Summer in Cape Town

Cape Town summer is quite beautiful.  The days are just perfect most of the time.  Occasionally there will be a hot day.  So this past sunday, after roasting during the church service, Wes and Leigh invited us to their place for a swim.  Since they live right around the corner from us, it was SO easy to say YES!  It was 91 degrees Fahrenheit in the SHADE!  We all were in the mood for a cool down in the pool.  

Oh how I love this man.

Wes and Dave racing on the floaty chairs.  It was hilarious. 

Ryann Grace, you don't have to grow up so fast ya know?

Floating around with mom.

Family Picture

(Laura, Lisa, Matthew and my folks-- doesn't this all remind 

you guys of our summers with the Saurs?)

I am becoming a...

...a house wife or a homemaker.  I mean, like one that makes their own baby foods, bread, and cinnamon rolls.  One that is on top of doing dishes and cleaning constantly even if the work goes unrecognized.  One that does laundry often and folds it neatly...

wow, I really never thought I would become one of those "moms".  I'm proud of it, but still cannot believe it actually happen.  I mean, my twin sister was always the "homemaker" out of us four kids and was very very good at it.  I was very happy to be the one doing the physical outdoor work like raking and prunning my mom's garden for the winter.  Washing the chopper and combine for Pops was no problem for me.  But ugh, if my mother asked me to clean the kitchen and "do the job well like Laura does" I grunt and groan and moan the entire time.  AND it is never clean enough for my mom or at least seemed that way to me. 

Now, somehow, mysteriously, I actually enjoy taking care of the household and taking care of my family.  Oh no, what has happen to me?!  :)

So yes, I have made homemade bread.  Just simple white loafs.  It is SO much easier than I thought!  It smells SO yummy when its baking and it is pretty good to eat.  Anthony is THRILLED.  His favorite food is bread.   I've also been making homemade baby food for Ryann.  Well, not so much "baby food" anymore since she's just eating small chunks of foods and not purees.  Still I can't believe how easy it is to do this.  It does take up some time of the day to make the meals and freeze it, but I just do it when I'm cooking dinner for the SA crew.

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to write this post was because of the homemade cinnamon rolls that I made this past weekend.  It was AMAZING.  Oh my gosh, I LOVED it.  It is a Paula Deen recipe, and good gosh, it's unreal. Anthony also LOVED them. When I go home, I am for sure making this for my family in Michigan because they all appreciate their sweet-tooth.  I've got two pictures to pose as evidence that indeed, Erin 'Carlson' Rodriguez is turning into a homemaker. 

  

Ryann's Roar and Bird Clicks.

Before... Then... and Now

~Before there were kids, two of my cousins and I all got engaged within the same month.  Then we all married within the same year.~  

Caleb and Krysti Edson married in April

Anthony and Erin married in July

TJ and Gabe married in December

~Then the babies came.  One was planned and the other two were surprises.  We all had our babies within one month (January and February).~  

Jaxon (right) was born to TJ and Gabe.  

Justus (left) was born to Caleb and Krysti. 

 Ryann (center) was born to Anthony and Erin.

~And now our babies have turned or are about to be one year old.  The year flew by.~

 

Jaxon is the oldest of the three.  

He was born January 17th.  

He has the same birthday as his dad.  

He has amazing blond poofy hair and is a handsome boy.

Justus was born February 12th.

He is the biggest of the three.

He could hold up his own head since day one.

He is such a stud.

Ryann was born on February 14th.

She has the same birthday as her grandmother, GoGo.

She is the youngest great grandchild of the Beckman clan.

She is beautiful.

few days away

We had a student retreat this past weekend.  Well, we left on thursday and got back saturday am.  Anthony is involved with the student ministry at Jubs, so he went, and Ryann and I got to tag along.  I'm so glad we did.  I was ready to get out of the house since Anthony had been sick for about a week  and half with a strange and nasty flu.  Dave then became sick with a common cold for like two days.  Now Bethany has been down with the same thing as Anthony for the past few days.  It has not been too fun being around sick people.  I've got to work hard to keep Ryann away from them and to keep her chill and quieter.  I'm really ready for things to be normal again!  So this weekend away was really nice.

I do not know the name of this place, but it was like a hour and half road trip away from Cape Town and the "cool air" from the ocean.  We left around 3 pm and the road trip was just SO HOT.  We do not have AC in the car, so we were sweaty and trying not to be miserable.  Gosh, i couldn't figure out if still hot air was better than blowing hot air (windows down vs windows up)  We really got a taste of the African sun on this trip.    

As an attempt to keep Ryann "cooler", we put the window shade around her to keep the sun off her.  She slept most of the way.  When she woke up, we played peekaboo with the shade.  Here's her smile after we lifted the shade.  

KK was taking a nap out on the veranda and Ryann kept wanting to play with him.  

Ryann wakes up at 6 or 6:30am every day now, and everyone else gets to sleep in for a few more hours.  Oh I miss those days.  Anyway, the three of us decided to take a walk and check out our surroundings.  It was windy that morning and so I layered up my little one.

oh my sweet family.

little miss adventurous

Friday night we all watched the sunset.  It was so beautiful.  Anthony thought the moon rising was really cool and I actually like this shot.

Beautiful sunset

A meal with pap.

A student/friend from University of Cape Town, KK, came to our place and cooked us an african dinner. He made us "pap", beef stew and a spinach dish.  You do not use utensils and the pap is made out of maize, which is the african style of corn meal.  The pap has a texture of play dough (but this can be eaten) and the flavor is very very very bland.  There is no spice in it.  It is used to "scoop" up the stew and spinach.  It was all VERY yummy!  When Marissa comes in March, he has offered to make it again for her to try.  I'm so excited.  I really enjoyed this meal.

Here Kitty Kitty

We had another Fun Day (I wrote a different post explaining fun day previously) at Jubs.  We all enjoyed playing and soaking up some sun and eating a great braii picnic.  One of the activities provided was face painting.  The kids LOVE getting their faces painted.  I decided Ryann should get her face painted as well!  She's a kitten.  But, right in the middle of the face paint, she wriggled her hand loose and smeared her whiskers... I quickly captured the hand and in doing so, I let the other one go.  Shoot.  She messed her other whiskers.  oh little kitty! 

Her hair reminded me of the wild cats on the farm.  So I thought it was fitting for her little face costume.