Nicol's birthday, and Jean's first smile!!!

We have it on camera!!!

JohnD's Impala

Uncle Nicol took JohnD hunting yesterday afternoon. He was successful on this lovely Impala.
Michael (his cousin from Zimbabwe) was with them. The boys had fun! He really enjoyed using Uncle Nicol's 6mm "guinea gun" - (named after the spots on the stock), and made another perfect frontal shot. Used special BarnsX bullets that Uncle Rick sent out for Nicol to test... perfect mushroom! :)

Our little Jean is growing so fast, and is such a good baby!!! He looks more like Nicol each day!

REMISSION!

Rejoice with us! We just got home from Pretoria two hours ago.
The bone scan is clear.
The cat scan is clear.
The blood tests are clear.
GOD IS FAITHFUL, AND GOOD.

Jean Bordeaux Martin!

O, I’m pretty sure Joanne already started spreading the good news around but here it is from our side as well.
Karia and myself were blessed with a beautiful baby boy on Wednesday the 10th of March. He’s name is Jean Bordeaux (my dad’s names) and we will call him Jean. He weighed 2.975kg and was 50cm long at birth. Actually smaller than the biggest bass I ever caught!
Karia and Jean are both fine and we arrived home just a while ago. As I write these lines he is sleeping on my lap. More beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen or rather just as beautiful as his mom and much, much, much more beautiful than the best made English doubles.
I’m quite proud of myself as well, I was with for the entire birth and even cut the umbilical cord, and I’ve changed nappies. Now most of you might have heard the story about myself fainting when we help with the ‘surgery’ on one of our trackers fingers. So I’m pretty chuffed!

An older gentleman asked me if I feel like I’m the first guy ever to become a dad and I have to say yes I do. I am a VERY proud husband and a very proud dad.
Jean (snr), Marita and Karia with Jean!

Anyway. That’s all from me for now. I can’t send pictures but Jo will get pictures soon enough and when that happens she’ll put them on the Shi awela blog. Otherwise you’ll just have to come and visit him at Shi awela.
Nicol nicol.karia@gmail.com

This is Nicol's sister - Isabel, with Jean.

PoloX & Twitter

JohnD learning how to catch a ball, while on horse back.

Micaela and Me - finding our "seat"... boy am I stiff and tender today!!! I think it's been about 12 years since I rode?

Twitter in the fig tree outside the kitchen. He comes when he is called! Loves bananas, mango and pronutro!!! Dislikes most other stuff and spits it out. He is sweet and very friendly. He got caught by Micaela's cat on Saturday... but he is healing nicely now and we hope he has learned that cats are DANGEROUS!

Tennis / Cricket / Horses / Birds ... Happy days!

Little Twitter - JohnD's little bird... found a way out of his cage two days ago. We couldn't find him anywhere, and we worried so much that he was lost. Well, it didn't take long for him to get hungry. We called and listened... and he found his way back to us - with his little beak wide open!!! Yesterday again, while JohnD was playing and stroking him, he flew off - but this time he didn't come back....for the whole night! Well, this morning - we were all DELIGHTED to hear him in the tree outside the kitchen - hungry and very ready to climb back into his little cage! We felt for sure that the night out was too much... but he seems fine! He has grown a lot, and is quite a character. He gets so very excited when anyone comes near him, and loves to be taken out and stroked!

They are both looking like different ladies, and are just so pretty. Jasmine still a little on the thin side, but so much better. They both had a shampoo yesterday afternoon, so they are shiny!

What great excitement this week. Ken put the gate in here at home, so we brought beloved Jasmine & Chloe "home"! It was quite a ride, as with them having had their injections, we didn't want them to work up a sweat! Because of the grids, we also had to go around the back of Silverbank, along the top boundary of the property... as Mr Buffalo Bill is in the area where we would normally have ridden through (where the gates are!!!).

JohnD had his first tennis & cricket lessons this week, and coped very well! He enjoyed them, and so we are signed up for him to continue... His hair is growing noticably now... and he is slowly gaining weight. A year ago today - he had his first operation...

We have such a faithful FATHER GOD!

The kids are participating in the "Triggies" go cart race tomorrow. This is the main public school in town. All of the ACE home school children have formed a team, so they are a crowd of approximately 34 children! :) Micaela is very excited... our team is "Ireland" and they are all going to be armed in orange, green and white!

We have had a busy camp this last week, folks from the UK and Sweden, as well as from Pretoria.

PoloX Tournament

We spent the day in Louis Trichardt, watching a polox tournament. Micaela had learned about it while we were in the US, and she was looking forward to it for about two weeks!

She got the opportunity to ride one of the horses, and play with the ball & net. She did pretty well, actually picking up the ball, from the ground, while up in the saddle. Her Poppa in Australia would have been very proud!

This tiny little minature horse was very tollerant of all the attention... I've seen dogs bigger than this stallion!