Fire DJ
Fire DJ Addy, on his way to save the day on his pink scooter
Nerf
Adam has figured out how to load the nerf gun on his on…which has pros and cons, but definitely brings much joy
Eli has been practicing jumping out of the hammock
Boys and the garden
It took some convincing, but I finally got a decent smile out of Eli.
Just cruising around
The clivias are blooming
And the blueberries are forming (hopefully we’ll get some decent yield this year – assuming Adam let’s them grow)
Chocolate pie and friends
We celebrated or public holiday with some good time with friends and the yummy chocolate pie that Donné made.
Dessert prep
Chocolate fudge pie
Thank you to Pete and Heather for hosting us all!
Keep moving
It’s been a weekend of bike rides, walks in the park and trampoline jumping – making sure we all keep moving, and the kids fill in the spaces with jungle gym time, Lego building and reading.
Some early morning relaxing in the hammock
And some afternoon sillies on the trampoline
Addy’s bike track ride
Adam has been gradually learning to ride his balance bike around the pool but mostly pushes it with the occasional short glide. We decided to go to the bike track today, so with some slight helmet rearranging were on our way.
Pink helmets are cool
Ads gets some freewheeling time (he was getting better by the end)
Grace and Eli both had an amazing ride today.they just missioned of while I walked with Addy and got through the entire course without any help and comfortably. Eli is getting very confident in the track
Building joy
Eli has been gradually building his birthday Lego, but he got real joy out of it today. He built a section of the fire station and was enamoured with the computers and equipment inside, and at lunch time he was very excited to show me. Later in the day he had to push through some challenges, but in the end got it sorted out on his own which was a very fulfilling process for him – lots of joy that he had figured it all out on his own.
Still plenty more to build, so more joy on the way.
Getting shirtless at Vergelegen
On Monday Donné took her folks to Vergelegen with the children, and one of the things that Grace loves to do there is get a milkshake.
The milkshakes are pretty big, so she and Eli shared one….but Eli decided to drink his part a little bit too fast and was soon turning slightly green.
With him not feeling great they started heading back to the car and Grandpa offered to carry him.
That might not have been the best choice for grandpa. Eli decided to get that green-feeling-inducing milkshake out, all over grandpa. So grandpa did the reasonable thing and took of his shirt. Jip, there go the Drennan’s – shirtless at Vergelegen and heading back to the car.
After that, Eli did feel fine though.
Eli’s 5th birthday
Eli turned 5 today!
We celebrated with a trip to the aquarium and the now mandated ice cream afterwards
Grace and Eli are backing up as the large stingray came by
The stunning loggerhead turtle is huge
Grace and Eli had lots of questions about the rare “pink meanie” jellyfish (which eats other jellyfish)
Checking out the rock lobsters
The tiny dark spot above the larger half dome dark spot is a little shark in its egg casing
Getting everyone to smile for a photo seems like a near impossibility at the moment, but I do love these guys dearly
Eli’s huge firestation Lego – we’ve got some building to do this week. The gift he seems to be the most enamoured with though is the small alarm clock that Grace bought for him.
Eli’s knight party
Eli is turning 5 on Wednesday and to celebrate we had a knight party. We went through many different party options through the year (which I think he started talking about just after Christmas), but finally settled on the knight party.
Ser Eli
Everyone got a personalised (hand made) shield and sword. The shields I cut out of 6mm plywood. The swords are a PVC inspection T and some 20mm conduit covered with a piece of pool noodle.
The PVC pipe inside the pool noodle give the sword….well…quite a bit more punch. Luckily we had shields too.
The knights (and the one princess) had to storm the dragon’s castle. First shoot a water balloon with the giant slingshot (which took some engineering to put together – a little finicky to load, but overall a success).
Climb the ladder to scale the wall, then up the tree and over the monkey rope.
From the monkey rope it was down to the rope swing to cross the moat, and then down to the dragon himself (to pop a balloon and start again). A super big thank you to Marguerite who made the dragon head for us.
We had a ring for throwing arrow darts through
There was lots of general sword fighting, with Steven taking on the little knights
And other adults needing to defend themselves
Eli also took some time to settle on his cake, but when Donné suggested that he could cut off the dragon’s head, then he was all in.
Hiding inside the dragon was some dragon treasure
At the end we rounded things up with a few rounds of “jousting” (also known as sword fighting while riding on dads’ shoulders’)
Knight lollies and flaming arrow marshmallows
The Knight Family Drennan’s (who really couldn’t quite all get it together to look at the camera at the same time for this photo).
Everyone had lots of fun, and we definitely enjoyed the party. Thank you to everyone who came, for all the gifts for Eli, and for joining in the fun.
