Still a 'quieter' week, with the creche course not yet running. I am however finalizing a lot of the pre-course admin work as more ladies register. So far I have 17 ladies registered for this course.
We had a ton of fun at Bible Club, last week I mentioned that we 'might' bring water balloons, but that they did NOT need to wear swimming costumes. So of course they all arrive in their swimming costumes, while we have no water-including activities at all planned. We had planned for it to be a games day and so left the girls in their grandfather and aunt's care - which turned out to be a very wise decision as 45 kids running and playing in a small space can seem chaotic, is loud and potentially dangerous to toddlers. We opened with a few songs then played the always popular "groups" game (a few times) and split them into two circles for a game of "fruit basket". We adapted the fruit basket game by having either myself or Michael shout out characteristics/colors according to which the kids then had to find new chairs as they are too young to think of such criteria themselves. After a juice break we asked them to congregate outside and Michael turned on the hose. Our plan was to play "poisonball" and simply intermittently spray them with the hose but they just jumped in front of the hose and started dancing and playing in the spray! They were having so much fun and were so eager to get wet that we didn't even start any structured game. So much fun!
Sunday was pretty epic, no Sunday School due to it being our AGM. It was the last Sunday of the month which meant it was a "praise and worship" Sunday too. A lot of the Aphiwe youth join us for these Sundays so our "new" hall was choc-a-block full. I was quite thankful to be in the mother's room, where Zante was delighted at being able to hold little 3-month-old Tariro for ever such a long time! I then held and rocked him to sleep which I haven't ever done for a child not my own! It was great! The praise session was fantastically uplifting and the AGM nothing unusual. I managed to miss almost an hour (and apparently all the excitement) by having to put Lexi down for her nap.
Homework Club ran more smoothly this week - mostly due to it being a "computers" week. However I also set up a waterpaint activity for Cherish, Mikayla and my girls. Cherish and Mikayla painted numbers 1 - 10 with corresponding amounts of objects underneath and Zante and Lexi just painted for fun. It is interesting that Zante paints an entire picture all in one color while Lexi uses many different colors. Later the four of them played on the jungle gym and I realized that Cherish, now a pre-grader, was only as old as Lexi when we first met her! No wonder these kids are so dear to us!
Wednesday dawned cold and rainy and we should have known better but my mom convinced us to still take the girls along to sister's class, as the sister whose home it was at has a heated pool. Bad idea. The girls were not able to keep themselves occupied, even though I took snacks and activities along. So I heard none of the class, and spent tea-time chasing after Lexi who was chasing after their pet rabbit, all around said pool. It had also started to rain so we ended up not even swimming.
On Thursday Michael was away all day going to fetch Happy from the boarding school, and I went shopping for clothes for the girls with his mom. This was a first but the day ended up being quite enjoyable, even the girls were on their best behavior despite the many stops and even a half-hour wait while a salesman tried to convince her to buy beauty products. When I dropped her off the girls were desperate to visit a while (they get to watch tv there) so I left them there and enjoyed a blissfully silent three hours home alone. It's incredible how much one gets done without two toddlers around! I discovered a really useful if sometimes slightly doctrinally "off" website for sunday school, or in our case Bible Club, lessons, namely Jesus Without Language. We will be following her "Bible Heroes" series and see how it goes!
As I write this we are on our way to Bible Class at the Aphiwe Center. My mom has been kind enough to watch the girls so that Michael and I can both attend!
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