Photostory Friday: An afternoon at the pool

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

While many of you on the other side of the world are starting to experience colder weather, in sunny South Africa the water in the pool is now warm enough for children to frolic in for hours on end. And since we don't really celebrate Halloween here, we had no worries about getting costumes ready, carving pumpkins or setting candy out! We spent the afternoon at a friend's house - in fact Daniella has been one of Joubert's best friend's for a while now, and she will be sorely missed once we move.
I've been taking Joubert for swimming lessons for ages and they have finally paid off - it's such a relief to be able to sit at the pool side without anxiously waiting for the inevitable moment where I would have to jump in (clothes and all) for a rescue mission!'

Dripping wet and happy


Daniella - all geared up!


Chris, Daniella's brother


Friends

Flowers from my husband

Henk gave me a bunch of flowers on Sunday and because of the hot weather we've been experiencing, some of them have already started to wilt and die ): I decided to photograph some of the flowers that were still looking fresh and beautiful and played around with different angles.

Wordless Wednesday and I'm tired of the painters in my house!

Painters ladder






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The defiance of Emma

Our house has been invaded by a team of painters. ALL of our walls are being repainted and it is DRIVING ME NUTS!! There is a very long story leading up to this, which I doubt my site has enough memory to host. In short: we moved into our brand new house almost 18 months ago, just to realise that it was flawed to the maximum. We have been experiencing sporadic attempts by the builders to try and rectify the stuff -ups ever since. The latest turn of events is that they suddenly realised that our house was painted the wrong colour (which I have been trying to tell them right from the start). This was not even the reason why they started re-painting in the first place!!! Like I said, it's a long story...
Anyway. All of the above makes spending time at home very unpleasant, so I took Emma to a tea garden this morning, with kiddies facilities where she could play. It's always wonderful to spend time with this little daughter of mine, but recently, it has become more of a challenge. The terrible two's has set in with a vengeance and she does not take well to instructions / discipline / directions. She has a mind of her own and is not afraid to show it! The following pictures are a case in point.

I bought her box of juice - nice mother that I am. She would not allow me to insert the straw for her and after trying to do it herself for a few minutes, she threw it in the sand. She then sucked some (maybe about 15ml) juice straight out the box. This quickly turned boring, so she started squirting the juice out onto the sand. Mommy did not like.

I called her name and told her to STOP wasting the juice (and my hard-earned money). She answered me with this look...


I repeated in a very strict voice that she must NOT play with the juice. She answered with a angelic (read manipulative) smile. I smiled back after which she started squirting again.

I eventually took the juice from her, but resourceful as she is, she managed to find another. When I spoke to her about this new turn of events, this is the look that she gave me... Let's hope difficult toddlers make delightful teenagers!!

More on the maternity shoot

A few more pics from the maternity shoot I did last week.

Weekly Winners: 19 - 25 October

I had a very busy week in terms of formal shoots and trying to do the processing with two small children in the house can be very exhausting. Thus I did not take as many pictures as I would have liked!

This one is from Sunday's shoot - such a little angel.

I took this picture yesterday as I watched the storm clouds moving in.


Henk's eye with all kinds of interesting reflections... (hehe, can you see what's going on there?)


Some pics from a shoot I did with a pregnant mom and her 16 month old son.







Joubert having a blast with his water gun



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Photohunt #133: Scary

When kids turn into monsters...

I played around with some presets in Lightroom, but the first two even freaks me out a little, so I'm adding the originals as they are also quite scary (and would be even more so if those were their actual teeth, haha!).

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Photostory Friday: The Boy WANTS a haircut

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

A few weeks ago, Joubert suddenly decided that it would be cool to have his head shaven. When he first told me this I looked a little bewildered and decided to ignore it, it would pass. It did not. He continued to pester me about having his hair OFF. I told him no - why would one want to cut such beautiful hair? I should have just listened...

A week ago, as I was finishing up my blog post for the day, I told Joubert to get ready to go to bed. He was standing right next to me and something told me to look up. I looked. And I looked again. I frowned. I tried to tidy his hair. That was not the problem. Joubert, realising that his mother would not listen to reason, proceeded to take a pair of scissors out of the kitchen, and cut his own hair. It was not a particularly successful attempt, but it was done. I laughed. I told him that in future I would listen to his requests, but he must promise never to cut his own hair again!

So the next day we went to the hair salon. And I asked to have the boy's hair cut - very short please (as if there was any other way, given what he did to his fringe). Yes, his head is not shaven, but the boy is very happy.

And so mommy learned another lesson. At five, a boy is old enough to know how he wants his hair cut!

Wordless Wednesday and time for a flower

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The surrogate family revisited

I did a post a while back about my surrogate family whom we were visiting this weekend. I enjoyed taking some pictures for them and found it quite a treat to work with models who actually do exactly as they are told! These are once again just a small sample of the vast amount of photographs I took.

Siblings


A kiss for our brother (whether he likes it or not!)


Elri


Anine