My bank account has ebola...

No wait it is SARS!

Today is D-day for paying my provisional tax return, and yes I have left it to the last minute...

Up to now it has been a matter of filling in a form and posting it off, as I have had to pay PAYE upfront on all my earnings. But now that I work for Canonical, I get my gross salary paid to me (from the Isle of Man nogal) and I have to figure the taxation out myself.

I have really enjoyed having all the extra cash sloshing around in my bank account and making things feel nice and bouyant. ( Are you getying the puns on liquidity?), but sadly I have to dosh over basically a full year's tax TODAY. I have had to phone the bank to up my daily trasfer limit.

I have beeen sure to make my estimates a little conservative, because for once I don't want to have to claim tax back in my return. So when I get my tax return fully completed and checked over by a more qualified person, I am sure I will need to pay in some more to square things up.

For now I will lament that sweet moolah which was doing such a good job of lining my bank account, and making me feel opulent and secure. I am also going to need to watch my budget closely again.

I see RED.

Howzat!?

I did not grow up in a very sporting family, in fact as far as I am concerned instead of being encouraged to participate in sport, we were actively discouraged. My parents were disparaging about sport and people who watched and participated in sports. It was seen as a silly waste of time and money. Also, as it would have envolved more complex time tables for us kids and lots of fetching and carrying, I think it was seen as too much trouble, particularly on week-ends - since my parents had 4 kids and I can see how that can become a pain...

Anyway primary school went by with very little sport involvement from me and by the time I got to high school I wasn't much interested and didn't volunteer to spend any more time on the school grounds than I absolutely had to.

As a result, I have never been very fit and never developed much hand-eye co-ordination or aptitude for sports either. I have always favoured solitary or one-on-one games (like fencing), as I have always felt uncomfortable in a team and like I will be the one to let the team down...

When it came to beach volleyball or frisbee I would normally try half-heartedly, expecting to be bad at it, and would hand off to someone else as soon as I could.

Quinn batting at cricket practice on Friday.

Fast forward 10+ years.

I started doing yoga weekly 8 years ago (which I still do), 4 years ago I joined our local gym and did aqua-aerobics, bums & tums workouts and walking etc, and I now do kata-boxing (martial arts style cardio kicking and punching etc) once a week, and have done for 2.5 years. In September I started running, and I have run over 500km since...

I feel stronger and fitter than I ever have, and I actually can't believe I didn't participate in sport at school, because judging by my current abilites I think I could have been pretty good!

Quinn has started Cricket and tennis at school. I went to his Cricket practice on Friday, and he was not doing particularly well. The result was he tried less and less, and didn't really bother to get back in line and so was not even getting much practice at all. Also, with some of the boys already looking very professional, I think it was intimidating for him... (I have included some pictures from the begining of the practice when he was doing ok - very cute!).

So on Saturday morning I bought him 4 tennis balls and a tennis set (complete with racquet, sweat bands & head bands etc ). We then took his cricket bat and the tennis gear and balls to our local park and got busy.

Quinn catching ball at cricket practice on Friday.

We had SUCH fun.

It turns out Richard is a star bowler (a talent he'd kept well hidden from me).

Quinn batted, bowled, caught and chased the ball and got more confident, and even Griffin was running after stray balls and getting in on the action.

After a while I got a long turn to bat, and I surprised myself by being far better than I thought I would be - but put it down to Richard being an accurate and consistent bowler, but still I was imagining joining a cricket team I was having so much fun!

We ended up going back again on Sunday afternoon, and I even convinced the boys to run right around the cricket field, to earn an ice-cream. Which they both eagerly did.

Quinn's battling and bowling has improved dramatically since Friday, and he even managed to hit all 4 balls in a row at times. Now that he has had some success he is also far more keen and excited about it, so I am sure he will enjoy the school practice much more this week and will start to try harder.

I had a turn batting again, and this time Richard got adventurouse with spin bowling and high-speed bowling too, with a combination of cricket bat and then tennis racquet I was able to return most of what he threw at me - even when he fired all 4 balls off in quick succession. I reckon I was hitting at least 90% of the balls.

Howzat!

Quinn bowling at cricket practice on Friday.

I can feel that it was a work out too, even thought at the time is seemed quite effortless and natural - my bum knows it's been working!

I am really going to try to instill a love of sports and physical activity in the kids because it it so nice to be active and to feel in touch with your body, and because I think it harder having to learn that later in life.

Gold Bug

On Friday while having a swim after work, I found the most amazing beetle in the swimming pool.

I have never seen anything like it. It was completly gold and at first I thought it was a gold plated toy or piece of jewelry, but when it moved I realised it was a real live bug!

It immediately made me think of Richard Scarry and his Busy Town Books, which always feature a character somewhere in the page titled 'Gold Bug'. I gave it to Quinn and asked him to put it in a bottle thinking it would be fun to keep it and/or take it to school for show and tell, but alas it was set free during the evening. I guess I wasn't specific enough about the putting it in a bottle, because although it had been put in a bottle, the bottle had no lid! *roll eyes*

I did a quick search and discovered it is a Fool's Gold Beetle or Aspidomorpha tecta , they eat Morning Glory leaves and our next door neighbour has one growing on our adjacent wall so that must be where it came from.
Edit: I just found another reference to it as a Golden Tortoise Beetle - Charidotella sexpunctata which looks exactly the same, I wonder if this beetle has been classified twice...?

I'll have a look around to see if I can find any more...

Here is some more info:
From Bug Guide and from wikipedia.
Interesting!

Guess what?

NOTHING!

The Dapper Rats

We have had our rat-critters for 2 months now, and so far so good. They are actually pretty cute, and it's nice to see how they have bonded with the kids. In fact they are far tamer with the boys than they ever are with me.

I can not get them to keep still at all - which makes photo taking with a not very fast camera quite difficult!

I am assuming at over 3 months old they are about at their full adult size.

Quinn the Athlete - maybe not

Quinn ran in his first inter-house athletics event on Friday. It was a fun and festive event and the whole junior and senior school was there, making it quite crowded, loud and overwhelming for the Grade 1s.

Quinn is in the yellow house called Andrews.

I think he had fun, but he was not exactly the star performer. Unfortunately - like his parents - he is a bit self-concious, so spent more time looking around to see who was watching him, than getting on with running!
In the end after his 50m dash - with gigantic big tackies on, he managed to come in second last. Which means someone else was slower than him - yeah!

Next time we'll get him to run sans shoes which will probably help.
He is however telling people he came second. We'll not burst his bubble this time.

The dirty week-end

After already been spoiled on Valentine's day, I was taken away for a spectacular week-end too. I was expecting it to be nice, but I wasn't prepared to be treated like a Queen from start to finish. *grin*

Richard had been given a free week-end at any City Lodge after having a very bad experience there during a Johannesburg trip last year. He decided to cash it in at the Courtyard in Cape Town, which is one of the nicer hotels...

I was told to make myself available from 4pm on Friday and to pack a bag for Saturday. Which I did. I did not at all expect what followed...

Richard and the boys collected me at 4pm and took me off to the Courtyard, where I was to kiss them all goodbye, as they left. I was then handed a bag by the hotel doorman William. He ushered my to a cloakroom and handed me a note. The note told me to change into my swimming gear (which was in the bag, along with snacks, sunscreen, hat and a magazine etc) and then follow William. I did this and he showed me through to the swimming pool deck, and prepared a lounger with fresh towels for me. I relaxed in the sun for 20 minutes and was then summoned by a friendly-looking lady.

She showed me through to a room which she said was my room. It was a thatched cottage with downstairs living area and upstairs bedroom and bathroom. There was a massage table set-up in the living area. A note told me to go upstairs to undress for the massage. There was a robe and underwear waiting for me.I went back down and had a lovely massage. A combination of aromatherapy and reflexology and shiatsu etc. The result was very relaxing and calming though. Simply lovely. When she was done she slipped away handing me another note. This one told me I had some time to relax and look around, and then to get ready for dinner. I had about an hour and a half. The living area had a kitchenette. Richard had provided red wine, sparkling wine, beer and tequila. So I made a shandy and went back upstairs to look around.

It was simply over-whelming. There were helium balloons tied to the banister, and the whole room and bed was decorated with candles, scatter cushions, scented pillows photos, flowers, cards etc. As well as a gift bag with lotions and massage oils etc. My clothing for dinner was laid out on the bed with shoes, hair accesories and jewelry and everything. I don't think a single thing was overlooked.
The roses on the bed were beautiful - with the flower part made out of feathers The bathroom contained all the toiletries I could possibly need, all beautifully packaged in a pink netted bag, and the bath was filled with red rose petals.

Then I saw a package on the bed, I had thought it was my present from Valentines day a few days earlier, but then realised it was a different parcel.

It was a package containing La Senza lingerie. WOW
I spent some time bathing and getting ready for dinner, and then made my way down to to the Wild Fig Restaurant's bar as instructed in the note on the bed.
(photos were forgotten after this)

I ordered a glass of red wine and waited, after a while Richard arrived looking very smart, in a new shirt and tie, which matched my outfit.

He had made plans for the kids to sleep out and taken care of packing their bags and getting them there etc. I had not had to plan anything or worry about anything or co-ordinate anything. It was nice to be able to just relax and go with the flow instead of having to be in charge and looking after everything!

We had a delicious dinner before returning to our room...

The next morning we woke up late and had a slow start to our day. At about 11:30 am we went to the gym, where we worked out a bit and met up with the kids and let them swim. We then all went for breakfast (at lunchtime) and had bacon and eggs.

After that we went through to our friend's renovation-completion- house-warming. We were planning on just stopping to say hi and dropping the kids off, but we ended up staying for quite long and having a wonderful time. We also made and ate sushi rolls and had the most delicious crayfish and litchi salad *YUM*, as well as looking at photos of some other friend's recent engagement in Zanzibar - it looks stunning. We had a good giggle about what was being called our 'dirty week-end' and I think the rest of the guys are going to be expected to be at thoughtful and creative now. (I hope they do it, because their ladies deserve it!)

We finally trundled off into the thick mist back over the mountain to our hotel...

We had another late morning, waking to a massive Cape power failure.
We finally made it back over the mountain after dropping all our luggage at home and collecting a take-way lunch for everyone at about 2pm.

We relaxed and chatted while the boys played and played. We took them home at about 6:30pm, both boys passed out on the way home, and were put straigh to bed.
With the power still out, we had no option but to continue our romantic week-end - by candle light - there was nothing else to do! ;)

I think it was a simply perfect weekend.

Am I lucky or what?

Memories of an Angel

We were just reminded of our baby Angel, while looking through some old photo directories... after a week-end of fun, and happy gentleness, a wave of warm sadness fills me.

She would have been 8 years old this year.

Angelique, I hope you are happy and at peace. We love you.