Chantelle’s off weekend at last, though by now you should be pretty familiar with the concept that Chantelle’s off weekends are now no longer off weekends at all! :)

After Jessie’s little incident (more on this in a later post, I promise), we got her to bed, and the rest of the Friday night was spent with Chantelle in the kitchen preparing for Saturday’s Willowbridge Slow Food Market showing, and me in the study, banging away at my keyboard on my latest software project.

So nothing exciting there I’m afraid, apart from a rather late bedtime.

Saturday morning blasted off with Chantelle up and out of the door at the crack of dawn, where she joined up with her mom and dad in Bellville, before heading over to Willowbridge to set up shop for Chantelle’s Cookies and Cakes’ second market showing.

Back in Gordon’s Bay (where the wind was pumping), Jessica and I took care of the chores and all the packing, before also heading out to the Northern Suburbs – after Jessie arose from her mid-morning nap and enjoyed her bottle of milk of course! The Willowbridge market was once again well supported and the ladies made a killing, so I suppose my little contribution of R7,50 for a piece of chocolate cake wasn’t exactly worth all that much on the day – though the cake as per usual was pretty damn delicious! Loads of visits from the various friends and family, as well as quite a few compliments and possible business leads meant that Chantelle and Cheryl’s day out at the market was once again quite the success.

Jessica and I left the ladies to continue on with their selling in order to make a quick stop at Ryan’s pad to check out the progress on his renovated kitchen, where we found him entertaining Michelle (who we haven’t seen in ages), and even managed to convince him to hand over the latest couple of episodes of Young Justice he purloined off the Internet.

From there Jessica and I headed off to Mom and Dad’s place, wanting to get in a quick visit with them following their return from a week long holiday up at Storms River. As it turned out, Claire was also there for the day, and we enjoyed a nice family visit, with Jessica being quite the centre of attention with old Pops as per usual!

With Jessica pretty exhausted by this stage, I opted to bid farewell to my folks and head off to Monty and Cheryl’s pad, where we dumped Jessica down on a blanket for a solid afternoon’s sleep, enjoyed a quick cup of coffee with catchup regarding the successful market, before Chantelle and I left little Jessie in the capable hands of her Ouma and Oupa, and shot through to Karl and Trish’s pad to join in celebrating Trish’s 30th birthday with her famous cake and off course boardgames, this time consisting of a entertaining game of Balderdash, and a couple of rounds of Pictionary Man.

From there it was back to our base at Oupa and Ouma’s house to pick up the carrot cake baked for Logan’s Christening party on Sunday, and one quick icing job later, Chantelle and I found ourselves at Damen’s door in Kraaifontein, where we successfully handled the drop-off.

Wanting to celebrate Chantelle’s great market experience and my pay increase at work, we decided to take a night off for ourselves, and so straight from Damen and Michelle’s pad, we popped in at Cape Gate Mall, where we ended up thoroughly enjoying the Afrikaans movie Semi-Soet at Ster Kinekor cinemas. It is a by the book, very well executed, funny and touching romantic comedy, and pleasingly, really enjoyable to watch – even if you are and Englishman like myself! Louw Venter is hysterically funny as always, and it was great to see the cinema packed full, the Afrikaner community really supporting this great local movie. (So much so, that Chantelle and I had to sit in the front seat of the cinema, having completely underestimated just how full the movie was going to be!)

After having laughed and cried for a good hour and a half, we decided to wrap up our evening by heading back to Bellville to stop in for a very late night supper at the famous Starlite Diner, where Chantelle enjoy a delicious steak roll and I partook in a fabulous Mexican burger. Yummy!

Anyway, the night had to eventually draw to a close I suppose, and we dragged ourselves back to base, stopping only to change a niggly Jessica’s nappy, before we could hit the bed properly and grab a few hours of sleep before Sunday came rolling in.

Sunday morning was again up bright and early, as we scurried to get Jessica and ourselves ready and settled, before shooting off to Durbanville to meet up with the rest of the friends waiting outside of the Durbanville Anglican Church. The big occasion was of course Logan’s christening, and it was great to see all the friends make it through to come and support, babies and all! As it turned out, the babies were all quiet and obedient (the thing we had been fretting about the most) for the most part of what ended up being quite a lengthy service in a hot and packed church, though I did eventually slip out after the last of the twelve children being baptized on the day were completed. Jessica and I spent the next little while out in the garden under the trees, before being joined by the rest of the guys who also seized the opportunity to slip out during what had turned into quite a drawn out Communion ceremony!

We decided to pass some time before Logan’s celebratory party back at Damen and Michelle’s pad by heading off to Durbanville Mugg & Bean with Evan, Natasha and Evalynne, though our experience was cut short by a very grumpy and exhausted Jessica who was now starting to scream her little head off because of the tiredness (thankfully the quick purchase of some interesting toy goldfish from the Crazy store next door offered us a little respite).

Chantelle and I were par for the course when we got lost trying to take the shortcut via Langeberg road to Kraaifontein, though the extended drive towards Malmesbury was nice in that it gave Jessica a little bit more nap time in her seat, not that you would have said this if you saw her mood once we did eventually turn up at Damen’s door. I’m not sure if it was the large amount of people, the heat, the exhaustion, hunger, or simply all four combined, but unfortunately Jessie quickly took to the screaming approach, meaning that after a quick snack and drink, we had to bid an early farewell and head back to our Bellville base camp, where we finally managed to get a struggling Jessica to go down for a rather extended afternoon nap.

At this point I headed back to Gordon’s Bay, bearing all the crates and materials returning from the market, with Chantelle following later with Jessica, meaning I got a little bit of a break from all the running around – which resulted in the production of this blog post, the unpacking of the car and the putting out of the bins in case you were wondering.

Chores, bedtime routine and at last a little alone time (with pizza) was all that was left for Sunday evening, bringing to close a rather busy weekend for the Lotter Clan!

*Whew* – I’m exhausted just typing this! :)