Cycling trip no 2

Good Morning everyone,

At last I have caught up with the blogging.

We woke up yesterday to find that it was an absolutely stunning day! the sun was shining and the birds were singing! Hehehehe.....

We leaped out of bed and decided that this was the ideal opportunity to go and do some more biking. In no time at all we had everything loaded and we were on our way.

This time around we went to Dinton Pastures, with its massive lakes and loads of biking paths. The one good thing about Dinton Pastures is that there aren't too many steep hills - its pretty flat out there.

The one drawback was that it had rained a lot the past few days and there a few massive puddles that we had to navigate through. One person in our group didn't care much for the puddles.... Waldo of course. He really enjoyed going through them as fast as possible. I guess i don't have to tell you what he looked like at the end of it all.

I ended up stopping every so often to take a photo and on one occasion I stopped, let Kayla off and went to take a photo. When I got back to the bike - Kayla came walking back and not seeing the mud walked straight into a muddy patch, slipped and fell down. Poor muddy child. Unfortunately she was covered in it that we had to go back home. We will continue our ride at Dinton Pastures another day.

Wanda's Birthday - 6th January 2008

It's Sunday morning - My dear wife's birthday, and she has caught up to me now as we are the same age now, well at least for another 10 months at which stage I will be the "older" one in the house.

I looked out the window, and notice that the sun was shining and that looked like it was going to be a lovely day. A perfect day in fact for my lovely wife. Lying in bed we contemplated as to what we would do for her birthday, and we decided that we could not waste a day like this in doors. We decided to go biking, but not around the neighbourhood, but rather at the Look Out which has biking trails. As we have not done this before, we have not invested in a bike carrier yet and we ad to load the bikes - yes all 4 of them into my car. Wanda took Kayla in her car and Waldo joined me in the bike transport.

Arriving at the Look Out it seemed a lot of people had the same idea as us, the place was buzzing. We unloaded the bikes, hitched Kayla's bike to mine (as madam cannot do this on her own yet) and off we went on our first ever bike hike! Boy was it fun - riding through the woods in the fresh air. Waldo especially enjoyed freewheeling down the steep hills. We did about 4 miles and it felt great. I wish I could say the same for our bums!!!

We all agreed that this turned out to be an excellent day which was complimented by a lovely dinner.

I had also bake a cake - and boy was it a cake of note - due to a comedy of errors I ended up baking 2 cakes and putting all the bits together to make one cake. It ended up weighing almost 2KG!! I'll have to work a bit on my baking skills I think.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WANDA !!

2nd January 2008

Well, I have been really falling behind with the blogging but I will try and catch up.

We had booked tickets to go and visit the Tutankhamen exhibition some time ago and at last the day arrived for the Groblerfamily to ravel into London. As we were only due to enter the exhibit around 2:30 we decided that it would be worth our while to visit another attraction in the morning.

The lucky attraction....... The Tower of London. Fortunately Wanda had told me to book the tickets online, because as we approached the Tower of London we were met by a SEA of people - hundreds of them!!! But with great thanks to my wife we walked over to the Group Bookings window and just like VIP's got our pre-booked tickets.

I had never been to the Tower of London and was really impressed with all the different towers and what it must have been like to be brought into the traitors gate and then tortured in the dungeon.

After finishing the Tower of London we thought it a good idea to get a bite to eat before going to see the great Egyptian god. We entered a fast food establishment that said it had seating for 220 people and we thought, with that amount of potential customers they should be running the kitchen like a well oiled machine. Boy were we wrong, the oil had dried up in his kitchen , they had 2 staff and this included the guy running the cash till. After standing in the queue for ever, we realised we had to get to the tube if we still wanted to make our entry time at the exhibit.

The Tutankhamen exhibit is at the O2, another first for us. What a huge structure. So many shops and restaurants. Of course Waldo noticed that there was a Spur in the O2, and boy was he excited.

The exhibition was really interesting, being able to see a lot of the artifacts that were discovered in the tomb. All the gold and jewels and they artwork on the statues were amazing.

Towards the end of the exhibition all our stomachs started grumbling and we finished off a great day out with a lovely piece of steak at...... wait for it.......... SPUR.

Bath .. .. 28 December 2007

As we had not done a road trip in a while we decided that we would go to the city of Bath to see what it has to offer. Wanda had visited the Roman Baths before on her visit to the UK a couple of years ago and she said it was definitely one of the well worth seeing places to visit. And boy was she right, the Roman Baths are awesome... Unfortunately the weather didn't play along but we are getting used to that now.

After arriving in Bath our first stop was naturally at the Roman Baths. What a sight, and so rich with history. Wanda and i had been watching the second season of the Series ROME and we could just imagine the Romans walking around these baths. Waldo had an opportunity to try out his new camera too and he took some really nice photos.

When we finished the Baths we went over to the Cathedral, and this was just as spectacular. While we were walking down the centre isle Wanda commented on what it must feel like to be a bride walking down that isle on her wedding day. The stained glass is just breathtaking and I don't think the photos I took does it any justice.

As the weather was really getting bad our last stop was the park down at the river to take a picture of the famous Pulteney Bridge.

A now very wet Grobler family, was just to glad to get back the car and make their way home!

Let's go back a couple of weeks...

CHRISTMAS 2007

Another year has rolled by and Christmas arrived in the Grobler home. The kids were up really early and we had to convince them to wait just a little while before storming downstairs to see what Santa had left them. This was mainly to the benefit of Wanda and myself as we had been up late the night before and were pretty exhausted.

Eventually nothing could keep them upstairs and we all stormed downstairs to see what had been "delivered".

Boy, were the kids excited. Waldo had asked for a camera, to join dad in the role of family paparazzi and Kayla wanted a watch and a "lifelike" sleeping pet. These pets look just like real stuffed animals and we decided that we were not going to start making horror movies in our house, as I could just imagine this stuffed creature running around the house at night. We decided to get her a little toy cat that is pretty lifelike. Even for a gadget junkie like myself this cat is too much. It reacts to sound as well as to touch. stroke its chest or its back and it will purr and meow, but pull its tail and you will get a hiss. When left alone it lies down and goes to sleep....

Wanda got some crafting goodies , pajamas, slippers and nice chocolates and dad got a tripod for the new camera, along with a nice scarf and Monopoly, again the Gadget version as there is no paper money but it works with credit cards.

We spent the rest of the day enjoying lunch and just relaxing at home. All in all a very Merry Christmas.

Happy New Year and all that stuff........

HAPPY 2008

Well its been a while since I have been here to update my blog.

Here we are in 2008 and I hope all of you had a great Christmas and may all your dreams come true in 2008.

I am going to try and bring you up to speed with a couple of happenings and outings that we have had around Christms and hopefully this will get me right up to date to continue with the blog for the new year.

Thanks again for visiting the blog and I hope you enjoy the photos and the stories.

Px