Apr - Daniel comes to play

Aunty Emma gave lil Emma a chalkboard which we've put in the Emma house outside. Emma loves it, and was willing to share it with Daniel who came to play.

All the kids who come to play LOVE playing in the house outside, I'm so glad I resurected it, I think they feel all grown up or something, and they close the door, locking the parents outside.

 

Daddy must draw what Emma requests....

They love the trampoline too...Kate gets drawn in...

 

Lazy Emma.

 

Emma does this thing we call the bum bounce, where she runs

around and then jumps up landing on her bum. Very cute.

 

Just running around.

This was actually the first time I've seen Emma show 'compassion' for someone else... Daniel started crying cos he wanted to go on the bike, and Emma got off and let him go (after a bit of persuasion). It was so cute. She'd gone from fighting over the bike with him, to saying, alright, you have a go then.

 

He seemed quite happy with that.

Apr - Kerri n Rus weddin

Kerri got married at the Castle in Cape Town.

 

They flew out from England to get married here - as you do.

Quite a cool setting, out in the courtyard. I'd never been to a wedding here before.

 

Not sure what denomination it was, but it seemed that Kerri and her dad stood up there holding hands for ages before Russel was eventually allowed in on the act.

And when Russel got the chance to 'kiss the bride', he clearly made up for the time that he's had to stand to the side. If I know Kerri, she probably ordered him to kiss her properly or don't do it at all!

 

He did.

 

Table mountain in the background.

Mr and Mrs...oh hell, I don't know his surname. Collett?

The castle, or the part of it where we were anyway, is run by the

Cape Highlanders, so we got a bagpipe player soon after the ceremony.

Sunset

On top of the castle

Drinks before the reception...

Time for a few pics of my gorgeous girl and I.

And with the other gorgeous girl.

April 1

ghdghd

A bit of Happy birthday on the piano, okay not yet, but give him a few years.

Lil Louis LOVES the piano, and lil Emma likes bashing away too. Coot man!

Singing Happy Birthday to meeeeee....

Blowing my candles

Playing and eating nicely with the cousins.

 

Suppertime. Feed me dammit!

Getting ready to go swimming. She looks a bit like the Red Baron, fighter pilot extraordinaire! She actually did this herself, after finding dad's goggles.

 

Bathtime. Emma LOVES bubbles!

 

How do you do? Roxette baby!

We weren't gonna miss this Joyride. Blast from the past Roxette came to Cape Town and we were there!

But I forgot my camera, so the cellphone had to do. Alas, my pictures were crap, but thankfully lifelong fan Bianca was in the front row to take a few snaps, so these are from her...

Apparently when lead singer Marie Fredericksson came out of an op to remove a brain tumor a few years back, she was left partially brain damaged, unable to read or write, or do certain activities.

She didn't perform too badly considering THAT!

A braai at Rory's folks' place

Well Nicole had her camera out so she took a few pics...

Here are the laatjies, growing up nicely...

And a few big group shots...

US newspapers report on Osama's death

Link to Poynter institute...

How the media in US reacted to announcement of Osama bin Laden's death....

I suppose I can understand it, but it still seems a bit barbaric, you'd maybe expect this of The Sun, or other trailor-trash type productions.

A few of my friends also commented on their fb pages about the celebration and were quite vocal in their criticism but I'll let the pictures and headlines do the talking...

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/130349/newspaper-front-pages-capture-elation-relief-that-osama-bin-laden-was-captured-killed/

Roddick, and lack of Americans in tennis elite

ANDY RODDICK put a positive slant on it, but the lack of an American man or woman in the top 10 of the world rankings underlined just how much the balance of power in tennis has shifted across the Atlantic.

For the first time since rankings began the nation that produced the likes of John McEnroe, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Chris Evert, Billie Jean King and the Williams sisters, to name but a few, the ATP and WTA lists contained not one player in the top 10 with ‘US’ in brackets after his or her name.

Mardy Fish, a player who has never reached a Grand Slam semi-final, is the top American man at No 11 while Serena Williams, a 13-times Grand Slam winner, is the highest woman at 17, despite not having played for nearly a year. Take out Serena and No 19 Venus and the next highest player in the rankings is Bethanie Mattek-Sands at No 38.

“It’s not for lack of looking hard and it’s not for lack of talent,” Mattek-Sands said last week in Madrid, where she was one of only two American women in the main draw. “It’s just tough right now. I think the biggest reason is that a lot of juniors get injured before they even have a chance to step on tour.”

Former world No 1 Roddick, who has admirably carried the baton for his nation since the retirements of Jim Courier, Sampras and Agassi, believes America’s new generation inevitably suffer by comparison to the halcyon days.

“There is no bigger crisis in American tennis than there is in Italian,” Roddick shot back in his post-match news conference at the Rome Masters after bowing out in the first round to Frenchman Gilles Simon.

“There has been a lot of harping on about the state of American tennis but we are perhaps the victims of our own success. Put us up against most countries we are still ahead.”

However, Roddick clearly feels someone else needs to step up, particularly at the Grand Slams which have not had an American male champion since he won the US Open in 2003. “I feel I’ve handled my part for more than a decade,” added the 28-year-old. “I’ve done my job for a long time.”

With no obvious American contenders emerging in the men’s or women’s game, it is Europe-based players who dominate the highest rungs on the tennis ladder.

Eight of the top 10 women are from Europe with Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki leading the way and the likes of Czech Petra Kvitova and Belarussian Victoria Azarenka expected to be challenging for Grand Slam titles in the absence of the Williams sisters.

The European bias is even more extreme in the men’s game where the entire top 10 are from the continent. Although with Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal and now Novak Djokovic so dominant in the past eight years there has been precious little opportunity for any other player, wherever they were born, to prosper.

Mattek Sands believes a new mentality is required among the Americans.

“In other countries there is just a little bit more of that grit to get out of where they’re coming from. Take some of the Russians. They’re trying to make some money, go somewhere better,” she said. “In the US we have it pretty good. It’ll take some people getting out of their comfort zone, pushing themselves and having it inside themselves.” – Reuters

Barcelona untouchable

I include a few sport articles on here every now n again when I deem them interesting enough... Heres one...
This was written after the semi-finals and appeared in the Cape Argus.

MUCH as everybody hated to admit it, for once Jose Mourinho had a point. Naturally, it was buried under the obligatory narcissism and masked by the stench of countless red herrings, but it was still in there somewhere.
“I don’t know if it is the publicity they give UNICEF, I don’t know if it’s their friends at UEFA, but Barça have managed to get all this power – and no-one else has a chance,” he said last week.
Seriously, how do Barcelona get away with quite so much? Is everybody browbeaten into a polite acquiescence to their antics because they have a children’s charity on their shirts? Surely if it were that easy, the Catalans would stick a dog collar on their new kit and have done with it.

But there is no escaping the fact Barcelona have a “holier than thou” attitude that conveys to the rest of football it really should genuflect when in their presence. Oddly, UEFA seem happy to oblige.

Anything that drops from the lips of Mourinho must automatically be treated with a degree of suspicion, since he has cast too many stones at too many people on too many occasions for his views to be accepted at face value.
But last week he was trying, in his own scattergun fashion, to point out how the game appears to have bought into Barça’s own boast that they are “more than a football club” – and that the authorities seem loath to tackle their excesses because of this.

Few would argue with the assertion that Barça are the most talented team in the world, but dare to point out they also rank among the game’s most accomplished cheats and that is endorsed with considerably less enthusiasm.
After last week’s Champions League debacle at the Bernabeau, Mourinho neatly slotted into his customary role of pouting pantomime villain bearing the brunt of worldwide criticism as his counterpart, Pep Guardiola, polished his halo nearby. But Barcelona are not some angelic collection of pure football aesthetes innocently tiptoeing their way around the “enemy of football”.

They dive and feign injury more than most, not just in overheated handbag-waving battles against their Madrid rivals either, but in any game where their rhythm is upset and their supremacy challenged.

At the Bernabeu, Pedro fell over more often than a drunk stepping off a spinning merry-go-round with an inner ear infection. Dani Alves spent so long rolling on the turf he became the first player to be stretchered away with third-degree grass burns.

Yes, the Madrid histrionics were bad, but Barcelona’s were worse. Seldom has one seen a team pressure a referee as they do, not even Manchester United in their infamous confrontation with Andy D’Urso.

Barça attacked the official mob-handed, waving imaginary cards in his face and surrounding him in an obvious attempt to intimidate again and again. Skipper Carles Puyol is the arch proponent of this repulsive tactic, leading his teammates in a strategy that is as co-ordinated and rehearsed as any set-piece.

Guardiola has claimed that his players are role models and not cheats, but viewers of the second leg in Barcelona last night would not agree following the antics of Javier Mascherano.

The former Liverpool midfielder-turned-defender went to ground far too easily and then rolled around theatrically.
Is it just that the wondrous skill of Lionel Messi is supposed to excuse everything else Barça do? It seems to be enough for most people, but it shouldn’t be.

Many regard it as “gamesmanship” but the rest of us ignore the euphemisms and call it what it really is – cheating.

Football is nothing if it continues down this road. It will be reduced to the level of pretend pillow fights. Contests have as little credibility as those bogus American wrestling competitions where steroid-fed lumps of mahogany pretend to grapple with one another.

The prevailing cynicism right now is actually quite abhorrent. We expect it from Mourinho, but when the best collection of players on the planet routinely fake, deceive and think nothing of the embarrassing spectacle they are making of themselves and the sport, then modern-day football has a serious problem. – Daily Mail

Start a marriage how you intend to carry on...

I'm not saying anything, I just heard about this from a friend.
Kinda sweet, hey?