Happy New Year from the Taylors

Hello Family,

I regret it has taken a ‘fire up the bum’ from Nick to snap me into action and try my hand at blogging. Likewise we also hope you all had a blessed Christmas and have a serious ‘blast’ planned for New Year.

We have had a super time over the past few weeks, getting away for a number of mini-breaks. Anne and I are getting a lot of pleasure mountain biking. The only good routes near us are in the sugar cane fields. All the races and good social rides happen up in the mountain area between Pietermaritzburg and Estcourt, so we went to the Nottingham Road area recently and road the dirt tracks and district roads in the beautiful farming area. There was heavy mist and light warm rain which made for excellent riding. It looked just like UK. This is a Pic from our cottage door.

We spent Christmas up in Bloemfontein with Sammy and her husband Jannie. They have purchased a house on a 2.7 hectare plot about 12 km from the city centre. They are extremely happy up there. Both are in their first year specialising so they will be based there for at least the next four years. Jannies family motored up from Oudtshoorn in the Eastern Cape. Lisa and Paul spent Christmas in Cape Town with his family.

(Jannie is on the left with his folks and his sister is next to Sam. The others are friends)

We then spent a couple of nights at a lovely Bush Lodge on the Pongolapoort river up on the Swazi border. Absolutely beautiful! Crocs, Hippo, Rhino, Giraffe and every kind of buck and bird you can think off. I spent quite a bit of time on the dam with my mates who were Tiger Fishing. (I hate fishing) and they were very successful.

(I hope you can see the little baby only a couple of days old)

Lisa and Paul have settled in nicely in Pietermaritzburg. They have also bought a lovely house in a wooded area close to the Botanical Gardens. They have done it up very nicely and the renovation was completed just before Christmas when the swimming pool was installed.

Unfortunately Paul will have to spend a year in Durban, probably in 2009 some time. Part of his speciality requires him to work in a unit which specialises in hands and the spine, so they are not sure whether to sell or rent their house while he completes these two modules.

Well that's all for now. I hope this first attempt at blogging turns out OK.

Love to all,

Anne and Graham

Happy Christmas from the US Sykes Family

Hello everyone!

I hope you all had a nice Christmas. We had a very fine time over here. We had everyone over to our house in the late afternoon. Ant was eating supper when the Kapanakis's arrived, and immediately started saying "Seemi, Seemi" (he's gone from calling his cousin 'Hami' to 'Seemi'). They were so thrilled to see each other, it was very cute. They had a very fine time playing together after their respective suppers were eaten. After the kids were all in bed we had our supper - started with mushroom and cheese raviolis in a delightful tomato cream sauce, followed by salad, filets with blue cheese and bacon, and eclairs with a divine white chocolate mousse for dessert. Not a typical Christmas dinner, I know, but we like it!

Here are a couple of pictures of the family. The first would have been perfect if Roy had been paying attention to the camera ;-) Ah - and Sami chewing on the ice-pack. She has a thing for them! Ant was not thrilled about this whole picture taking business; he wanted to PLAY! So we had trouble getting him to pay attention. And unfortunately Christopher looks a bit like a devil child with those eyes of his - he's actually quite the opposite, very laid back. And just starting to smile!




We would love to hear what everyone else did for Christmas. And pictures please!!!

Sami and Ant played together today as well, as Kate's family stayed here overnight. I am really impressed at how well they already play together, they've gotten quite good at sharing over the past couple of months, and both like to give things to each other, which is great. They also had a ball playing on the spare bed upstairs, throwing themselves around and giggling up a storm.

Christmas tree

We finally got our Christmas tree up this morning. We had intended to get it last weekend, but what with all the snow we were digging out from we just didn't manage. (I'll post a picture of that soon, we've been *buried* this year - three snowstorms already!) Finally got the tree on Wednesday, but didn't manage to actually get it into the stand and up until today.

Mark was outside chopping up the ice that has been building up on the stairs so I was trying to avoid having Ant see the tree without him, but when we went to get Ant's milk after his nap, he caught a glimpse of the tree in the living room.

His first reaction was to laugh - I guess it is surprising to see a tree in the living room all of a sudden!

The he exclaimed "towah!" (tower). I replied, "actually, it's a Christmas tree", to which he responded "ho ho ho". We've been telling him that Santa Claus says 'ho ho ho', I guess he associates that with Christmas.

Since then, every time he walks into the living room, he says "teeeeee!" (tree).

On a completely different note, I'd like to request that everyone post a family picture from Christmas day!

Xmas Decorations 2007

Jessica and Sarah making decorations for the tree. Requirements - coloured paper, macaroni (preferrably uncooked although S tried with a piece from her macaroni and cheese supper!), ribbon. Tools - Scissors and threading needle.

Much fun had by all, including Granny and Grandpa.

test post

The Rubidge girls are here today.

Christmas in Africa

Amy is leaving today to spend Christmas with her other granny in Johannesburg, so we all had a farewell party in Tokai forest yesterday. Glenda made a Christmas tree:

While the boys braaied:

That's Lloyd on the left, Chris's friend Gopal, Chris with Amy and Chris's friend Dominic.

Sarah and Amy ran around a lot and Pam tried not very hard to chase them:

And finally, you know it's been a good picnic when your feet look like this:

News from the Kapankis Family (also via Nic)

I guess Kate's email about their new baby may not have made it out to everyone, so here it is:

"It's a BOY!!!

Christopher Antony Kapanakis was born at 1:31am on 11/9/2007 [November 9] weighing in at 9lbs, 4oz [4195g], 22 Inches [56cm]. Mom and baby are both doing very well. Dad is just thrilled, and Sami will be meeting her brother in a couple of hours:-)"

Honestly, none of us except Billy thought that this new baby was a boy. I think we were all taken by surprise!

Here are a few early pics. Hopefully Kate will post some more soon!

Christopher is named after both of his grandfathers - Billy's dad passed away when Billy was in high school, and of course Antony comes from our Dad's name - just spelled differently because otherwise there is no way Americans would pronounce it properly!

Also, he's already almost 12 pounds [5400g] - this kid is a whopper!!!

News from the Tyacks (via Nic)

Mandy emailed me in response to the album of Ant's pics I just sent out, so I thought I'd offer what she said as her first contribution:

"Lauren, Andrew, and Tich did an advanced scuba diving course this weekend. They had to do two dives in the river, one in the dark, which sounded very scary to me!! Today they went to Rottnest for the day and did two dives, which was apparently beautiful. They did not go onto the island at all, just off the boat stuff. I had a very domesticated day at home which was nice. Made Granny's recipe Christmas cake.

Andrew and his girlfriend Lisa are going to Thailand tomorrow for 12 days on holidays.

Lauren starts her internship at Fremantle hospital on the 17th Dec, so she is making the most of the break until then. "

I have to say I didn't even know Lauren was going into the medical field!!!

More bragging!

Since we're showing off our kids, I had to post this video - Ant is talking amazingly well for a fifteen month old, he has well over two hundred words, and is putting together two-word phrases regularly! In this video we're going over some of our animal noises and body parts. He loses interest at the body parts, but at that point I turned the camera LCD screen around so he could see it - that's when he says "BAYBEEE". He doesn't quite get that it's him yet - although at Mom's house on Saturday he looked at a picture of himself and said "Antee" or something like that which is how he says his own name.



He also says "hone" and "hinging" during the video - 'phone ringing'. He substitutes H for a lot of beginning letters in words; S, F, R and L so far. Interestingly, Sami also subsituted H for S, (although she's outgrown it now), so her name is "Hami". Did anyone else have unusual letter substitutions?

I don't know if everyone got my email with Ant's fifteen month pictures - if not, here's the link

My Family by Jessica

The end-of-year school reports come in envelopes decorated by the kids. This is Jessica's version of her family:

Sarah's carrying balloons because it's her birthday. And note the grey hair on mom!

A taste of what's possible

And an excuse to show off my children! Jessica was a mouse in the school nativity play last week:

And the next day Sarah turned three:

She's wearing the "twirly whirly dress". It started out with two layers of tulle but the top one has had to be removed because of extreme raggedness and the bottom one will follow soon. This dress is quite frequently taken out of the laundry basket because nothing else will do! Did somebody say second children tend to be strong-willed?

Welcome

Hi all -- Sykes-a-delics won the name contest so here we are! If anybody wants a tutorial in how to do this stuff just leave a comment. I'm going to figure out how to add everybody as contributors now.

Update: Okay, you should all receive invitation emails shortly. There may be a registration process for some of you, but once registered you will be able to write entries here. Good luck! I'm looking forward to it.