Last weekend we took Max and Oupa to the Brian Boswell Circus here in Pretoria.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the circus, the last one I saw was pretty piss weak, can’t remember what it was called but it was in Corowa. So I didn’t hold much hope that this one was going to be much chop, and the first carnie we saw had one dead eye and no front teeth (why they had him running the kiddy’s ride I don’t know), but I was pleasantly surprised with the show.

They opened with a tiger show that was pretty crap, but the rest of it ticked all the usual circus boxes for me. Sure the performing poodles were a little disobedient and there wasn’t any midgets other than midget ponies, but the juggling and acrobatics were pretty decent and the triple stack tightrope walk was impressive.

All in all a pretty good circus experience, apart from the clowns freaking him out a bit Max loved the whole thing.

His actual party was on Saturday at Zita park in Garsfontein. After an initial struggle to find a venue, it turned out really well appointed. There was plenty of grass to kick the ball on, and everyone enjoyed the play ground equipment.

Ouma backed up last years cake effort (Mario) with another awesome cake. This time it was Brewster from Chuggingtons, Max loved it and Kean managed to get an early finger in it.

That night ouma and oupa dropped in and Max was spoiled with even more gifts.

Max’s birthday ran over a couple of days. It started Thursday morning with pressies from us (including a cool wooden train set). Max loved playing with it on ouma’s stoep in the sun.

You know how sometimes when you pour water over someone’s head you get this perfect umbrella of water separating out around the head, well here’s our attempt to capture that (somewhat unsuccessfully) in photographic form.

Poor little Maxy boy, it’s a good thing he doesn’t mind having water poured over his head!

Nabbed this shot from my snazzy new iPhone the other day, I realised he’s been going to this nursery school for over a year and I’ve not got any photos of it.

This is him standing at the front gate, I cut out the ugly coils of razor barb at the top and managed to get in some JJ Abrams lens flare by mistake!

Brought Zett home today after the successful removal of an acoustic nuroma in her right ear on friday.
The doctor says that she is recovering better than most, though I suspect a large part of that is Zett putting on brave face to get out of hospital. I can’t blame her though, hospitals are shitty places.
There’ll be no more brave faces though, she’s in my care now and there’s no way I’m letting her do anything for the next 4 weeks.

Last night we had a lunar eclipse, my trusty 300mm lens captured it surprisingly well.

Finally got our Kili journal transcribed with some pictures up on the blog.

• Getting there & around Moshi
• Day 1
• Day 2 & 3
• Day 4 & 5
• Back in Moshi

I also found a couple of Swahili words we learned and their meaning. 

Hakuna-ma-ta-ta: No worries mate, cobba, bloke!

Jambo: G’day mate.

Mambo: How are you?

Poa: Good thanks.

Dad got Max a little jungle gym for Christmas. He absolutely loves it! This was a little while ago but Kean and Max playing around with it was too cute.