It's been a busy few days since I last posted, sprinkled with excitement, fun, exercise, celebration, happiness, exhaustion, sorrow, and pain, pretty much in that order.

Here's Lauren at the playball open morning a couple of weeks ago:



And here she is on Thursday morning. It was her first ballet exam. And no, I am not able to take credit for the bun.



She'd been excited about it for weeks, though was not entirely sure what a ballet exam was. Waiting for the exam to start, I was completely unable to guage how she was feeling about it. She gives very little away.



She came out of the exam very happy (parents have to wait outside during the exam), although that probably has absolutely no relation to how she actually did, not that it matters in the slightest.

From there it was on to the local park for the annual autumn picnic for the children, family and friends of Lauren's school. On the way we picked up Daniel, and had a conversation along the following lines:

Dan: Mom, have we got juice?
Me: Yes!
Dan: Got chippies?
Me: Yes!
Dan: Got buns?
Me: Yes!
Dan: Got orangutans? *
Me: Er..?

The autumn picnic is a real favourite. The kids bring rakes and make a huge pile of leaves.



Danny enjoyed meeting up with William again (who goes to Ladybird now). Dan will go too from next year.



Then they have songs around the 'bonfire'. And finally there is a wild leaf-fight. This is the best bit.



I love this one of Danny.




Saturday morning saw us up early for Robyn to open her birthday presents, and shortly after that we were off on a 4.5km walk as part of Robyn's school fun day. The exercise was great and made me think we should do it more often on a weekend morning. The rest of the morning was spent squandering a surprising amount of cash on the various stalls. Danny was unfortunately in a completely awful mood (probably as a result of being woken up before dark by Robyn birthday-bouncing around). Lauren went on a bungee-type-bouncy-thingy, whereas Robyn wore a path across the field going back and forth to the tombola. **

Exhausted, we staggered home for a couple of bites of food and then we were off to the Durban ice rink (we picked up friends, Janine and her daughter Jess, on the way). The ice rink is just as I remembered it - dark and a bit run down but loads of fun. The girls absolutely loved it. Unfortunately the pictures came out quite badly. I think it was to do with the weird lighting and bright ice, but here they are anyway.

Robyn with Jess (who Robyn would probably call her best friend except that Robyn has decided not to do the 'best friend' thing but just have 'friends').



And here's Lauren:



And me and Robs:



And Danny, who blissfully for both him and us (as he was tres miserable shortly before this picture was taken) passed out in the stands quite early on. We had hired some skates for him too and tried to get him to cooperate, each holding one of his hands, but he kept just kind of lying down between us.



And finally, the grown-ups (Janine is to the left of me).





By 4.30 we were tired. We weren't quite finished though, as next we were off to Spur for supper. Robs had the sparkler and happy birthday song thing, which she enjoyed.

And then we got the phone call. The woman who worked for us for seven years, who loved and looked after Daniel for the mornings for a year, whom we persuaded to retire last year, aged 58, due to ill health, had died in the afternoon. It was a shocking end to the day. As well as the grief, we weren't sure whether to feel glad for what we had done to help their family and make things easier the last few years, or to feel sorry we hadn't done more. We will miss her.

The funeral will possibly be next weekend.

Which brings us, finally, to today, in which Robyn seems to be suffering from an excitement hangover, has been crying on and off all day, and has either sprained or badly bruised her ankle from an awkward landing while jumping off the mini-tramp.

Sleep seems like a very good idea round about now.



* meringues

** place to exchange money for rubbish