Today Duncan spent most of the day seeing clients in Stellenbosch. Grace and I had a great morning of painting, baking, and cutting paper and gluing the little pieces of cut paper. At lunch time Grace went into the office and came back with an old phone. I asked her who she was phoning and she said Daddy. I asked her what she wanted to tell Daddy and she replied “come home, miss you.” That just melted my heart.

Her progress in her speech amazes me each day. I am so proud of her.

Grace managed to somehow get a little cut on the bottom of her foot yesterday. Nothing serious if you look at it (just a little more than a scratch), but something very serious for Grace. There have been lots of tears around this little cut. A plaster seemed to help a small bit yesterday, but Grace practically refused to walk on that foot. Fortunately putting shoes on her seemed to help her get over it for a while. Today she seemed mostly fine, but required a token plaster to keep the cut out of sight and out of mind. Getting into the bath has been loads of fun.

A friend and I were discussing how it is quite hard to describe exactly why it is that having a family is better than the things one might be able to do if you did not. One way might be to say that life is deeper and richer due to the growing relationships. I liked what one friend said, that our love grows with each new family member. We also grow and develop as the love we learn spreads to all the other parts of our lives too. Although it might be hard to describe, it is something definitely worth living.

We are spending the weekend at Yzerfontein with friends.  Since the beginning of the week Grace has been saying "go beach" so when she woke up this morning and found out today was the day, she was super excited!  She fell asleep in the car on the way and when she woke up the first thing she said was "beach".  

So Grace finally got her wish and her feet touched the beach sand and although the water was FREEZING it didn't deter her from going into the water

Caleb trying to catch up to Grace to give her, her bucket

Keren arrived for a visit today and Grace is enamoured. She absolutely loves her aunt and is quite happy for Keren to do everything that she needs done, from reading books through to helping her go to the toilet. Keren also came bearing gifts of Percy Pigs and clothes…particularly a Dora T-shirt which Grace loves.

We've mentioned before that Grace LOVES tomatoes, especially baby tomatoes.  This evening at supper time Grace asked me for some tomatoes, I told her I would get her some in a few minutes, I just needed to finish what I was doing.  Apparently a few minutes was not "Now" and when I turned around she had pushed her chair across the kitchen, opened the container of tomatoes and was helping herself!  

Grace helping herself to some tomatoes.  I bought that 400g container yesterday and well lets just say Duncan and I have not eaten many of them!

Grace has started saying a very cute there-you-go which we have been trying to capture on video to no avail. She says it quite a lot so there should be plenty of opportunities to capture is, but all that we can get her to say on tape is "go."