All summer long Claire was determined to conquer the monkey bars. At the end of August Claire finally conquered them and Jimmy captured the moment with some photos & a video. When Claire puts her mind to something she won’t stop until she gets it. She is a very determined girl and Rhys is a total monkey who has a small part in the video too 😉
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[wpvideo rZLHjc9H]
On a hot Sunday morning we decided to pack up our swimming gear and head to Elk Lake which is about a 15 minute drive from our house. Jimmy spent a lot of time at this Lake and the conjoining Beaver Lake in his youth. I ran the trails of this lake when I went to University. The trails are really nice and if you run the whole lake it is 10km. Elk Lake is the training area for Canada’s Olympic Rowing team and is a popular fishing area as they stock the lake with fish annually.
We arrived fairly early so there were not many people. We played in the sand and then quickly made our way into the warm lake water. Claire and Rhys love swimming. Particularly Claire who is a fish and once in the water does not want to come out. After a few hours we packed up and headed home to host our friends for an early evening BBQ. A great Sunday!
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Claire being a ‘baby turtle’ on her daddy turtles back 🙂
Recently, we read about a park full of bunnies that was in the nearby suburb of Benoni. It was a nice warm day when we visited and although we weren’t completely impressed by the park itself, the kids did have fun with all of the bunnies and we had some good play time. It made for a solid weekend adventure.
Its always nice to find more public parks to visit that are relatively safe.
In South Africa the fear of the unknown is always present. Many Johannesburg neighborhoods go so far as to block of certain roads that lead into their areas. They’ll hire a security guard who monitors the one singular main entrance exclusively, taking down license plate numbers, etc. Seeing as this pooling of funds and hiring of security is often privately done, it makes for lots of unmarked dead-ends and unexpected U-turns while driving around. One day, we noticed an unmanned gate and opted to drive in without ill intention. We left without incident after a nice walk. It was very pretty and very quiet and we made some nice conversation with the other people who also chose to stroll on this day.
