ...
This one Dave must have taken yesterday ... Jade really liked her dress, the headband was actually the belt which I didn't like so I put it her hair and let me tell you, she thought her mom was just the best LOL silly girl :-)
Today we are off to the open house at Jades school, it is probably going to be a long thing coz golly there will be hundreds of people there all trying to find out who their child's teacher will be. I think we then get to visit their class and meet the teacher, or I hope so anyway. We will also find out the bus schedule which I am also excited to see, golly I hope we are move a later pick up then an earlier pick up. The school is so close to our house there is really no need to be picked up at 6h30 so we will see ... I am holding thumbs. We will try and take pics tomorrow morning and post them here as soon as possible.
Remember to scroll down, you might not have seen the last update I did a few days ago, I was particularly impressed with the pic of Jade and Amber where you can see their eyes so clearly, you can tell Amber is not going to have blue eyes, sorry my girl !!!
Not much to write at this point, almost at the end of the Summer Vacation, I cannot believe Jade goes to Grade 1 next Tuesday, golly, this Summer has just flown by for me, way too fast. Usually by this time I can't wait for Jade to go back to school and right now, I just wish I had a few more weeks to hang out at the pool and to do some more stuff together.
This year has just flown by for me, before we know it, hopefully Dave's folks will be here, then it will be Jades birthday and Christmas ... not to mention Halloween and Thanksgiving thrown in there, the second part of the year always flies by for me but it is always my most favorite time of the year so bring it on !!!
This past weekend Jade and I went to do some back to school shopping while daddy looked after Amber, gosh I cannot believe how much more I get done that way ... thanks Dave. But yeah we are now ready, got all our school supplies and a few new pairs of sneakers and we are good to go. I bought lots of new clothing over the Summer so thankfully I didn't have to do any cloths shopping or the day would have been so much longer. We got her hair trimmed so we can now see her eyes again ... thank Heavens and well ... we are ready, cannot wait for the bus to arrive Tuesday morning, Jade is very excited to be on the bus again after having to be driven to school all those months when we moved into our new house. Of course Dave is also relieved to have his car to himself in the morning, I thought it would be good bonding time for him and Jade, little did I know he kept her busy with stuff so he could listen to his pod casts etc. can't believe that !!! MEN !!!
This week we have a few last minute playdates and pooldates and well I have my renewal jewelry show at our house Saturday night so I have to get the house ready for that, then Monday is her open house at her school and Tuesday it's off to school. I will try and take pics Tuesday morning to post on here, it will be early so let's see if I can pull that off.
Here are a couple of pics I just too of Jade and Amber, Amber is in an outfit that obviously came from family in SA ... thanks Gav (hehehe). But you can see how she has grown, I can hardly believe it is the same child when I look at pics of two months ago, wow !!!
Can you believe how long she has gotten ...
I love pics of the girls together ...
I thought this was too cute :-)
As you can see she is doing better after some neck exercises the past few weeks, when Jade goes back to school I need to take Amber for another physio evaluation but I am sure she is will say Amber is fine, or I hope so. I read recently that we shouldn't be worrying if she is not meeting the milestone on time apparently if she was 3 1/2 week preemie then she probably will only reach those milestones 3 1/2 weeks later than her current age, so I feel a bit better about that and will just see how it goes. In two weeks she has her 4 months check up and I am sure the doctor will inform me better then.
One last one ... by this point Amber had spat up on some of the outfit so this is why she looks a bit different. Don't take it personally Gav :-)
Quick video of Amber doing tummy time, had to cut it short coz she was not in the mood for tummy time and you, I am sure don't want to see her grumpy.
One last note ... Grandpa we are thinking of you !!!
I put her in the Bumbo to exercise her neck but as you can see she still battles to keep her neck upright, this is actually to the other side to normal so I left her stretching that way coz it will stretch her weak neck muscle but when she gets tired she flops forward and well sometimes lifts her head up but other times not. She has improved a lot in the past 2 weeks but is far from where I think she should be, Dave doesn't seem concerned but it does worry me.
Totally worn out (hehehe) poor thing, she slept like that for a good while and it was a good stretch of neck muscles, of course I hovered around her coz it worried me she was in that position but she was fine.
Last but not least, she was fussing so Dave put her in the baby Bjorn and for once she loved it in there, enough to actually fall asleep in there, Jade used to love that thing and sleep in it all the time but this was the first time Amber did, you rock Dave :-) now do it more often (hehehe).
Finally THE END !!! Don't forget to scroll down to see all my latest update, I did a bunch ...
Just two pics of my sleep head girl and how she has grown, now at 13 weeks or 3 months old.
This week we started putting a little cereal in her bottle at dinner time and it seems to have been going well. Since San Diego she is pretty much going through the night, till like 6h30 ish but if we pick her up and put her in bed with us sleeping then she falls back asleep, today she had her breakfast at 8h00 which means she went from 11h00 ish till 8h00, not bad. Jade did it way early but then Jade so far has done everything way earlier than Amber, hopefully she plays catch up soon.
Ok, our last day in San Diego and another big one. We tried to get ready quickly and get an early start coz I would need to pack that night and needed time to sort everything out for a long trip home.
Anyway, here is Amber taking up the entire queensize bed ... another Jade I guess, Dave myself and Amber slept in one queensize bed while Jade had the other queensize bed all to herself, it wasn't planned that way but that's how it turned out.
Ok LegoLand, yet another amazing place that we didn't get to see completely coz we ran out of time, I need two weeks in San Diego and I would be happy :-) Can't believe we were there 5 1/2 days and we visited 4 theme parks, it really was as crazy as Disney, you need more time to enjoy it and relax inbetween.
One of the rides Jade went on was a lego car ride, it was really cool as the roads were set up with stop streets etc. just like a real road and the kids did great, there is a video of Jade, look how well she did, I guess her Barbie Jeep riding helped big time too :-) The kids get a driving lisence when they 'pass' their driving test. Very cute.
Here she is with a Lego Character, there are a few of them throughout the park but there is always a line for a picture with them so it was more important for us to make it to as many other attractions as possible.
This was a cool coaster which luckily even I got to ride later in the day, thanks Dave, you eventually caught the hint !!!
Here are just some pics of a few of the lego items throughout the park. This dragon was outside The Claw ride which was the only ride that scared Jade enough not to want to go out, and it was a ride that turned which Dave hates so I think he was happy to pass on that one.
There was an area you walked through that was build up like a city with houses along the walkway, here is just one of the windows.
Yep this is a lifesize car built with lego, is that not amazing ?
Wow and then there was a splash area which was fantastic, almost made me want to go play in it, there were thousands and thousands of kids and parents in this area and the scary part was there was no way you could keep track of your child, thank God before Jade left us, we told her where we would be sitting and that she must not panic if she cannot see us at a glance and just to come back to that area and that is exactly what happened, thank God. These places scare me a little, thank Heavens Jade is a responsible kid and is very aware of stranger danger and how to scream if she in any way feels threatened. But still it's all very scary.
Then we took a walk through the Lego Factory and how lego boxes get filled by machines, it's amazing how they say there are never errors, it's hard to believe but apparently true. Look at this picture carefully, it is not candy, it looks like a candy store right, but it was rows and rows of lego pieces and you could put together a packet of lego to take home.
This was just a slow ride through a lego jungle kind of thing you could take, we didn't do it but it looked kinda cool.
Ok there are a bunch of these pics and Karen they are all for you, this is Miniland, it is so much lego all built up to look like areas around the country, it was amazing, you know how much work this must have been, we have been to something similar in San Fransisco but this was so much more. I actually sat there and fed Amber just looking at everything the detail was mind blowing. It had moving pieces too, cars that drove, sounds, did I say amazing ???
Ok I know that was a lot ... sorry but it all just amazed me. Below is a video of a water ride which was actually fun for me and I wasn't on it, what you can't see too clearly is to the right of the spinning thing there are like water canons which I got to shoot off and wet them, I really laughed so much :-) Great fun.
Jade and I on a boring spinning ride which obviously Dave passed on (hehehe) but golly did we spin fast, way faster than I thought, I had to concentrate on getting out without killing myself I was so dizzy.
Jade with some princess in the park.
Outside the Big Lego Store, wow ... now having said that, this week I am off to Concorde Mills and they have just opened a Lego Store so we will see, maybe it's bigger than this store we will see. Karen I don't think the prices were cheaper than the stores though, or I don't think so and they were very low in Star Wars stuff, obviously that is their biggest seller.
And so that was the end of our trip. One last pic I wanted to add was, on our way we got delayed an hour on the runway in Texas with no air, it was disgustingly hot and very irritating as I had Ambers trip sorted out in my head but oh well what can you do right ? Anyway Jade and Dave walked to the front of the plane coz Jade needed the restroom and while they were waiting in line the Captain or Pilot started talking to Jade, apparently he also has a 6 year old. He invited her into the cockpit and even had her sit in his seat with his hat on, how cool was that, I am so glad Dave got this shot, it was the cherry on the cake to an already great trip.
So goodbye San Diego, we will be back, that is for sure, we now understand why so many South Africans chose to move there, my brother would absolutely love it, that is for sure !!! I wouldn't want to live there though, I love Charlotte, it is so green and lush but it's boring in comparison to San Diego, what a great tourist destination. I miss the beach and would love to be closer to the beach and well the weather is great there but I am now used to the hot Summers and Cold Winters which don't even seem that cold anymore to me, so what else is there, ok it's closer to Vegas that would be a reason to move there (hehehe), gosh but it's so expensive there and we could never have the house we have now in San Diego, and well long flights back to SA ... nope I think I will stick with Charlotte :-)
Thanks again Tania for everything.
Oh and by the way my spell check is not working again so there will be lots of errors over all my updates today, but hey it took me long enough to do all this I am not rereading it all.
