well, after a few promises and hints, here we go then with some pictures from our recent holiday! for those of you who got a hint at them coming and have been keen to see them, i can only trust that it turns out to have been worth the wait!
we had a wonderful if somewhat exhausting holiday up at Sun City. the exhausting part would, of course, come from trying to keep up with James and William who were on top form and wished very much to do everything all at once! well, that's no great surprise; with so much to do and so much space to do it in the boys went wild under our great encouragement!
here's William doing just that, with off in the distance your humble narrator making some rather useless attempt to keep up with him!
William is rather taken with this walking and running business. we had the pram with us for him, but he wasn't particularly interested in it. he walked some remarkable distances for someone who is not quite 2 yet, but did take a quick break every now and then to catch his breath at least!
stopping to take a breath only means more enegry to keep on playing, of course, and the play area near the massive place where one can go for the king of breakfasts (the Cabanas, for those in the know) provided the boys with a great deal of fun!
James has obviously been to the place a good few more times than his younger brother. so frequently, in fact, that he pretty much knows where everything is and exactly what he wants to do the moment we get to the place! as he has not featured in this post yet, here he is posing and looking like quite the chap in the mentioned play area.
i very much prefer to get pictures of the boys together, but it's rather difficult to capture them both looking the same way! Michele more or less managed to get a great pic of them in the play area, but don't just take my word for it - see for yourself!
far too much going on for them to stop and pose, really!
William seems to find endless fascination and interest in the most simple and straightforward of places, it has to be said. he found an old (hopefully mostly clean) container of some description by the swings near one of the jungle gyms and quite happily spent a while playing with that and the sand!
oh, to have that very straightforward and pleasant enjoyment of life once again!
no trip to Sun City would be complete for us without a ride down to the Kwena (i think) crocodile park. over the years i have posted many, many fabulous pictures of the magnificent nile crocs they have there, so shall just include the one here this time.
James remembered the names of all the really big ones (Arnie and The Terminator, no less) and was very happy to see them all again. although we took him around last year i think it was this year that William appreciated them somewhat more - to the extent of sticking his hand through the fence to try and wave hello to them!
other wildlife on display that William took a shine to would be covered by his current favourite phrase, "noisy bird". he loved the aviary a great deal indeed. here's James sat with the two parrots that William took a particular like to!
as for what James liked, well, just about everything would be the answer! a big number one of course would be having a go on the most excellent Star Wars and Jurassic Park games they have available there.
which is not to say he was inside all the time playing them, far from it. an interesting new love he has is for the excellent, fun game that is mini golf, or if you will crazy golf!
a very interesting thing happened as i was showing him how to play the game. as soon as he clocked that the idea was to get the ball in the hole using as few shots as possible James took a shine to just putting the ball by the hole and tapping it in. when i encouraged him to have a go at starting from where one is supposed to, well, the inevitable happened - he got a hole in one on a rather tricky course!
James also took quite a shine to photography, and it was his taking of the camera that led to me sorting through well over 500 pictures to present these to you! even if i say so myself, James is getting rather good with the camera - now that he has stopped shaking it around the moment he presses the button, at least!
here's one he took of "the rest of his family" as we were walking around!
i am not usually prone to vanity or a wish to put pictures of me up here (unless it's wildly amusing), but all the same i have to say i really, really like this one that James took of your humble narrator!
and i really love this one that he took of himself!
rather clever son, well done!
another thing that excited James a very great deal was the "Monster Trucks" they had there to ride on. well, to him i suppose that's what they look like!
he was a bit nervy at first, as indeed was i when i let him go on it. i am currently trying to teach him how to ride his bike, and thus far his learning has got as far as "why wear out the breaks when a wall will come along and stop you?". thankfully, however, with this excellent bike thing he soon clocked the steering and indeed worked out how to make it go around rather fast!
a somewhat more pleasant ride, however, was the delightful "safari ride" train we found near where all the animals are. family around the world can expect the home video "soon" and you should be aware that it features a fair bit of this, since we ended up riding on it four times!
it was a brief yet very pleasant ride around the grounds, with William and James both loving riding around and getting very close to the ostriches, springboks and meerkats. there was also one there that James is convinced is a buffalo, it is not for me to correct him. especially when i did not quite catch exactly which animal it was.
well, there you go! there are about a hundred other stories and pictures to tell, but some things are always best kept as family memories, even here in the 21st Century. hope you have enjoyed what i have put here, though!
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment