Christmas and New Year

Christmas as filled with the usual excesses, excess food, excess drink, excess cheer and in Christopher's case, excess presents.

On Christmas Eve Sean and Josie came around and joined us for a drink and a wallow in the pool, Josie took great pleasure in getting Christopher in the pool.

Christmas eve dinner was celebrated with the Jordans. To say they spoilt Christopher a
littlewould be like saying that Christopher has only change our life a little. The presents
around the tree were almost entirely for Christopher.

Christopher is now the owner of his own yacht, not just any yacht, a remote control yacht. He also got a train set, not the simple set, the one with loops and points and the works. I can safely say that Jenny's family is nuts, very nice, but definitely a bit nuts, although I'm not complaining and I know that Christopher isn't either.

He also got a singing Santa on a motorbike/reindeer. Santa sings, the bike vibrates and lights flash, Christopher loves it but we've refrained from letting him play with it otherwise he would very quickly reduce it to its component pieces.


One of his favourite toys, which apparently Kate had a great deal of pleasure trying out in the store, much to the consternation of the staff and other customers, was his Pooh Mobile. Apparently Ed specifically said that they had to make sure that it would be strong enough, so Kate hopped on and went scooting around the store testing it. Now that would have been a picture worth getting!

Chris joined us for dinner and while we had a feast prepared by Kate, he munched on teething biscuits. I'm not sure what he enjoyed more, the munching on the biscuits or the mess he managed to create, either way he had a good time and looked well pleased with himself when done.


This year we broke with tradition and instead of going around to my folks for Christmas day we invited them to our house and prepared Christmas lunch here. A bit hectic getting everything organised, but really well worthwhile.

New Years was a more sedate affair with Alex and Brian hosting a small dinner party at their place, we had a late dinner and were still eating at midnight. A couple more bottles of wine and we all retired to our beds. We all slept over so there was no worry about driving. Christopher decided that 5am was a good time to wake up. So we were up early. Jenny and I sat outside with Christopher and discussed a wish list of things we'd like to do to our house, hopefully we win the lottery this year.

We then had a good fry-up breakfast and spent the rest of the day relaxing. It was a perfect way to welcome in the New Year, good food, good wine, good converstation and good friends.

Christopher's first wedding

So I am about a month behind in my blogging. On the 16th December 2006 Toby and Meris got married. This was Christopher's first wedding. They organised for a whole weekend wedding on an olive farm near Riebeeck Casteel. We went up on the Friday and had a fish braai in the evening, where Chris managed to crawl around in the dirt, and put anything in his mouth that wasn't moving, and something things that were.


He decided that Friday night was so much fun that he wasn't going to miss a minute of it and stayed awake most of the night. So 2am I was walking him up and down outside trying to get him to sleep with no success, Jenny then took over and let me sleep and spent most of the night awake trying to get him to sleep. Saturday we were feeling a little the worse for wear. Megan was up early with me to help feed and entertain Chris and we let Jenny sleep as she had spent most of the night awake and let me get at least half a nights sleep.


Being in the vicinity of Allesveloren we had to go and visit and buy a couple of bottles of port, we had lunch at the restaurant on the wine farm and discovered that Christopher liked chewing bones after Megan suggested we give him one.


Saturday afternoon was the wedding, Toby's best man had a work crisis and was unable to attend the wedding so he asked me to step in and be the best man. Jenny took great pleasure in pointing to me that technically I wasn't the best man, I was the 2nd best man.

The marriage officer then got lost and nobody was sure where she was so Toby's mother approached me and firmly told me that should the marriage officer not arrive that I was to stand up and conduct the ceremony. Toby and Meris could then get legally married on Monday. So in one day I was promoted from guest to best man and almost to marriage officer. Fortunately the marriage officer arrived so I was spared that task.

The reception was typically Toby and Meris, the toast was not done with champagne but with Tequila. That certainly kicked off the party. Christopher by this stage was exhausted and went to sleep at a normal time and slept for most of the night so we got chance to relax and enjoy the reception.

The following morning all the guest were invited to a brunch on the farm where Toby and Meris opened their presents. The idea of a weekend long wedding is a really good idea, the one thing about our wedding is that it seemed to be over too soon, we didn't get nearly enough opportunity to spend time with the people we invited.

All told it was a weekend that was somewhat tiring but thoroughly enjoyable and completely unforgettable.

Back from the silly season

So it has been over a month since I posted, I will try to make up for it by posting a couple of articles in the next week. The silly season caught up with us far too quickly and with our hectic social schedule (it is really a problem being SO popular), work pressures and Christmas I've been very lazy with regards to updating the blog.

Christopher has been introduced to the swimming pool and loves the water, we took the cautious approach of getting him swimming nappies, and just as well, during one swim he decided to let rip. Let us just say that we avoided having any floaters in the pool that day!

He is also starting to try his hand at new hair styles, well technically I'm trying my hand at giving him new hairstyles. He tried to go for the evil look, but instead ended up with a silly-impish look. Not quite the scary evil monster effect he had in mind.


In honour of the Christmas spirit we next tried a punk-Santa look, it looks like Santa has overindulged in the the Christmas cheer a bit. Say no more...
Christopher is starting to get even more mobile, he is pulling himself on furniture and then walking around holding on. It is only a matter of time before he is walking.

So that takes us up to about the middle of December, in the next posts I'll describe our adventures at Toby and Meris' wedding and the antics of Christmas and New Year. And I promise it won't be another month before the next post appears here, honest!