Bramley Famli

I have some more pics and will upload, but this pic was taken this morning by a friend. It’s Carli, Emily and Jordi. The beauty of the pic is the poster in the background. Julie didn’t compose the pic knowing it was there, and only saw it afterwards. What a beautiful caption on an exciting day.

Jordi moved to Grade 4 and Carli started Grade 1. All sorts of emotions were flying around this morning. Mostly nervousness. Leish did an amazing job prepping all of us for today. It was a day that worked so smoothly, kept emotions in check, and included us having to jump-start Leish’s car after standing for 3 weeks while we’re away.

Click here to see the full image.

A couple of weeks ago our friends, the Blackburns, invited us for a night of camping with them to the Magaliesberg. A risk on their side, as we’re beginners in this area. They helped us gather together some equipment and we headed out on our adventure.

Was a great evening (hectic wind, some rain and all). The girls had a good time, and it was a good first step into this world together. Here’s a short vid of some of our stay. 3 sec bursts from the footage we took.

Or you can see the video on YouTube by following this link.

If you’d like to see all the video’s we’ve uploaded, check out our YouTube Chanel.

Today’s my birthday. I’m now officially a ‘ballie’ or so they tell me. 40 is the entry point to this new descriptor of me.

It’s been a kewl day. Surprised this morning with breakfast in bed, presents and lots of love from my family, and then through the day by friends, through sms, facebook, phone calls and twitter. So much love through so many platforms.

I started the day, once the girls had gone to school, with an 8km run. Had to remind myself I’m not too old. I then went to a web interview for The Times’ web site to be screened in Jan 2010. The cool thing was my outfit. Jordi and Carli dressed me in a tie and a badge / pin that said ’40 Today’. Not the usual attire, fer sure, but I was reminded throughout the day that I was 40 and still much adored by two very wonderful and special girls.

My (our) big present was a video camera. Water proof, solid state hard drive and truckloads of memory. The girls have gotten into YouTube so it’s going to be a blast for the next while. Of this I am certain.

I posted this morning’s clip to YouTube. Take a look…. Click on the video to be taken to the larger version, or click here

As London, from Disney Chanel would say, “Happy Birthday me” : )

A touch late posting this entry : ) Halloween has come and gone, but I only updated the photos yesterday.

I had to work on the evening, but the girls went, and they had a blast. Although I do believe that the person who had arranged it got some of the timing wrong and so they only caught the end of the community event. Never-the-less, the girls went to town.

Leish also got involved and scary. The pic I’ve used in the entry has a funny story to it. Leish sent it to me via her phone. I replied ‘why is Carli the only one smiling?” Apparently when Carli saw it, she asked why Leish was smiling? : )

Click here for more pics.

Jordi downloaded an app for my iPhone the other day called DoodleBuddy. If you have 2 iPhones with bluetooth activated you can both draw and play with the same pic at the same time.

Needless to say they’ve had a lot of fun with this app, and when Leish and I can’t find our phone’s it’s because there’s art going on.

Click here to see the entire gallery. Thank to Martinus, Tracy, Pete and Lynne for donating their faces to be over-haulled. Or pimp-my-face had it been an MTV show : )

While we were away in Umngazi, the girls joined in with some of the formal activities organised for the children.

On one particular day this ended up being a sand castle building event. I think it was billed as a competition, but I didn’t see any competing going on. I figured it was just clever marketing speak to get the kids to join in, and then someone wisely withdrew the competition as the kids got stuck into letting their creativity out, clearly not very concerned as to whether they were going to win some prize.

Our girls teamed up with Zara and Marli and built a ‘music world’. It was stunning. A guitar, a piano, a music note, a concert venue, drums. Spectacular!

Took some pics of Jordi and Carli playing the piano. I was impressed. They were proud. So they should’ve been.

Friday night was Leish’s 20 year high school reunion. Mine was 2 years ago. So that makes me older and provides a little insight to the interesting feelings that float around at such events : ) I don’t know if there is a correlation, but one of Leish’s good mates pulled out on Friday afternoon around 16:00. Of course there was a good reason, but I wonder?

The 20 yr reunion shared the school hall with the 10 yr reunion and the school celebration of 25 years in it’s current form. So it couldn’t be and wasn’t the piss up mine was, and it did lack the intimacy of focus just the
20 yr reunion might have had, but it was a beautifully diverse and a proud night shared by all.

I enjoyed meeting Leish’s school mates and getting a taste of her world way back then. Some really good people have shared her world.

It’s not often, if ever, that I’ve seen such pride in a school, as speech after speech gave testimony to a school that made something very spectacular of itself over the past 25 years.

Leish contributed 2 years to the history that was unveiled last night. If friends, stories and teachers who remembered her are to go by, she certainly added more than what was expected of her.

Had I been her last night, I would have felt incredibly proud to have been a part of Stirling High School. But I’ll leave that for you to explore….

A good friend of ours, Martin Geissler, who’s family we met through Jordi’s friendship with their daughter, has a blog I discovered today. Martin is the Africa Correspondent for ITV News, comes from Scotland, and even has a Wikipedia entry (pretty kewl in my books).

Martin has some amazing stories from his travels through mostly Africa, recently, and many parts of the world, as he covers what’s happening, exploding, and making news.

His latest entry is titled ‘Crap Shoot’, which as he explained, is one of those ‘behind the scenes’ stories that will never make the news, but certainly is worth reading. A great story.

As you’d expect, he has a Twitter profile, and for those interested you can follow him here.

In a post somewhere in the past I wrote about going to Gav and Jude’s wedding in Kasouga.

If you feel like a warm loving feeling, go and have a look at these two amazing people on their wedding day.

• The Wedding
• The day after the wedding

My mate Gregg Sneddon is one of those passionate people when it comes to money. Your money. And not getting his hands on it. He’s more about you keeping your hands on it. He’s a great writer as well, and I love reading his stuff. He’s edgy, counter-cultural and probably gets up the nose of many of his peers in the financial services game.

He used to send out newsletter many times a year, and has transfered accross to a blog based info distribution system.

Check out his latest entry on Unit Trust RA’s v Life Insurance RA’s.