would you like your child to look like this?

Some of the girls were drawing on him with charcoal. He said he wanted to look African ;-)

Our baby is 4 and Sarah lost a tooth!!

It seems incredible that it was four years ago that Joshua was born.  He was helped into the world by one of Sarah's friends, spent the first week of his life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit since and not looked back since.

Now I wonder what else to tell you of Joshua since his arrival - this year his Christmas present from one of his teachers was the Mr Men book Mr Noisy - she tried to choose the one that reflected their character. He is a confident little chatterbox, always asking questions, especially to Miriam and anyone else he knows will keep answering them endlessly. He is very friendly and a bit of a ladies man, although now we're pleased to say the ladies include other pre-schoolers rather than just twenty-somethings! He is generous and caring, it was his own little idea to share his advent calender chocolate with his Dad on his birthday (slobber and all) and to share the smarties that he just received today with Tom before Tom went back to school after lunch. He loves having his friends over to play with him, he loves watching movies, playing with playmobil pirates and plastic animals. He has spent nearly half his life in Africa and has been to five countries on three continents. He remembers very little of the UK but knows how much he loves his family there, talks about them regularly and along with Tom loves to see photos.

So 4 years on he is thrilled to be four! He is loving it being his birthday, that people have said happy birthdday to him wherever he has gone, given him gifts and sung in the dining room. Really this is such a great age to have a birthday!! And his favourite present was some plastic animals that Tom gave him, he was so pleased with them that they have been to breakfast, school and lunch!

Sarah has spent some of the day in the local hospital, having a wisdom tooth extraction. There was no cavity in the adjoining tooth like they thought - it seems that the wisdom tooth had just moved and was causing some pressure. It was such a blessing that Dag, the ship dentist was able to remove it locally, and that it won't cause any more bother, beyond looking like a bruised chipmonk for a few days anyway ;-)

the fear not factor

This week school is a little different - the children are practising the school play, The Fear not Factor. They are making final preparations for the performance tomorrow night. Tom is doing some group singing and dancing, plus has been in the publicity group. Josh is a cow in the nativity if he can be convinced to go on stage this year (after refusing last year when supposed to feature as a sheep!). Tommy gets to write school policies this week as we get further along the accrediatation process.
Tom has helped make some invitations and posters, others have been involved with the sets and costumes. Here is his handiwork:

 The invitations

 The poster

seasons

We are about to experience Christmas in Summer and it does feel strange. Summer might be a strong term for the weather that we are experiencing, with rain being the most common phenomenon, but it certainly is not winter and snow is something we are hearing of only from people far, far away in the distant land of home. Some things are familiar - the shopping malls best avoided as they are jam packed full of crazy festive shoppers for example, but on the whole it all feels strange. But kind of nice, I actually can't quite decide. We spent yesterday eating ice cream at the park in our shorts and t'shirts, not shopping for a Christmas tree as we have no where to put one. Next weekend we thought we'd visit the football stadium as Tom wants to see where the World Cup semi-final was played, rather than joining every one else in the long shopping queues or worrying about getting the turkey. The children have made decorations, this coming week we are making and decorating Christmas cookies and going to a carol service at our church here. There are signs that Christmas is coming, but it is nice to say that it is not because of any chaos or stress usually experienced at this time of year or because the days are getting colder or shorter. There are some things that we will miss this year having Christmas in South Africa (after our families, Mum's shortbread and mince pies rank fairly highly as does pretty much all the British food...), but it will no doubt be a unique international experience, sharing the day with our ship family -we're going back to the Ship for the day so the whole community can celebrate together.

the crocodile and the gazelle AKA sports day

Today Tom was part of team gazelle and Joshua team crocodile as part of the Academy sports day. Usually we live on a ship with very little space and rules restricting running around so being here on the campus has been a lot of fun for the children. Unfortunately it never stops raining here and the football field was flooded but we still held a sports day event in the gym. The teams had to prove themselves in high jump, mini hurdles, penalty shooting, throwing balls and bean bags, in relay and sack races. They had a lot of fun, then the whole school minus pre-school and nursery put on a gymnastics display to show us what they have been doing in PE for the last few weeks. Here are some pics from today:

 Team gazelle

 Team crocodile

 Penalty shooting

 Josh high jumping

 Tom in the gymnastics display