Ready set here we go again

Cliché, but what happened to my December break, it’s done and dusted and we are already one week into 2014.  Our holiday was amazing, we spent two weeks at the coast and a week in the bush, we are all tanned, rested, a bit fatter than we were three weeks ago, but it was worth every calorie laden vodka along the way.

I think that Liam finally realises that Santa Claus does not exist as he started asking piercing questions and we basically lied to him, and then he walked into my study yesterday and saw the wrapping paper, and I fobbed him off with a story about Santa and me just all buying paper at Checkers.  Gerhard decided to have a man to man talk to the poor boy to explain that we lied, but also to beg Liam to now join us in the on-going deceit of Luka.  We will see how this turns out. 

Santa – i.e. Gerhard and I got Liam a fishing rod and “a tackle” and a tent for Christmas, a miracle really when considering that we still do not own a Wii or a PlayStation or any other TV game device.  We spent the 25^th of December next to a lagoon attempting to secure a fish and we ended up with some crabs.  Despite how that sounds, it is innocent I swear, Luka took a small fishing net to the lagoon and ended up catching crabs, whist Liam and eventually Gerhard and a very neon pink wormlike hook was extremely unsuccessful. 

Luka got babies and Barbie’s, and she loves them.  She also baths them and I think that the bathing baby smells of rotting water, not because she spent her Christmas next to a lagoon fishing with Gauteng tackle, but because try as you may, you never do get the last bit of water out of the doll that is allowed to go in the bath regardless of how hard you squeeze.  Luka thinks it is adorable that this doll can wee, and cry, because I figure that the best way to try and drain the doll is via the eyes and not the terrible little hole at the bottom.  I generally try to hide the face squishing from Luka, it’s a bit too “bride of chucky”. 

In news just in, Barbie finally managed to get panties, imagine my bemusement when I saw that Barbie still goes bra-less despite having a rather significant pair of boobs, but they finally put permanent panties on her.  Liam was rather amused.  Liam also told us that in the beginning ,there was God and Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela died and now only Jesus remains.  The kid is going places already mixing politics and religion, if only we lived in the States. 

 So what will the year 2014 bring for the van Wyk van Rooyen family?  Well, Liam is going to Grade R, Luka is moving up the ranks from the Baby Home to the Pre-Primary school, she will be in the Bug Class and she is the bee.  Only moms will get this last reference, when kids are small and unable to read, they each get allocated a symbol to identify the shelf where they must keep their school bags, the cups they drink from etc.  Luka is the bee…

Liam will be joining the mole class, animal still to be provided.  Gerhard went back to work yesterday, walked straight into year end, he plans on playing more golf this year and we plan on going away more.   I only arrived back today, checking in for the last shift so to speak – you see I have resigned again.  I seem to thrive on change, and I have resigned quite a bit during the last couple of years, once to take up farming. 

This time around it is to start up my own consulting business, I have decided to name it “Corporate Affair” and I will be offering governance, secretariat and sustainability services.  I have a home office, a laptop that Gerhard won in a golf day (I was upset because it was not a blender), I have a domain, emails, branding and stationary under design, it all feels so grown up somehow, so responsible.  So wish me luck.  Gerhard and I joke about all the money I will make and we are spending it in our imagination, so if Liam tells you his mommy is rich and buying his daddy a land cruiser, a house at Leopard Creek and a beach buggy, it was a joke, don’t judge. 

I think Liam summed up life when Luka played with a baby pic of Liam in a frame.  He was around 18 months old in the pic, wearing a green t-shirt and a dummy.  He told her to not break the picture, because if she broke it we would have to “squish” him back to small to take the photograph, and he no longer had the dummy or the lime green shirt.  If only we could go back into the past, all squished.

Have a good 2014, see you soon.