Dear friend H and her man P have just adopted a gorgeous boy, they brought him home yesterday. Congratulations guys, and little KB, you’re joining a great family and extended church family, and you already have totally devoted parents, welcome little guy:

A little background on H & I’s friendship, we’ve been friends for just about ever, or around age 12 anyhow. We went through some tough teens times together and remained inseperable even though for the most part we went to different high schools and universities. We even had this awkward teenage phase when we dressed in identical skimpy outfits (shod in the iconic 8 hole Docs), died our hair the same colour and trawled the malls and youth groups together. Aaah, those were the days. Thankfully there is precious little photographic evidence

Life kinda hit normal again this week (well, so far) so I’m putting my blogging socks back on…

Lets see, since my last brief but momentous post (for me anyway) lots has happened. I am now 12 weeks pregnant. We had another scan last Friday and all looks great. It was really awesome to see the little one sleeping peacefully (takes after Mom). Doc then nudged around a bit to get Junior to move, where upon he/she did a big stretch, yawn, and then pretty much went back to sleep. I love this kid

The Doc also made an early prediction that this may be a boy. Of course this is way too soon to say for certain, but if she were to put money on it, she’d say boy. She also said she wouldn’t put money on it.

We decided we’d tell this news to the family, a decision I’m regretting slightly. When we uttered the words “looks like it might be a boy”, seems all the family heard was “boy!”. My mom-in-law was so excited (I’d previously said that I thought it would be a girl – just my own feeling) that she burst into tears. She came round two days later with 3 little boy outfits! So while I wasn’t hoping either way before, now I’m offering up some prayers that it is a boy after all, just to spare the (initial) disappointment.

Roughly the third question everyone asks me when they hear I’m pregnant is “So what about your horse / Are you going to stop horse-riding?”. It’s been getting on my nerves a bit. I don’t want to endanger my unborn child, but seriously folks! I’ve been riding a minimum of 5 times a week since I was around 6 years old! I haven’t driven a car that often, but no-one asks me if I’m going to stop driving. I think I can do this sensibly. I haven’t been riding much (time constraints and other issues) since I found out I was pregnant, and it’s been driving me insane. At first it wasn’t too bad. I was so tired I wouldn’t want to go and ride, but now my energy is returning I feel this profound loss off accomplishment. It’ll be 10 PM and time to go to bed but I don’t want to go! I don’t feel like I have done anything all day – despite working 10 or 12 hour days recently.

So yes, I will continue riding – gently and with consideration – a couple of times a week until it feels unsafe. If I start to loose balance or get anxious about it, I’ll stop. If my horse is having a bad/mad day, I’ll get off. I won’t do any jumping or competitions. I will be sensible about it. I can do that.

Anyway, enough about that.

I have noticed from my Google Analytics stats that I get fairly regular hits from India, Dillip, is that you? If it is, leave a comment and say Hi …

Also, quite a few folks have found my blog searching for Smiths Motorcycles. I’d expect it’s this post that brings them here. While I didn’t explicitly say that Smiths was where I had such shocking service with my bike, I did tag them on the post, and I suppose you can draw the link yourselves. Well, the guy can do a good job, but it may just take you half a year to get your bike back …

Well, that’s all for now folks. Will try to post a little more regularly again.

When I was just a little baby my sister would stare at me in my crib until I cried.
When I was three years old, and my sister was six, she gave me a haircut. She also gave my dolls haircuts.
We fought often: she always won. She fought dirty: biting, kicking, pulling hair and pinching, whatever would give her the upper hand.
We shared a room as children and she’d always insist on total darkness at bedtime, even though she knew I was afraid of the dark
When she learnt how to French plait hair, she would teach anyone else who asked except me.
We attended the same high school for 5 years. In that time she barely said 20 words to me. We never played or socialized together at all if we could help it.
Once when I accidentally bumped her and caused her to spill her cup of cocoa, she poured the whole cup on me.

I thought I’d always hate my sister as much as I did back then, which is why is still surprises me just how close we have become now. I’m sure I did and said things that hurt her too, but I wasn’t very good at seeing things from any perspective but my own back then.

As chance would have it, we ended up studying the same course at the same time when we started our tertiary studies. We drove together to save on petrol. Mutual introversion banded us together in the early days, and as a result we ended up in the same friend group. Convenience resulted in us doing our major projects together.

Six years later we work at the same company – Sis submitted my CV here when I was thoroughly fed up of my old job. We live in the same neighborhood: it fitted into the required price range and was suitably close to my parent’s house, as we both go there several times a week to ride our respective horses. These days we may even share a horse on occasion, my sister doing the dressage training and me the jumping training, something totally unheard of in the past.

We’re both quite private people (say I, broadcasting it to the world on a blog!) who don’t volunteer much about what’s affecting or upsetting us when the hurt is deep. You need to know us well before we’ll tell you what’s really going on, and even then, you need to know that what we might mention in passing is a huge hurt in our lives. So when my sister mentioned a few months ago a certain difficulty she’s been going through for a while, I knew it was no small thing.

I’m amazed at how much I feel for her in this time, there is nothing much that I can do but be there for her while she acts all strong, and it breaks me apart that I can’t do more for her. To my sis: who would have thought we’d ever become so close? I love you and I’m praying that everything works out for you, and soon.