Rain at last!

This spring has been extremely dry.  Every now and then our hopes would flare up, only to fizzle out within minutes:

A few times we had sweltering hot afternoons with very pregnant dark skies…

and rain that started promisingly, but soon stopped after a thunderclap.  Every time before the pavements even got wet! 

We heard about Johannesburg and Pretoria getting lovely rains, but here on the farm this was all we got!

On Sunday we had a special gathering to pray for rain and when we woke up in the middle of the last night, we could hear soft rain.

This morning the farm roads were wet!  No really muddy wet, but 7.5 mm wet!  Praise the Lord! 

Jurielle and Abia’s birthday party.

My sister Lalie’s granddaughters differ 13 months, so they had a combined 1st and 2nd party.  It was great fun!

Oupa with the two birthday girls: Abia and Urielle

 

Thanks for a great party, Nelia and Jopie! 

The A.B.C. game and counting

I have started to train for the Midmar mile. For me, training boils down to swimming one mile per week. (When I asked another swimmer in the dressing room whether she swam often, she replied that she swam 120 minutes every day, because she swam all the open air miles! Every day…!! One hundred and twenty minutes?! No wonder my time for swimming 1 mile is at least minutes slower than hers!)

Anyway, so far this “season” I’ve only trained in the gym swimming pool. As it is only 20 m long, I have to swim 80 lengths. That means I have to COUNT the lengths. The two previous years I meditated on Bible passages in a specific order to help me to count and to while the time away. (Ps 1, 2, 3 etc or Matt 1, Mark 2, Luke 3 etc.)
This year I decided to count 4 sets of 20 lengths and to count with the…. alphabet. During the first 20 lengths I meditate on whatever comes to mind – I believe that the Holy Spirit guides me here:

A : arbeidsaam wees (work diligently), aandag gee (pay attention).
B: bely, (confess), bid (pray) beplan (plan)
C: Be calm, creative, cool
D: doelgerig (goal orientated), dadelik (immediately, i.e. do not procrastinate…) dissipline
E: eerlik (honest)
F: fluks (diligent)
G: Gees vervuld, geduldig, goed,  (filled with Holy Spirit, patience, goodness)
H: hulpvaardig (willing to help)
And so on and so on until I get to the letter T. (I substitute Q for V as there are many more things to meditate on that start with v than with q)

Mostly God tells me to work smarter and to check my temper and to be more helpful.  Invariably when I get to N, I am reminded to be "netjies" (neat) and "natuurlik" (natural) - a bit of a contradiction here or is God telling me that to be neat should be part of my nature?

For the 2nd set of 20 lengths, I pray for family and friends and often people I do not even know e.g. C: the miners in Chile. (My blog friends are also included in my prayer list.) I know lots of special people whose name starts with A: Alta H, Alta M, Alet, Annemarie, Anne F, Anne J etc. etc.
I only know two people and one organisation whose name starts with an I so can pray a little longer for them.  When I come to V (in place of Q)  I pray for an old school acquaintance.  I wonder what has become of her?

For the third set of 20 lengths, I “sing” hymns and other gospel songs:

A: Aan U of God my dankgesange, U wil ek in my aandlied prys
B: Besing die lof van Jesus saam.
C. Christ the Lord is risen today
D. Danklied (Thank you) and so forth.

The first time I tried to “sing” according to the alphabet, there were letters that I could not match to a song. When I got home, I fetched the new song book of our church. I now have more than one song for each letter. (There are no Afrikaans gospel songs that start with F, but there is "Father we adore you..." and my favourite "Our Father who art in heaven". in English.)

I do not know the songs well enough to sing them off by heart, so I checked the words. So sad, that the words of so many hymns that I have known more or less, have changed . What do I do now? Do I check in the old books and use the older, better known words, or do I learn the new words? I am still in the process of looking up songs and have found real gems.

I loved the A.B.C. game when I was little when we all tried to come up with a boy’s name/ a vegetable/ a car/ a flower etc. that started with a specific alphabet letter. I now enjoy this mind game even more than before!  This time because it fills my mind in a positve, healthy way. 

Any suggestions for prayer, meditation or hymns and gospel songs?

Two nephews and a niece came for a visit

Recently the H’s of Natal came to visit.  The elder son, Evan, had been chosen to participate in an athletics competition in Pretoria, so it was a good occasion for them to visit the farm again and for the children to …..ride horse! 

My “good” camera had gone missing – can you believe it!  Knowing that the “old” one often let me

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down, my heart was not in taking pictures, but there were a few moments too good to miss!  I am just so sorry that I did not get one of Hananiël!  Sorry, Han!  But come again in December and I’ll make doubly sure I get you in a  picture!

Here are a few snaps of the weekend:

Almarie getting to know Martelize and Franco in the sea-sand container.

Thelwyn and Janita looking on.

 

“

Martelize called “Heaven, Heaven…!” “(Evan, Evan).  He was her hero!

Franco also wanted his feet covered with sand!

Evan pushed the two little girls on the swing  while…

the moms chatted on the stoep around the remainders of the “Braaidag” lunch.  If you wonder about the green and gold – it was Heritage Day!  Hendrik thought it was for Brazil.  Hoe kon jy dit nou vir een oomblik dink!  If you wonder about the stacked chairs: they make wonderful high chairs for the little ones.

Meantime the men folk chatted inside… Note Gert’s shirt!

And the two girls went on swinging!

End of an Era

As I have said before,  my own children loved swimming and swam A LOT when they were little.  We did not have a swimming pool, and most of the swimming happened in the farm’s “swimming pool”, i.e. a pool without a pump or filter.  Sadly I have very few photos of the many happy hours of swimming that happened there:

Thelwyn, about 18 months, in the background with wings.  Jansie in the foreground.  When Jansie was a toddler, she was a bit afraid of the water, but Lalie and I got her to “swim” between the two of us, making the distance longer very gradually.  We did the same with many other little ones.  Those were the days.

Thelwyn floating on her back – 19 months old.  In those days it was the “in” thing to drown proof your child. 

Anyway, all that swimming and drown-proofing happened a very long time ago…  In the meantime the pool got into serious disrepair: the walls and the floor of the pool kept on cracking and because the floor had a dip in the middle , it was a MAJOR job to clean the pool! (Water cannot drain upwards – it has to swept out, leaves, mud and all!)  After Ma had bought the property next door with its proper and practical pool (it hasn’t got a deep end), the children always went there to swim.  (The property now belongs to the F’s, so the children can still go there to swim.)

A swimming pool in disuse is an eyesore:

View from my kitchen.

Closer view of same swimming pool.

So we decided to close it up and turn it into a road:

The logs were removed and the last thin branches were burnt.  (No-one is allowed to burn anything in the dry season and I was worried that the smoke would get anxious neighbours complaining!)

Early in the morning before the front end loader was due, Jan and Hendrik removed some railway sleepers nearby.

Then the big push began!

 

  

After little more than an hour, there was nothing left to be seen of the pool. 

But… I got rocks for my rockless garden!  They surfaced as the walls crashed and the strong machine could easily dump them for me close to our stoep: a farm “climbing frame” for the little ones.  I love rocks – it would have been a shame to bury them, wouldn’t it?

 

Two  trees by the pool were pushed over too – very sad, but there was no other way!

 

Die plek lyk soos ‘n slagveld!  Not only were the two trees close to the swimming pool, pushed over, but the big machine also pushed over some other dead ones, saving us a lot of manual labour!  But right now all these dead and uprooted trees look awful!

In the afternoon the big machine returned to level seven loads of soil.  (Mmmm, this is starting to cost a lot…)

 

Eric lent a hand in filling the big hole by the outlet of the pool:

 

The vista has been opened up!  Come rain!  (How Ma would have loved seeing her garden so beautifully opened up!)

Now all that’s needed are some new trees… to hide the Escom tower that was not so  “in your face” before! (One of the uprooted bushes hid it before!)

Thank you God for this beautiful place that we may call home!

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Buffelspoort and a first swim!

Gert and Dorette had to attend a wedding in Rustenburg recently and they asked us to babysit.  (The children had been invited, but they thought it wiser not to take them along – clever parents.)  So off we went for a weekend at Buffelspoort. 

We arrived late Friday afternoon.  The L’s had already settled in and were busy getting the children ready for supper and for bed.

On Saturday morning we had our first swim.  It was a bit chilly, so we opted for the indoor pool.  The water was a bit hot, as you can tell by the flushed faces, but both children (and all the adults of course) enjoyed it immensely.

This was Janita’s first swim ever.  

Look at my pretty Kitty costume – a bit big still, but it was the smallest one the shop had! 

Little babies relax so easily in the water, that it is quite simple to get them to float on their backs.  Thelwyn was “drown proofed” when she was 18 months old and that’s where I learned the technique – although I certainly did not go about it in the rather traumatic way poor Thelwyn was taught! 

This is a picture of me and Dorette when she was 5 months old.  (We were quite the talk at the resort then, with both children happily floating on their backs beside me.)  We nearly got Janita to float like this as well, but time was a bit short!

Dorette and Gert in their finery, off to the wedding of a close friend.

Franco wasn’t too happy to see them go, but Oom Hendrik took him for a walk and like any activity with Oom Hendrik, that was great fun!

Meantime, Oupa Jan fed Janita carrots.  She is a good eater!  She is already wearing a plastic bib – loves playing with it too!

 

In the afternoon Franco and I fed some ants outside the rondavel.  Conclusion: they prefer chips to sugar water – and the birds prefer ants with chips too.  Many different birds swooped down to rob the ants of their chips!  Interesting afternoon, while Oupa watched Curry Cup.

Afterwards we took the children for another swim before bath and supper.  Again only squeals of delight!  (Franco was not very happy when Oom Hendrik went down the super tube, so Ouma decided to postpone going down the super tube herself… did go the next day, though, and it was great fun!)

After supper, I first put a seemingly wide awake Franco in his “bed” (mattress on the floor).  We read a Bible story and said good-night and we never heard a sound from him again till the next morning!  Janita was fed, had a bottle and also still seemed wide awake!  I put her in her cot, nonetheless, and like Franco, she fell asleep very soon – no fuss, no bother. no tears.  Looking after them was as easy as pie! 

Martelize has a new costume, and I can’t wait to see her in the water!  I think the best place to start is a heated pool, but when to go?