Mac Moments

Had Sean's Teachers feedback today, he is doing well and has a few things to work on, but overall they are very happy with him...... We have had a slow day otherwise - the kids are waiting for the holidays to start and we are working on the website. No more news today folks

Super Sundays..... at last a rest from the week. We had a fabulous day of just watching TV, reading newspapers, doing the monthly shopping and playing games.... oh and a bit of fixing up. It was chilly though, we have not had a great heated hot summer this year, so it was a perfect day for staying inside and watching DVDs.... the kids loved it! We also watched The Secret which was motivating, Sean has been desparate to get his Ben Ten watch that Shirls brought over from the UK for him.... it is actually a special device that Ben Ten wears on his arm to transform things - if you watch it you would know - his motivation for the watch is to get 18 or more out of 20 for his spelling and 8 or more out of 10 for his maths and a good report back from his teachers.... so he is positively visualising the whole event of receiving his watch!!! Watch this Space..... It is also motivating for us with the business, so go The Secret go....

Fun Day at St Teresa's was lovely seeing all the little ones having loads of fun. Wine club in the evening was great fun as well, with wonderful views over Johannesburg, great company and wine!

Athletics Day at school, very cute to watch the little men run their hearts out!! You can actually see how they develop and they become more sure footed from year to year. The Grade 1's are still a bit wobbly, Grade 2's are getting the arms pumping and the Grade 3's fly.... Our little boy had fun Our house Benedicts came 2nd and we need to see how the Senior Prep school does! We sat next to a woman who was raving about the grounds and how beautiful the school is, and you know she is right, it has the most amazingly beautiful fields and the view over Joburg is phenomenal.

Art art art, what would we do without it. The picture is of my favourite artist Frans Groenwald, he puts a twist on his art. The caption on the mice is : The Blind tasting You've got to love it! I started off with a 9km run this morning which was great as my run on Tuesday was awful.... so at least the running was better today. Then off to art for a couple of hours at time out (I love that word, wish it was around when I was little), I love the fact that I can space out with fabulous people and just be creative without the constant : Mommy can I have this or that or the next thing!!! And my painting is looking great great great, someone is interested in it so I am smiling. Need to create more during the month so that I can become productive.

Happy Birthday Kerry, hope you had a fabulous one! Corker of a quote today from Jessica: "My yawn thinks I'm still sleeping" How cute are these kids of ours!

Happy Birthday Cerri... Woke up with a blinding migraine, has slowly gotten better during the day... we don't have much choice do we, still need to work, fetch kids and do homework! Also got the rash on my legs sorted out, dermatologist doesn't have a clue what is wrong with me, so onto cream and cortisone for the little beans. Still managed a run this evening with Steven, forced myself even though we walked a lot... the head felt like it was going to fall off. Sean is on his 14th Merit certificate today for speed reading and Jess is learning the alphabet. It is going to be great when they both can read!

Started Karate today, so that was fun...nice to do a different sport! Took the kids to see "Horton hears a Who", which they really enjoyed. On leaving the shopping centre we found that the lady who was meant to wash my car had not done it and the kids (Sean was adamant that she was a bad lady for not having done it) decided to wash my car when we got home.....

Kids had a fantastic easter hunting day, from getting a map from the Easter Bunny in the morning and going on an easter egg hunting trip at Rohan and Alines house! Made a Milk Tart today, didn't look great but tasted brilliant. Really trying to become more domesticated lol!!

Photo 1: The kids being bounced by Steve Photo 2: Jessica and Kayla Photo 3: Michael and Sean Photo 4: Beautiful Kayla After a hectic evening with Debbie of wine and smoking (yuck), we woke up to massive hangovers and regrets on having over indulged to that extent!! However, the Easter weekend continued with friends, cooking fabulous food and great conversation! The kids had a ball!

Photos - if you look carefully you will see Steven dotted just below the Avo at the top of the first photo, the 2nd one shows him a lot clearer actually climbing our beautiful Avo tree in our garden, we probably picked about 100 avos off the tree this morning and Steve climbed like a real monkey! Jess had loads of fun filling up the baskets! Happy Easter Weekend everyone. I suppose not meant to be a happy day today, when Jesus was crucified, but it has been amazing to hear my children talking about the weekend and relating the story to us. They know exactly what Easter Weekend is all about and what happened to Jesus.

Just a reminder that we live in Johannesburg! Had a fabulous sleep in this morning, I got up at 8:30, Steve at 9:30 - bugger the run! There is always tomorrow! The sun has come out and it is warm again, let's hope it lasts. Had a fabulous Brunch with Aline and the kids, bought some plants and got the garden sorted out for the weekend. Jess went to physio again and she is much better! Spent the afternoon with Julie, Taryn and Jason, we haven't seen the kids since December and Julie and Andi since February, so it was great just to chat and catch up. The kids are getting so big, Taryn is already half way up my head and a size shoe bigger than me already and Jason is a step and jump away from being under my chin! Stop growing up so quickly!!! Jess already had to have her ingrown toe sorted out, she was so brave, but would not have the local aneasthetic done (injections are not her thing), so we had to go with clipping and pruning it - with me telling her the bad soldiers were being...

After days of rain, we may as well live in London! It is still pouring with rain, check out the gray sky and boy is it cold..... Steve's trip was not too successful, not the right crowd and definitely the wrong expo. But he is back, and we made another two sales in the last few days - both corporates, so things are looking up! Jess still sick, but getting better!

Talk about fighting - Sean wouldn't let Jess into the bath because he wanted to bath alone, she got upset (check the face out), then eventually I convinced him it would be more fun and they spent the rest of the bath seeing who could hold their breath the longest underwater! Steve is in Cape Town marketing Xpatulator at the oil Expo, so it is me on my lonesome with the kids. The electricity went off at about 6pm, just as we finished with dinner, so it was a rather quiet evening with no technology - hence the lateness of this blog. Jess has got Bronchitis, so I have decided to go the complete natural route and do homeopathic medicine and phsyiotherapy. As we are changing all our aspects of health, we need to change charging towards anti-biotics straight away to clear any illnesses. Let's see how it goes. Today's yoga was focused on the 7th Chakra and was an interesting introspective session. We did shoulder stands, headstands and meditation, so very quieting.

Visit from Uncle Andrew, made the day a whole lot more exciting. It is absolutely bloody freezing here, we may as well be in London! although the coolness is quite refreshing. And fireplaces can be lit again..... in anticipation of winter. Photo: Andrew and Michaela

Relaxing long breakfast on Sunday was a load of fun....always great to get together with a group of friends and laugh your head off! You do feel years younger when you do that! Photos are of our crew, and of Summer and the new addition Sean was very cute today, on our way to the breakfast he was telling us about a programme he had watched on National Geographic about Dogs that were born as domestic dogs and were too wild to keep and sent into the wild to survive. Steve asked him if they were Wild dogs, so he says :"No Dad they were only a little bit wild, not completely!"

Slow day, went to a talk on how to cook with organic foods to increase the health of the family and especially the kids, very informative and has incentivised me to get on an organic cooking course... Took the kids to Swan Lake on Ice, which was absolutely amazing, the choreography and performance are world class! Jessica's best quote to date, going into one of the toilets at the show, she closes the door, lifts the toilet seat up and turns to me saying: "Mommy, that lady left her smell behind" - just so appropriate!

Witches and wizards in the garden, the real and the image on the wall Enjoy!

Painting a scene of Clarens in the Free State As life gets more hectic during the week, the blogs get shorter. We had a fabulous day today, with a work in progress at Art - my best yet according to the teacher....hopefully I can sell it for a mint! Then on to a party for Jessica, at a nursery, which gave me time to actually buy the plants I have been meaning to for months..... so all in all worked out well. Back home to chaos of Sean having tantrums about his homework, but very proud of the peanut butter cakes he made at OT. Have just finished homework which should take 45 minutes to do - 3 hours later...... crazy crazy crazy.....

First day of Hockey for the kids... they had a ball and were exhausted when they got home at 7pm....

My mind is so much fresher in the morning with so many thoughts and ideas, by the evening I am faltering on my thoughts and wondering what I had envisioned to write on here during the day. Thoughts flowed from yoga to friends to the days events...... I always come out of yoga feeling so much calmer having sweated (yes sweated believe it or not) and used my muscles to there full extent. People who don't do yoga tend to think that it is an easy class of stretching and meditating. They could not be further from the truth if they tried. Yes, you do get more flexible within your body as you do yoga, but this takes years. The thing about yoga is using the mind to control the body and the body's strength. You try do a backbend at age 40 and see how well your body copes. I have seen big burly men in the class unable to push themselves up to do a backbend, because their arms are not strong enough. How about a head stand, where most peoples arms just cannot hold them..... very i...

Photo: our beautiful trees in Johannesburg, one of the biggest man made forests in the world! Worked my little tush off today, if you want to know anything about how to market on the internet I am becoming quite good at it, from submitting to Directories, to sffing ads via AdSense on Google. Although Steve is definitely far ahead of me when it comes to submitting and writing articles.... and bookmarking, that is his domain. So if the business doesn't work we can at least say we learnt how to market on the internet!! Bonus for the day was that Swimming was cancelled for the kids, gave me an extra 1 1/2 hours to get homework done and start working again..... thanks to whoever put way too many chemicals into the pool today. Another bonus, I did the most amazing workout this morning, my body is aching but I feel good about it. 20 minute hard run, followed by a few weights on the legs and the super circuit and a great stretch, managed to do a backbend and a couple of other contortionis...

I would like you to all meet my running partner..... SWAT..... it was quite an eye opener for me today on my run. Mainly because I actually ran with my eyes open today, usually I am looking round only for strange people who may accost me (which has happened before - so not just paranoia here) and then watching the beauty of the trees, dam, park etc etc around me. Today I looked at my surroundings with my eyes wide open, I found a security car on every road that I ran on, they were either stopped or driving up and down - never noticed that before (usually there is 1 around in totality)...maybe because I usually run in the mornings and perhaps the security guys are rushing to help people that have been attacked (who knows), then on every street I ran down, there were at least 2 to 5 houses for sale.... people are definitely not happy with the crime rate as it is.... It was just so interesting to watch.... included in all of this negative feel that I was experiencing, there was this posit...