Welcome to this beautiful world Jemima!

Yesterday morning at 10h30 Gary and Stacey Keizan became mommy and daddy to the most beautiful little Jemima Annabelle Keizan!

John and I would like to wish you guys the happiest life together filled with sooooo many wonderful memories and love!

We can't wait to meet her!

Only 83 days left to vote

Just a little reminder to vote on our Baby Woollam Poll, you only have 83 days left to vote and we absolutely LOVE seeing what our friends and family think.

So look on the right hand side of the blog and vote!

The joys and excitement of waiting to find out the sex!

A birthday, an exhibition and a GREAT weekend away

What an amazing week and to top it all off ... my birthday week!

The week started on high with seeing our precious little Baby Woollam again.  And ended with a hot shower after a beautifully cold weekend.

It was my 29th birthday on Thursday and I would just like to say thanks to all my amazing friends who called, mailed and sms'ed me the bestest wishes!  You guys absolutely rock my world!  I spent the day with Kelly, shopping and sipping hot chocolate at Vida!  And ended my day with my photography exhibition.  We were only 6 students and had our little exhibition on Thursday night to end off our course, unfortunately I left before everyone else and couldn't take my photos with me, but as soon as I collect them, I will post them.  My husband said that my photo was the best one there ... he might have been a little bias, but I still love him!  What an amazing course and for anyone who wants to know a little more about their cameras and have some really fun practical lessons, visit:  http://www.fforward.co.za/Fast_Forward/Welcome.html  and to top it all off, the photo of the door and the broken window ... IS MINE!!!!  

Friday night we went for a little birthday dinner with a few of our amazing friends.  We went to Bihari in Fish Hoek, the most amazing little Indian Restaurant with the most amazing curry!  Fish Hoek is a dry town, so no alcohol gets sold, but we took some wine, beer and champagne along to celebrate.   

Matt & Kirsty

Frannie & Candz

Matt (Candz husband) & Paul (Fran's fiance)

Bianca and Garth

Martin & Kelly

The craziness of deliciously hot curry!

Candz, Frannie & I

The group!

What an amazing evening!  Thank you so much for dinner and joining me on my birthday guys!  Love you always!

Saturday John and I got invited to a weekend away in Hawston.  A good friend Mike has a private nature reserve in Hawston, which is about 5 km's outside Hermanus.  The whole farm is totally "green" running on solar power, wind power and water supplied by the rain.  The guard dogs are good old faithful or should I say feared Ostriches.  All in all, the most beautiful place!  Totally peaceful and amazing to enjoy it with good and new friends.

Due to it being winter time, the solar power was obviously a little limited, the wind was so strong that the gas flame for the hot water kept on blowing out, so no hot water for the weekend.  The rain water has to last the whole year, which leads to only flushing the toilets once or twice a day.  They have a very clever plan on reusing all the water used, by standing in a bucket in the shower, to catch all the dirty water you wash off yourself, and then using that to flush the toilets with.  A few people jumped into the icy cold showers one of the mornings, but I opted to stay save and not tempt early labour with 0'degree water washing over my little bump. Not the norm for us city slickers, but it was so refreshing to see how much better we could be to our mother earth.  John and I are now totally aware of how we waste water, electricity and take the MANY luxuries we have grown up with and became dependent on for granted!

Saturday night we watched our South African Bulls totally eat the Chief for breakfast after their Super 14 win of 61-17  at a little pub in Onrus.  Afterwards we went back to the Italian Villa in the middle of the beautiful nature reserve to make homemade pizzas.  I'm not going to say much about the pizza, except ... what's homemade pizza without a flour fight?  Pictures tell all ...

Starting off calm with Candz chopping ingredients and the boys chatting ....

When it all went pear-shaped ... flour fight!

Candz & Mike (our amazing host)

Candz in ALL her glory!

The gang:  Mike, Candz, George, Sally, Darren & John

(please note ... no hot water for showering!!!)

Our fantastic pizza braai'er Mattie

The bestest dough roller and in good old Johnny fashion, loaded his pizza with soooo many toppings, that it was too heavy for the base and broke in the oven ... :(

Mike & Sally

John making a fire to heat the house

After dinner silliness with our own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Mattie

Mike

The night took an interesting turn when John took a photo of me in action, but captured a weird shining light in the picture.  We were totally confused, but Candice quickly set us straight by explaining that it was the way angels gets captured in photos.  I've never seen anything like it and I'm sure there's a scientific explanation for it, but I was told that it's a angel looking over me and the baby ... now how can you not want to think something so beautiful.  I would love to believe that my guardian angel (who I've believed to have been there most of my life) is looking over me and my unborn baba!  The photo below:

The next morning I slept in while John, Candz and Matt had a private yoga session with George.  I woke up just in time to capture them finishing off.  What a way to start the morning!

We had our tea and decided to go for a walk in the nature reserve, which stretches for 5 km's next to the beach and all the way up into the Hermanus mountains.  Some photos of the beautiful setting:

John

The group!

After the walk, John and I took a drive to Hermanus to go visit my dad ... thinking that I was going to have a nice hot shower at my dad's, he told me that the Hermanus area's electricity has been off the entire day and night and I was out of luck of any hot water.  Not even a kettle to boil some.  So off John and I went to the petrol station to buy some take away coffee, we had a good afternoon just chilling with my pops!

 

And last but not least, the trusty guard dogs!

George, John and the Volstruis!

Thank you Mike, what an unforgettable weekend, with so much beauty.  

With all our love ....

The Woollams!

Day to Day ... this and that!

I didn't take many photos this week, but an eventful weekend non the less.  

Our funny weather has left us with a few cold nights, so John and I decided to make a trip to Tokai Forest to pick up some pine-corns to start our little fireplace with.  What a waste of time ... we ended up walking around for 2 hours and picked up maybe 10 really bad looking pine-corns on the way. 

 John in Tokai Forest

We met up with Vince and Chloe for breakfast at Olympia on Saturday, was absolutely great to see them and as always had a fantastic meal at one of our favorite restaurants.

Then Saturday afternoon we went to a braai at Phil and Debs house in Noordhoek, also found out they're having a baby ... "Congratulations guys, you're in for such an amazing ride and you will soon realise that you could never even have thought of loving anything as much in your life!"

Yesterday we had a super relaxing day, with a bit of DIY (we painted our doors and door frames) and watched some TV, sitting with a cup of tea at our fireplace.

My little Tiger Boy already protecting his little brother/sister,  sitting with his paws on my tummy!

Talking about the little Baby Woollam, we had another visit to our doctor this afternoon, unfortunately we don't get any more photos to take home with us, due to the little baba getting to big to photograph, but it was still so great to see the little heartbeat and see how beautifully big s/he has gotten.  At an estimated weight of +/- 780g, almost 200g bigger than our last scan 2 weeks ago.  We couldn't get a full size, 'cause our little munchkin decided to curl his/her little legs and totally bend it's little neck, which made it totally impossible for Dr Graves to do a proper measurement.  My tummy is getting bigger and bigger by the day and we can now even see the little kicks, bumps and punches by just watching the bump.  Such an active little baba!

This Thursday I've got my photography course exhibition, which I'm really excited about.  It will be my first time showing photos and I'll be sure to post copies of my photos on my next post.

We're about 5 students who will all show their work, so should be pretty awesome.

With a big week and lots of photos coming up, I'm sure my next post will be much more interesting ... until then ...  lots of love ... The Woollams!

Seems like summer is back ...

OK, so summer is either back, or it's the calm before the storm, but we're having the most beautiful weather EVER here in Cape Town!  

Another good weekend all round, with a surprise visit from John's mom and Paul to a planned visit by Marc and Lauren.

Friday night we met up with Marc, Lauren .... Levi .... yip, Ben and a few other friends, at Kalk Bay's Brass Bell, a pretty disappointing meal all round, but still fun to see old friends!  We went for a little nightcap down at Cape to Cuba and off home to meet Rose & Paul who only arrived from Jo'burg at 11:30pm Friday night.  

Saturday morning I went for my photography practical and met up with John and the folks at Olympia for some freshly baked breakie.  Had a little afternoon snooze and met up with the gang at Deeno's Restaurant in Newlands before the rugby.  The Stormers beat the Western Force by 1 point, but we had the "best seats in the house" ... hey Ben!  

Lauren, Marc, Warrick, Romy and my Tuck!

Mattie & a little hungry Candz

The K brothers sneaking a sip in the stands

The Woollams at Newlands!

And last but not least, the Stormers girls right in front of us ... best seats in the house?

Sunday morning ... Mothers Day ... or as I prefer to call it ... Mothers-to-be Day!  It was the most beautiful day, so John, myself, Lauren and Marc, decided to go to Llandudno for a  little beach day.  What fun, we packed a HUGE picnic basket, with ingredients for Marc to make "The Best Rolls EVER" for lunch, the boys had a little swim, we played beach tennis, John surfed the biggest waves I've seen at Llandudno and I tanned my baby bump a bit!

"Lauren, you have to send me some of the pics, 'cause I don't have any!"

We didn't get to see that much of Rose and Paul, due to it being Paul's dad, Bernard's 99th birthday!!!  

Happy Birthday Bernard, we hope you had such a special day with your family down in Cape Town!  

But we had our Mothers Day dinner for John and his mom last night.  It was the first year John has spent Mothers Day with his mom in almost 10 years!  So a very special evening.

The table set outside, thanks to our gorgeous weather!

John and his mom cheers on Mothers Day!

So to end this great weekend, I would like to wish all the Mothers, Mothers-to-be and Grannies, a very happy Mothers Day!

Baby Woollam at 22 weeks

After not being able to sleep due to utter excitement of seeing our little baba again, we had our scan at 09:00 this morning.  

Baby Woollam is growing so well and developing like a little trooper!  S/he is completely on schedule ... if not a little ahead ... and we already know this little bundle is most definitely the best thing that has EVER happened to us.

Weighing in at +/- 600g and 29.5 cm in length, it was so fantastic to see that everything is going great.  10 little fingers, 10 little toes, beautiful heart and a great blood flow.  We saw his/her eyes and lids, we saw the heart with all the rooms and valves.  We saw the kidneys, stomach and a healthy spine.  The doctor checked every joint, muscle, bone and organ and everything was PERFECT!

A few photos, sorry for the quality, but I didn't have a scanner, so I took photos of the photos.

The little baba

The beautiful little legs

Out little baba was crossing it's legs and in this photo you can see the 2 little feet with 5 little perfect toes!

The most beautiful little face!

My tummy is growing bigger every single day and I've realised that I have a pretty active little one inside there, so I get kicked and I can feel every little turn ... so precious! 

With all our love ... The Woollam Mommy and Daddy :)

Another LONG weekend in the past!

The 3rd long weekend in a row ... but we're not complaining.  Time to relax and be John and Toni before we're the party of 3!

Saturday night we went for dinner to Katinka's house to say our goodbyes to my brother before leaving for Witbank again.  We had a fantastic braai with as John calls it, real Boere food ... the most divine oven baked bread, a veggie dish to die for (definitely going to take that recipe for myself) and little baked potatoes and lamb chops!  Wow, getting all hungry again!

Katinka & her Mom preparing the deeelish food!

The 3 chefs, Rudi, Katinka and her mom

The 3 boys in my life

My dad and my brother

Baby update ... John felt our little baba for the first time on Sunday!!!!  How exciting!  It's all so real for him now, we play music to little Baby Woollam every night and chat to the bump as if it can already chat back.

The pregnancy is going really well, I'm in a stage, according to some family, called "Nesting":

Around the fifth month of pregnancy, the "nesting" instinct can set in. This is an uncontrollable urge to clean one's house brought on by a desire to prepare a nest for the new baby, to tie up loose ends of old projects and to organize your world. 

So at least I'm all pro-active and cleaning like a buzy bee!

With all our love ...