Can you say “Holidays”?

Yay! School holidays started today! I picked the kids up from school today at 11am and already felt a sense of relief.

4 weeks off bliss! No homework in the afternoons, no fetching & carrying to & from school (sometimes 3 or 4 times a day!), no school projects, just some pure fun! = HAPPY MOM!

This weekend is, of course, Easter. We’re at home, a quiet long weekend for us.

Tuesday we’re off to our little place of African heaven… The bushveld.

Hopefully we will see more of these beautiful prehistoric looking creatures…. I just love how this little baby is resting on his mommy’s back!

& this won’t happen again…(feb 2012)

the new, wider floodplain after the floods this summer…

Don’t you just love these faces?

You get the picture?

We’ll be back again after about a week, then we’ll relax at home until it’s my mom-in-law’s 80th birthday.

The whole family (the birthday girl + 5 kids + each of their spouses, + all 10 grandchildren= 21 in total) will be off for 3 days down to Umhlanga in Kwazulu Natal to a beautiful old hotel which was recently revamped …

I cannot wait to take photos of the beautiful lighthouse! (and I have to admit staying in such a gorgeous spot will be sublime!)

So this school holiday, we’ll have a bit of the bush and a bit of the beach – the best of both worlds – I can’t wait!

Under Construction

I am finally 'getting it'! Blog designing is not rocket science once you learn to play around a bit. I enjoy making use of Blogger's basics and getting it to do what I want! One of which is the Navbar I've finally figured out how to do. So go ahead and start clicking to be redirected to specific areas on my blog. Watch this space as I'll be upgrading it it soon now that I've figured out how to get it there!

I'm still busy with the Blog Design course "Bling up your Blog" at the Little Light Studio. What fun! I love this creative site. Kayla Aimee and Wilna are really talented and artsy and explain everything so well - so go one and click on their button which you'll find in the left side-bar of my blog.

Do pop in again to see how my blog changes as it is still Under Construction!

This weekend we went away to Buffalo Thorn Lodge in the Pilanesberg near Sun City. This was our second visit and we really enjoyed it. The accommodation was superb and the kids had fun with their cousins. The highlight was finding a pride of 5 lionesses having their lunch! They had caught a Wildebees, we estimate around 2 hours before we saw them, and were devouring the last of it. They weren’t too keen on the vehicle and the one dragged the carcass further into the long grass where they could eat in peace. Fortunately we could still see them when they stood up.

 

One thing we decided after our visit is that we are so spoiled at Olifants being able to drive around when we choose and also the landscape there is so beautiful , nothing can compare in our humble opinion.

The weather lately has been cold and wet to say the least! We have had such a lot of rain, so unusual for late April. At Buffalo Thorn, getting there was quite a feat! Take  a look at the car!

We literally drove sideways in parts! The mud got into the rims of the wheels and the car shuddered all the way home each time we exceeded 90km/hr! So now we’ll have to have the tyres removed and cleaned out. At least we got some real mud on the “Rangey” which normally only sees city driving with the odd pothole here and there!

Today is a public holiday and Leon’s sister, Denise is visiting from the USA so his mom and Denise are coming to us for lunch. The weather is still cold and wet – real comfort food weather! So I think we’ll have a roast chicken with potatoes & veg (which Leon has offered to cook! Yay!!) and I’ll follow it up with good old-fashioned South African Malva Pudding…

 

Back home again...

We did end up visiting Ian & Nikki up in Letsitele over the weekend. As usual Nikki cooked up a storm and we had to roll home! The kids so enjoy seeing each other. Shannon had to sleep in Cayleigh's room with her as she says Dee-Anne always gets to have friends to sleep over and she never does (she is only 4!). Shannon crept into the bed next to hers some time after Cayleigh was fast asleep in Dreamland and the next morning she asked Shannon if she heard her trying to wake her up in the night. (She hadn't). Obviously Cayleigh wanted to check to see that her cousin had in fact kept to her promise of sleeping over in her room!

On Sunday morning we took a drive up to Olifants nature Reserve to have a look at property there. We found a gorgeous place in Olifants North - what peace and tranquility! Although there hasn't been much peace and tranquility at home since as we have been debating eversince whether or not to make the purchase!

Here are a few photos:

The view over Olifants Nature Reserve from the patio

The game viewing vehicle in carport.

The boma adjacent to the house.

Shannon took these photos with her 'new' camera. When Leon bought his Nikon, he sold his Panasonic to my mom and she gave her old digital camera to Shannon. Shan naturally thinks she is the bees knees as she now gets to snap away at whim!

I am amazed - she isn't too bad! Occasionally she ends up with blurred shots but mostly her photos are in focus and some are quite good.

Here are a few photos I took at Buffalo Thorn Lodge on our game drives...

I love fiddling around with my photos in Photoshop once I've downloaded them. Sometimes I think, maybe it's 'cheating' a bit to tweak them here and there, but then again - if it makes for a better result - why not?

Here's an example :



Before :


After :


The result- a brighter image with more of the sunset hues moving down onto the trees and Impalas. This I did by adjusting the contrast, levels and colour in 2 different layers. I then erased parts of the bottom half to end up with a photo where the Impala, trees and the sunset are better exposed. I love the warm 'African sunset' tones in the resultant photo. I think there is an improvement- but that's just my subjective opinion.

Well I'd better go get some stuff done around the house now. The kids are back at school, so the holiday is officially over and I need to try to get back into routine!


Bye for now.
Veronica