Christmas in a Hot Climate

I grew up with hot Christmases and as a result that was my "normal". I never thought twice about the irony of the snowflakes and snowmen decorating the windows, or a seriously overdressed (and obviously sweltering) Father Christmas.
8 years in the UK, however, gave me a whole new perspective. There, although we never managed a white one, Christmas was at least cold enough that snow was a feasible possibility. In addition, due to short days, lights were actually visible for long enough to make putting them up worth the effort. Santa actually needed his beard, fuzzy hat, boots and fur. Evergreen trees were necessary because they were the only ones with leaves. In fact, real holly was readily available - no need for plastic imitations. Last, but not least,  we actually had a fireplace with a chimney over which to hang the stockings. (We actually have one in our new house too, but it's not generally in action at this time of year).
On our return to South Africa I found myself feeling somewhat rebellious when it came to Christmas. I wanted our celebrations to reflect our context, rather than meaningless (to us) traditions and so began the evolution of alternative practices.

Our 6th New-South-African Christmas looked like this:
Prequel
26 November: A trip was made to the nursery to buy an indigenous Christmas tree. (We buy a tree that we can plant out into the garden after Christmas). This year's was a Kiggelaria africana (Wild Peach). We had one at the old house, and the kids were annually fascinated by the swarms of caterpillars, resulting butterflies and birds that it attracted. I decided we needed one here, too!
Instead of using traditional Christmas decorations, this year we decided to try a Jesse tree instead. The kids took turns to design and make each day's ornaments. By day 7 it looked like this:

The Tree (temporarily out in the courtyard for a bit of sun)

On the 28th the Christmas factory opened and the Tordiffe elves got to work making Christmas cards for our far-away friends.  Factory labour continued right through until Christmas day.

The finished cards

We tend to try and hand-make gifts as much as possible (a bit of the old "reduce, re-use, recycle" theme, with some frugality to counteract the extreme consumerism prevalent everywhere else). It always serves as a lovely excuse for getting creative.

Wire baskets filled with chocolates, candles and bath goodies for the sisters- and Mom-in-law.  Tins of lebkuchen, tomato chutney, brandy truffles and oat-and-herb biscuits for the blokes

Scrapped photos of the ZooBabies for the Grandparents. This is  SirBiggs's  under construction...

...and MrTepps's. I neglected to take pictures of the finished products (and those of the girls) but will exchange these for some as soon as I can get into ZooGranny's house to take them. ZooDaddy built bee-yoo-tiful frames for them!

My gift to ZooDaddy: His favorite poem merged with  one of my photo and 2 of his and then printed onto  canvases 45 X 90 cm (1.5 x 3'). This is panel 1...

Panel 2...

...and Panel 3

1 December is always the official "decorate the house" day. The kids got busy putting up their advent calendars, the wreath for the front door and various ornaments. They also insisted on putting up the artificial fir with all the snowman-snowflake-reindeer ornaments (which I insisted be tucked away largely out of sight in the Notschool room).

The Big Day
Finally Christmas day dawned as the only sunny day in a very rainy patch (I think SirBiggs's fervent prayers must have been heard). Christmas stockings (filled overnight) were examined and then it was time to leave home. ZooDaddy was on zoo-duty, and I was doing the music for the Christmas service, so the kids got to decide where to go - LadyLol came with me, the rest went to the zoo.
We reconvened at home and began preparations for Christmas lunch and visitors. This year we were to be joined by ZooGranny and ZooGrandpa, the Pretoria Cousins and a friend from church.
The plan was for a braai on the patio next to the pool, with all contributing various dishes. While some of us got salads ready in the kitchen, others got busy laying tables and starting the fire. The kids had the job of moving the tree and presents out onto the patio, as well as setting out the picnic blanket on the lawn. This was interspersed with much cavorting in the pool.

Table laid, picnic blanket (and kids and dog) on lawn...

Gifts and tree in the ideal position for attack

Lunch was a marvelous affair, as usual, but interrupted by frequent queries as to how long the "grown-ups" were going to take.

The fare

The feast

The fun

The reason for this was that gift-opening was to take place between main course and dessert. This activity did occur in due course, much to the delight of the kids, naturally.

ZooMomma was elected by the kids as official gift distributor.  Official uniform was "the hat"

The rest of the afternoon was spent languishing in or near the pool, lingering over coffee and dessert (yum), playing with new gifts and watching an absolutely gorgeous film that the grandparents had brought along.
All in all there was complete consesus that it had been a wonderful day.

A Week in the Life of SirBiggs's Bed

After tearing my hair out for a long period at the state of confusion in which I found SirBiggs's bed on a daily basis (despite his insistence that he had made it) I was pulled aside by LadyLol for an explanation. It turns out that SirBiggs makes his bed every day according to a "theme". If only I'd known!
To celebrate my new-found knowledge I determine to keep a photographic record of just one week in the life of his bed. Here are the results:
Day 1: 29 October 2011
Theme: The Band

Gorilla (vocals), Lion (drums), Ted (guitar) and Rabbit (guitar) are the members of the band

The Audience are arranged on MrTepps's bed

The big picture

Day 2: 30 October 2011
Theme: Dog-piling Big-Big. Explanation: Big-Big is the large Panda; Dog-piling is when everyone dives onto some poor victim and lies on them.

Big-Big at the bottom of the pile

Day 3: 31 October 2011
Theme: The (orange) Black-hole

The photo does not show clearly how Blue-Teddy had already had his head sucked into the evil vortex. The rest spiral round as the gravity begins to take effect.

Day 4: 1 November 2011

Theme: The Big Fight

Everyone is fighting someone else

Day 5: 2 November 2011
Theme: Big-Big attempts to be Invisible

No-one is taking the slightest bit of notice of Big-Big. Is it because they can't see him or because they just don't care?

Big-Big's invisibility cloak slips

 
Day 6: 3 November 2011
Theme: The Diamond Hunt

Everyone fights over the diamond that Ted has (unbeknownst to them) already walked away with

Day 7: 4 November 2011
Theme: The Big Wave

The wave retreats leaving destruction in its wake

Seal lies recovering on the beach. Fortunately all survived.

Unofficial Sabbaths

A while back in our family's developmental history we went through a period where we were pretty religious about "Sabbathing" on Sundays. Not that we performed all the traditional Sabbath rituals, but we set the day aside for rest, family-only time, space for reflection and enjoyment. The kids were still at school and so we were not getting much quality time with them in the week, and ZooDaddy and I were feeling pretty burnt out. Those Sundays were literally life-saving.

As the family has evolved, though, the focus has shifted. The kids have grown up and their social needs are increasing. Most Sundays they go off with friends after church, or we gain extra kids. ZooDaddy and I have become less strict about catching up on work on Sundays because we're learning to live restfully during the week, and so feel less burnt out.

This Sunday, however, for some reason none of the kids visited or invited friends. ZooDaddy and I were feeling lazy, and no deadlines were looming, and so, spontaneously, this Sunday turned into one of those traditional Sabbath-Sundays. We cooked and ate together. We played in the pool together. ZooDaddy got a bit silly (which is unusual and VERY loved by the kids). It was a perfect day.

It's not something I feel we need to impose religiously again, but it was a reminder of how much fun we can still have when it's just us. LadyLol declared it to be her "The Best Sunday Ever". I'm sure there's a degree of hyperbole there, but it's good to know that as she and the others grow and explore their own separateness from the family, that they still appreciate the moments when we're "just us".  

School Hours

If there's one thing that I am learning , the more we travel down this educational path we are on, it is that learning can, and does happen at any time. As the chief educational facilitator in this family, I am learning that I need to be on call, and be prepared to be of assistance, at any time (as a rule, ironically, not  during usual school hours). A few examples follow to illustrate my point:

On Friday, 20:30, LadyLolo finds a Braille note from a friend in my room and decided that this is the moment at which she wishes to learn Braille. (I have some lovely twitter-pals, two of whom sent me packages that arrived from the US on the same day, full of treats. This however was about 3 weeks ago!)

All my goodies: Braille T-shirt and twitter-bird charm, Braille Starbucks gift-card, Coffe-beans, American coins for the kids to look at, and the note

She heads off to the bookshelf and pulls out "The Story of Inventions" because she has remembered that it had a section on Louis Braille and the Braille alphabet.

LadyLolo discovers her own resources.

I am called in to assist, because there are some characters in the note that don't appear in her book. I give LadyLolo a quick overview of important Braille punctuation, as well as an explanation of Grade 2 Braille. (At the same time, I myself get a bit of a refresher course!)

Saturday afternoon, around 16:40, SirBiggs is sitting playing a farming game (from Y8) on the laptop  at the kitchen counter. I am pottering about in the kitchen, tidying up, when he asks: "Mom, what do you add to 3830 to get 4150? And so an impromptu maths lesson follows, in which (in the space of 20 minutes) SirBiggs learns about using simple numbers in order to work out the type of operation needed, and how to do "long subtraction" with "borrowing". Incidentally, while we were still schedule- and curriculum-bound, the same concept took LadyLolo and I three weeks of torment (for me) and tears (for her) until it was properly grasped. This, I think illustrates the power of motivation in learning. When I asked SirBiggs what had prompted the question he explained that he had added a plant to his farm and his profit had gone from 3830 to 4150, and so he wanted to figure out how much value a plant adds in that game. The learning is easy because it's relevant, sensible and necessary in the context. Schools attempt to mimic this kind of "real life" scenario by using word problems, which leads me to share a tweet that appeared in my timeline earlier today courtesy of @kamz26. She writes: "Mathematics is the only place where someone could buy 60 watermelons and no one wonders why...". I HAD to smile!

Yesterday evening MissyGeorge and MrTepps were running around like this:

Who says socks, underpants and pyjama shorts can only be worn one way?

I am reminded again of the incredible creativity of thought that comes so easily to children, that adults appear to struggle to regain, and that is becoming ever-more crucial in our rapidly-changing world. I hope our children manage to hang on to their ingenuity and originality.

Unplanning

When LadyLolo asked me on Friday what we'd be doing on Saturday, I told her that I had no idea. Funny how the unplanned days can end up so full!

We woke up and first thing went out into the veggie patch to do our daily inspection. Were very gratified to find even more seeds had been germinating.

Rocket seedlings emerging

This inspired some frenzied gardening activity, including planting out our new plants from the Margaret Roberts Nursery. MissyGeorge and SirBiggs potted on their strawberry plants and freshened up the pots with a new coat of paint.

SirBiggs deals with the old peeling paint

MissyG paints her pot to match the promised fruit

The painting theme continued. MrTepps spotted his sisters painting their nails and demanded a manicure and pedicure of his own. They were more than happy to oblige.

Orange is the nail colour of choice (It matches his shirt)

LadyLolo makes certain that her handiwork doesn't smudge

While the beauty treatments were in progress, we received a call from ZooGranny and ZooGrandpa, inviting us to come over for tea and to look at their roses. SirBiggs was quick to ask if ZooGrandpa would be willing to teach him how to pick locks (it seems that this followed on from a previous conversation between the two of them to which I was not privy). ZooGrandpa was happy to oblige.
ZooGranny's roses were, as promised, extravagantly in bloom.

 ...As were her irises.

We spent some time enjoying (and helping in) the garden and drinking tea...

...and SirBiggs got his first lesson on how to open locks.
 Once home there was still time to play with the dogs...

...and pop over the wall to play with the neighbour.

Photographed by LadyLolo from our roof

Not too bad for a nothing-to-do day!

Strategic Gardening (And Garden Visiting)

To add to our collection of garden-related visits, we took ZooGranny, and cousins and friends along with us to the Margaret Roberts Herbal Centre. The kids and I had paid a visit in late winter, and vowed we'd come back in the spring. Even in winter it was beautiful, and we knew we'd be in for a treat come the warmer weather.
Margaret Roberts is a pioneer in South-African companion planting. Her gardens are essentially potagers, mixing fruit and vegetables with herbs, flowers and traditional South African medicinal plants, to the most beautiful effect. What's wonderful is that she uses the natural properties of the plants she chooses in order to grow everything completely organically. Plants susceptible to aphids, for example, are grown next to plants that act as natural aphid traps.
When planning our veggie patch for our new garden, we referred a lot to her book on companion planting, and a visit to her garden to see it all "in the flesh" inspired us enough to get through all the hard work of clearing, digging, hard-landscaping. Only the day before this visit we sowed the last of the seeds into our patch.
Our second visit, thus, was a bit of a celebration of work achieved, as well as a hope-inducing promise of what ours may look like in a little while.

In the tea-room: a foretaste (pardon the pun) of what the gardens are like. Have you ever seen such a beautiful salad?

My boys decorating one of the fountains. The gardens are laid out in a style that reminds me of formal  Italian gardens.

MissyGeorge amongst petunias, starflowers, borage, lemon trees and anise.

Cousins, friends and the Zoo

MissyGeorge tries out the gongs. What a beautiful sound and - I was impressed - they were (almost) tuned

SirBiggs leaves his mark in the gravel garden

With little friends and trees to climb, who could be sad?

Good friends, big and small - and behind them the riot of colour that is the garden.

At the end of a long day: MrTepps falls asleep on LadyLolo's shoulder on the drive home. That's a heavenly smelling Lemon Verbena, bought at the nursery for our little patch, behind them.