Another weekend, another birthday

This afternoon, with gorgeous weather to match, we enjoyed a birthday barbeque with Zayn, one of our young adults from church, and his family and some church family.

Quite a hilarious afternoon, really, with so much gentle South African (and much Afrikaans) ribbing and teasing. 

Three generations right there...a blessing to have family all together in a foreign country.

Zayn, birthday boy, right there...

And then we got into a bit of silliness with charades, which was new to a few people.  Took off pretty well once we all got the hang of it, with so much laughing and a bit of confusion with bilingual topics.  We should have introduced a new category; once we'd drawn box-shaped TVs or curtain-gestures or indicated a book or movie, we could have perhaps waggled our fingers at our throats to indicated Afrikaans (as it tends to be spoken more gutturally) or swished our palms around the mouth and nose to indicate English, which is placed in the front of the face.  I've noticed the same about French and German respectively.  Russian, I suspect, comes from deep within the stomach region and is best pronounced while inducing a double-chin.

Not to be mistaken for a fire-hydrant

Joan, during the cleanout prior to shifting, donated this fabulous old chest to Nick. It was grey but Nick wanted it to be shiny and RED. He bought paint and over several days, transformed it into this marvellous piece. I wish I knew more about it as I suspect it's VERY old...perhaps Joan you may feel inclined to leave some info in a comment on this post?

Quite frankly

Birthday celebrations this year for our friend Justus included a bonfire with sausies and marshmallows, cakes, and a selection of friends from different places who gelled into a happy group...how can anyone not be happy with a roaring fire in their midst!

While the gals engaged in selfies on phones, the men whittled sticks...

...they had to be long enough to cook sausages on because you definitely didn't want to get any closer than a metre or two away, or be found accidentally treading on embers.

A bit of Damper bread happening - the raw dough was spread over the sticks and cooked until done.  

Some people had more success with it than others!

A few fireworks to celebrate...

...and then yummy cakes, too many to name or eat in one sitting.

Happy birthday, old fella, and many more!

Losing the Leevers (sob)

Oh dear, the Leevers' "l***" Sunday with us today...I asked Joan how she was and she said 'fine, so long as no mentions the l word!'  We presented them with gifts during the service and prayed for them, with very few dry eyes left in the congregation.  Although their departure has been imminent we've really just not been trying to think about it.  We will miss John and Joan very much.

Following the morning service in which John preached, we had our monthly fellowship lunch.  Since I already had my camera handy, I made a nuisance of myself in every direction...

Gorgeous Zach (below) belongs to "don't-photograph-me" Elijah (above).  He and Rosanna and their four children have recently joined us from the West Coast, although we have yet to meet their fourth.  That will be in about ten weeks!

"Wuhsheeeng deeeshes"...

Nestle keeping up

Ooooh, look what is on the shelves at PaknSave!!

An afternoon in the orchard

A job perk...being on-hand as the school photographer :)  Aaron's class was planting an orchard, with trees generously donated by Greenleaf Plant Centre.

While the kids worked well together, sharing spades and holding trees in place, the real hard work had already been done by Mr Rentoul who measured and dug the holes in preparation.

And here's my other lovely boy, just returned from his Monday afternoon at TTEC (Timaru Technology Education Centre) where his class does hands-on training in various fields every week.

Made over

While Nick was away this week (returning just before 2 am Friday morning), I sewed...and sewed and sewed.  Finished the jacket in time to wear to the orchestra last night :) Overall I'm reasonably happy although the image I had in my head prior to starting was very unlike the finished product.  But it's wearable!

I had a bit of a mishap with the lining during the early stages of sewing, and melted off a large bird-shaped chunk of facing.

Fixed! 

Magnificent Mozart

Red letter day today...I had long been looking forward to the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's Mozart performance at the Theater Royal this evening.  We were not disappointed!  The orchestra performed The Abduction from the Seraglio: Overture; Sinfonia Concertante and Symphony No.40 in G minor.  The solo violinist (Vesa-Matti Leppänen) and violist (Julia Joyce) were outstanding, delivering (to my ears) flawless and apparently effortless performances with superb communication between the two.  Loved it!! 

After the performance we met up with Andreas, Danielle, Joan and John who had been seated on ground level to go out for a coffee.  We had thought to sit down somewhere sophisticated but all the local hangouts seemed quite full, so we opted for Burger King which gave us unspoken permission to be loud and silly :)