Christmas pictures (J1)

We took some great pictures of our Christmas and holidays, which I would like to share:

This one is of J2 and J3, just before we were ready to leave Kasane and start our holidays.

When we got home, our guest AL was already there, J3 is saying hello here, in her favorite Mickey Mouse outfit.

J3's first Christmas, unwrapping presents, but some help was still needed.....

The Christmas tree with loads of presents, the night before we were unwrapping all these presents.

Julia with her Christmas bib, a present from her grandparents.

J2 taking the stockings down, this was the American Christmas experience for our Swedish friends and their kids.

It was about 40 degrees on Christmas day, so some welcome refreshment in our swimming pool.

Finally the turkey was ready, and Christmas dinner was served. J2 did a superb job planning this delicious dinner.

The cook was enjoying the dinner herself as well.

We will be off camping for the next few days, and will put some pictures on the blog when we get back.

J1

happy holidays (J1)

It is Christmas holidays, the office is closed for 2 weeks, and we are trying to relax and recover from a crazy last few months, or a crazy year really. We have become parents, have been busy with work, the animal shelter, our vegetable garden, studies and other things I can not even remember anymore.

It is a shame to be here and not travelling somewhere at an exciting location, but we are still having a baby without a passport, which makes travelling across borders pretty difficult. The latest is that the passport is printed, and being couriered to Botswana, so if we are lucky we should have it just before new year. This would really make our best Christmas present ever.

So what has been happening the past few weeks? I can be pretty short about this actually, work and studies for J2, and work and work for me, long days and weekends, not really exciting. We took on a huge project during October on a really tight deadline, making things quite difficult at times. We are managing though, and everything is working out, the good thing is that we got to travel to Kasane last week, and spend some time on the Zambezi river, which was nice. But is was still work of course. Julia came on this trip as well, and we stopped at Nata Lodge on the way back, as a start of our holiday, which was probably the nicest. The lodge has been rebuilt after a big fire, and is a really nice place.
The Kasane / Chobe area is really special though, even on a work trip we saw hundreds of elephant, hippos, giraffe, hyenas, buffalo and all sorts of antelope. The first game viewing for J3, we had these warthogs right outside our hotel room.

So the plan for this holiday is to eat good food, drink nice wine, go on a short camping trip to break in the old camping trailer we bought and to introduce J3 to her first camping experience. We have booked at the Stevensford game reserve, which is only about 300km from here. I am also planning to do some work on the Harley Davidson bike we bought in November, we picked it up at an insurance auction, it has some small crash damage which I should be able to fix up. I can not wait to get on the road.

I will post some more holiday pictures during the coming week. We wish everyone a very happy and healthy Christmas and new year.

J1

passports and vegetables (J1)

What has been happening in Botswana in the last few weeks? Things have of course been busy as ever, J2 has been working day and night to meet her deadlines for her course, on top of her work and ‘mommy’ commitments.

We started some new projects, and for a large new project I had to travel to Lusaka (Zambia) for 3 days / 2 nights. It was very sad to leave J2 and J3 behind, not something we normally do or want to do. I did not even get to see any of Lusaka, because we were working until midnight during the days there to get everything finished. But I won’t bore anyone with more of the work stuff.

The puppies enjoying J3's new blanket....

J3 is doing really well, she is now eating rice cereal, mixed grain cereal, banana, apple, gem squash, carrot, beans, peas, butternut and avocado. Of course not all at the same time, and supplemented with loads of baby formula, but she really likes the ‘big girl foods’ What she likes even more is snacking from what mommy and daddy eat, her favorites so far have been mustard, peanut butter and yoghurt. We have started to try to teach her some sign language, she is not really getting it yet, but we will keep you updated on this.

We had an overcast and cold day this weekend, which gave J the chance to try out some of these winter clothes

And Jock needed to check / approve them of course....

The vegetable garden has been doing quite well, the tomatoes and beets are growing really well, and we are getting some nice spinach as well. J2 has already made a batch of pesto from all the basil we have. There is also wild cucumber all over the place, not sure what we can do with that, but I am sure we can come up with some recipes.

Our veggies 'busy growing'

More veggies....

What else is happening? There was a farmers market this weekend, as well as a bowls day for the animal shelter. Both were visited by myself and J3 only, as poor J2 had to stay back working on her study assignments. The HHH running club has changed to Monday night runs for the summer period, because Sunday morning was getting too hot. We set the run which was held yesterday, and had a nice route through the bush behind our office park.

Other then that, we are just worried about getting this little baby a nationality. The Netherlands and USA can not give her a passport until she has been with us for 2 or 3 years, and Namibia does not have to give her a passport, when adopted out to non-nationals. Basically, she is falling ‘between the cracks’ of the legislation of the countries involved, and somehow we need to get exemption from one of the countries, so she can have a nationality. In the meantime we can not make any plans for traveling, not even to South Africa. It is starting to look like we may have to spend Christmas in Botswana as well, who knows how long this is going to take?

The swimmingpool is in perfect condition for summer.

Poor Reilly sometimes gets forgotten, because she is such a good pupper...

One more picture?

J1

Picture Blog (J1)

So we are parents, and business owners, and animal shelter committee members, and hashers (running club), and.....busy busy busy. Some pictures of our last few weeks (warning: the baby content is pretty high)

Julia and her best friend Billy sharing the puppy bed, Billy does not really like the sharing.

Julia started eating 'solid foods', she has rice cereal for breakfast, and either carrots, peas, avocado or gem squash for dinner.

And last week she managed to stand up against the couch all by herself.

Jock loves to be around her all the time, he will just lay right in front of her, and either be cuddled or petted.

Jock has really turned out to be a very good dog, and he is a beautiful boerboel too.

So we decided we want to grow some of our own vegetables, but the problem is that we live on a mountain, meaning the garden is mostly rock. The solution was to construct some raised planting beds, and have a load of topsoil delivered (read: delivered to the driveway, and spend 2 days with a wheelbarrow bringing it down the steps into the garden)

Julia was helping her daddy with constructing the new vegetable beds, the ride in the wheelbarrow was loads of fun.

One of them up, and Julia supervising the works in the back...

This was the biggest job, getting them filled with soil, J2 started planting as soon as the first one was filled up.

From one day to the other we just had all this beautiful 'yellow snow' this tree just changed within one day.
We went to the 1 year birthday party for our little friend Hilma today, Julia's first little friend.

Here is Julia with the birthday girl, I am sure they are gossiping about the other people at the party.

Julia and her mommy (while everyone else is very excited because the birthday cake came out)

Last night there was a big evening, called 'the Greek night out', we went with a few friends, and it was a blast, complete with Greek music, belly dancers, delicious Greek food and.....BABYSITTERS.

oh and of course, what would a Greek night be without throwing plates, opa!!!

This is me and Julia at the Greek night, just before she is going the the babysitters.

Julia received a very nice gift, a beautiful quilt from her auntie S from JC. It has nice and bright colours and African animals.

I am sure she will have loads of fun with this blanket during the summer.

So there are some pictures to update everyone on what has been happening with us for the last few weeks. We are of course looking forward to oma Anneke coming over to say hello to her granddaughter in the next months.

In the meantime, I will try and put a few pictures on here more regularly. Our internet connection has been horrible at home for the past weeks, but they have re-aligned our receiver, and promised much faster internet. Lets hope they are right.

J1

Update from Botswana (J1)

When J2 wrote the last posting we were still in Namibia, so I guess there is some catching up to do.....

After nearly 4 weeks in Windhoek Namibia, we made it back to Botswana during the second week of August. We really enjoyed Namibia, the restaurants and shops were great, our apartment could not have been better, and we even managed a short weekend away to the beach in Swakupmund. But, after 4 weeks we both really wanted to go home, and this paperwork for Julia was taking a long time. We managed to get temporary documents for her to cross the border into Botswana, and wait further on this side, so finally got to take her home.

Since then things have been quite hectic, and not because of Julia. She has been a really good girl, sleeping through the nights, coming to the office, meeting new people. The busy stuff was more related to shelter activities, running club, and mostly work. During the whole time in Namibia the guys in the office took perfect care of things, and there were not any big deadlines and new projects to start. As soon as we came back this all changed, deadlines to complete, a few new projects starting at ones, one of the guys on leave for 2 weeks to get married, and maybe we took on a little too much work. It is still very busy, but I guess we should not complain, and be very happy this did not happen while we were in Namibia. We did continue to work while we were there, writing some reports etc, but nothing urgent which gave us a great chance to spend time with Julia.

We are taking turns working from home now, which is quite nice. Julia has already turned 5 months last week, and she is very busy growing. Summer has come in very quickly, and temperatures get up to 35 degrees C during the day already. Last night we even had our first rain of the season, very nice and early.

Our internet connection is very slow at the moment, so I won't even try to load up any pictures with this post. Hopefully some time soon.

J1

Big things happening... (J2)

Most of our family and friends are already aware that we have recently become the parents of a beautiful 3 month old baby girl... so naturally there is the obligatory photo-sharing process to go through now!

So, without further adieu, here is Julia...

She is a great little girl, and 100% healthy and happy. Her birthday is 3 April 2009, and the official adoption paperwork was finalized on Monday 21 July. She comes from Windhoek, Namibia and spent her first 3 months of life in a public hospital after she had been found abandoned in a river bed outside of town in her first 24 hours on earth. We are currently staying in Namibia for a few weeks to get her birth certificate and passport sorted out, and will be headed back to BW with the little one as soon as it's all done.

In the meantime we are still working away (thanks to the miracle of email and cell phone roaming) and keeping up with things rather nicely. Even Billy came along with us and is enjoying all his special attention away from the other 2 dogs.

Apologies in advance to those who didn't hear it from the horse's mouth yet, or who are currently suffering coronary heart failure after reading the above, but it all happened very fast and during the adoption process they tell you not to spread the word too far and wide, lest something unexpected happen and things don't work out or take a super long time to become a reality. Often the parents can start to feel pressure from other people asking for updates and "is there any news yet?" , etc etc, so that's why we had to keep a bit of a lid on it since March, when we started the process.

But now it seems everything has worked out great and we look forward to introducing her to all our family and friends as soon as possible!

Puppies (J1)

We have some really nice pictures of Billy and our new boerbull named Jock. Unfortunately, the two of them do not get along very well.

Jock certainly likes to sleep a lot, he can play really hard for 5 minutes, but then he is finished. We took him for a 5km run last week, and I was very surprised he actually made it.

He is slightly bigger then our old boerbull Sech, and his character is a lot different. We think he is about 2 and a half years old, and we adopted him from the kennels. He was a typical abuse case, and was scared of everything at first. Things have changed though, he has gained confidence, and is quite the watchdog / guard dog now.

Billy is coming with us to the office most days now. He is looking after the canine side of our business. You can see him at the picture above at his workstation.

This picture was just after one of his disputes with Jock, unfortunately he ended up wounded (again)

Billy is really getting older, this is how he used to be 24 hours a day, ears straight up to make sure he knew what was happening. He sleeps a little more these days.

And Billy does not like the cold, when we have a fire in the fireplace he lays right in front of it, and a distance I could not last longer the 1 minute. Sometimes I worry he might melt away. We have recently bought him a little jacket.

The vet thinks he may have arthritis, making him a little stiff, and really appreciate the heat. Hopefully the jacket helps.

No pictures of Reilly this time, I guess she has not done anything special, apart from chasing monkeys on the mountain from time to time.

J1