out of control..........

Well I need to explain my long absence from blogland....and to do this I need to show you some pictures, but first I have to issue a warning....if you are the sort of person who gets nauseous and rolls your eyes thinking "get -a -life!" when you see people going ga ga over baby stuff, please scroll quickly down to the next heading.....(PS until 3 years ago when I became a granny, I was FIRMLY in this category)

Ok for those who have strong stomachs and have opted to stay, C arrived from her spot in a dusty portion of Northern Africa, complete with ENORMOUS bump where her sylphlike tummy used to be.... so naturally we have had to re-acquaint her with the wonderful world of 1st world shopping.

Let's just say that the restaurants in Port Elizabeth are noticing a sudden upturn in their turnover, and are wondering why.

And of course there are several baby shops in town .... so we HAD to go and see what they had. I need to remind you that when Ian and C sent us the scan of our new grand-daughter, we were threatened with broken knee-caps if we bought her anything PINK.

Well, it started out fairly well, we found some adorable red stuff, how cute is this cotton loop jacket with ears on the hood?

but the rot set in when we came across the set in the middle, with the pink dots and stripes......

and while I was VERY good and stuck to orange (I mean WHO could resist those bellbottoms??)........

......C had a rush of blood to the head and got these! But what is even more scary than that is the squealing and oohing and aahing that went on when we found all this stuff, it was positively revolting! We almost had to go for another coffee to recover our dignity! As C said, we are TOTALLY out of control....(we won't even mention the amount of chocolate we are getting through!)

OK BABY-STUFF-PHOBES CAN COME BACK NOW.....

Anyway as you can imagine we have been having great fun. But there has also been some horrible damage done to the credit card in another area, because K and I have discovered a TREASURE. There is a second hand bookshop nearby which we stumbled across, and it specialises in collectable old non fiction books, including some of the ones about the development of Port Elizabeth which we have seen in the reference section of the Library. They are like hen's teeth, so we were ecstatic to be able to take a deep breath and buy them. I won't bore you with all our research yet, but it is continuing apace!

In the midst of all this, Max and I popped down to Port St Francis to check things out and our friendly seal was hanging around right next to the jetty.

I am delighted with the way my knee has responded to the surgery. I was so missing our sunrise strolls, so this morning I begged and pleaded and after making a strong cup of coffee for him, finally succeeded in booting Max out of our nice warm bed to go for a walk with me.

It was worth it, look at this ship being caught by a ray of sun, way across the bay.

I love the way the sun glows on the buildings as it rises.

If you follow the progress of my art blog, you will remember this tree, which I did for a commission recently.

We spotted a lovely one this morning, it is the indigenous Coral Tree known as Erythrena Kaffra.

If you check my side-bar you'll see a new kid on the block....Max has started blogging and is already TOTALLY addicted! It is hilarious when we go for walks, stopping every 2 seconds to take photos. We get very little exercise, it could hardly be described as power walking, but we do have fun!