TRAINING A DRAGON

THE DRAGON!

Hello Friends,

Well, today is not the best day in our lives. The reason is this horrible old pump story. Every single time Rhys tells us to go and switch on the pump. We HATE that pump duty. So today I was walking to go and call my brother Kay to come and do the Slobberdog story and Rhys came in here and grabbed my head and squeezed it really sore. The worst thing is he did it in front of a volunteer. I could see she was shocked! And then he screamed and said ‘Go switch on the pump!  Why don't you do what you are supposed to do.  Now the nursery has run out of water’ I was crying. I can’t help it. I know he calls me a wimp but I cry when I’m upset. 


I called and called for my brother, Kay, but he didn’t come. So then I walked to the pump and I cried all the way. When I came back home I found my Mom in the house.  I told her what happened and she said - Yes Jesse but you frustrate Rhys because you know you have to pump on a Sunday morning otherwise the nursery runs out of water.  But then she saved me. She went to Rhys and told him – I don't want the twins to switch on the pump anymore. She especially doesn’t like it when I have to go after it is dark. Mommy told Rhys to leave us alone because we are too young for that job. He must find somebody older to do it. And Rhys said – 'Yes, okay, I will leave them alone.  But you guys are just little sissies.  Can't even switch on a little switch!’  When we walked out of his cottage I said to Mom - Well its not about the switch! and Mom said -  Shhhh Jay.  Don't be disrespectful!

Christian

Well I don’t believe he will leave us alone. He just says that because of Mommy but I bet you when Mommy goes out he is going to get us AGAIN.


When I was walking Rhys came to me. He pushed me and said – YOU go and help your brother. And I said – But he is already finished with the pump. And then he said –  Then go and fetch me cat food. But I didn’t. Instead I ran away into the playground. As soon as he was calling my name, I said, “James pick me up, quick!" and I stood on his shoulders and I climbed up into the tree and hid behind the leaves.


Then Rhys came into the playground and said – where’s Kay? I nearly died, but then James and Christian saved my life because they said - We don’t know.  Shooo! That sure was scary. My other brothers said – Go and switch on the pump quick! and I said – I don’t do the pump anymore. But then they said … - Don’t lie! And I said, if you don’t believe me … go and ask Mom.


Slobberdog is not happy right now. Mommy is changing the garage into a homework room for all of us. Fr. Barney helped to pay for it.  It will have computers in it because these days we always need to do computer work for homework and we can’t get it done because we have to use her computer and there are too many of us. So now they turfed poor Slobberdog out of the garage to make the changes. It was so sad because he was lying right on top of all the stuff they turfed out, because his mattress was up there, wobbling on top of old cupboards and boxes and stuff. I don’t know how he managed to get up there and to sleep there all night under the stars, but he did. Even though Mom tried to call him in, he just sat there looking grumpy.

OUT IN THE COLD!

Mom kept covering him with blankets, but then when he needed to go for a wee he would lose the blanket and be cold again. Oh, poor old Slobberdog. It really is a dog’s life hey.

I don’t know what is going to happen to his sleeping place once we have finished the room. I hope we manage to buy him a nice, cozy kennel. But because he is such a big boy, the kennels cost a lot of money and Mom keeps saying, - maybe next winter we will be able to afford one. But it never seems to happen for poor old Slobberdog.

Today is Father’s Day. I can’t talk to my father today. But if I could talk to him I would tell him to speak to his son Rhys and tell him to behave. LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL.


I think we should put a big sign on our gate with a picture of Rhys that says:   'BEWARE OF THE DESPICABLE  HUMAN!'  LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL


What does despicable mean?

I don’t know, I heard it on a movie. But its not very nice.  It was on HOW TO TRAIN A DRAGON. LOL LOL

If Rhys tries to touch me or my brother again, I would take a vuvuzela and wave it at him. I will say ‘you touch one - you touch them all’, that’s our family lore. So nobody can beat us except our mother because she knows whether it’s right or not.

But actually I AM sad about Father’s Day. We did send our father a Father’s Day card but he returned it. Mom says 'Not to worry, he has probably just moved again.  He likes moving. She said he’s probably in Pencilvania by now.

Where’s Pencilvania?

Where the Pencils live, silly! LOL LOL. I don’t know. I think that’s what she said. Or maybe Scandanavia.

Oh well, it doesn’t matter anyway does it?

NAH. Gone is gone.

But there is some great news! We are going away for 3 days. A most amazing thing happened. We asked our Mom if she would call Lynette and ask her if we could visit her for a few days. This holiday is so long and boring! We love Lynette a lot and always have lots of fun at her house. But Mom didn’t know her ‘phone number and so she tried to call Fiona but Fiona wasn’t answering her ‘phone. So then Mom said she will try later. And before she got a chance, guess what? Lynette ‘phoned Pippa and told her she wanted us to go to her for a few days. We are leaving on Thursday. How cool is that? Me, Kay and Benjamin will be going.

We are going to get spoiled. She always spoils us. Benjamin is our little bit bigger brother. He is the one who got burned. I’m too sad to tell the story, so I am not going to say anything now except GOODBYE!

Okay, I will tell the story about Benjamin. This is it: One night about two Christmases ago, we were all making a little camp outside under the willow tree. We took our little two-man tents and pitched them outside and we thought it was going to be great to sleep out there, under the stars. We did it lots of times before. We were all singing songs and making our tents nice, while Tommy was making a fire in the braai-vleis place.

BENJAMIN

Tommy got irritated because he could not get the fire to catch. The wind kept blowing it out. So he said to us – I am going to fetch something from the workshop. So off he went and came back with a plastic bottle of petrol. We all said – let’s not do that. But Tommy was sure he knew how to do it well. So he took the bottle and told everybody to step back. Then he poured it on this tiny little flame in the braai and WHOOOOOSH! The whole braai exploded and Tommy got such a fright! He threw the left over petrol bottle across the lawn and it splashed and burnt Benjamin.

Benjamin ran straight into the house and to Mommy, screaming and screaming, Mommy! Mommy! Tommy burned me. Mommy grabbed him and was screaming: What happened? What happened? And Ben said Tommy burned me. Mommy put him in a cold bath while she called Pippa and when Pippa came they rushed him to hospital. He was in ICU for 10 days and was very sick. He missed Christmas and everything. We were all so sad and very scared.  We didn't want him to die. It was terrible. Mommy and Pippa were never home because they were sitting with him and they didn’t talk to us because they were so scared. But there was a family who were spending Christmas with us, Cheryl Spessert and her three kids and husband. They looked after us while Pippa, Zoё and Mom were at the hospital. We prayed a lot. We were happy that the Spesserts were Christians because we all wanted to pray so much.

Anyway, Ben eventually came home. He has bad scars on his face, but they are getting better and better. If people tease him at school we threaten to punch them in the face because he is our brother. We believe ‘You touch one you touch all!’

ITUMELENG GETS A RED CARD!

I want to say something about the World Cup. We are NOT as happy as we were at first. The reason is because there was this very ugly Referee in the Stadium when Bafana Bafana was playing. And we could all see that he didn’t like Bafana Bafana - but only the other team which was Uruguay. He never gave Uruguay any red or yellow cards, but he just kept picking on Bafana Bafana through the whole game and in the end, he gave our goal keeper Itumeleng a RED CARD! That was so bad and Itumeleng cried and cried and was so disappointed. Now he can’t play in the next game against France and he is the best goal keeper in the whole world and this might make us lose! Just imagine how upset poor Itumeleng must be? And on top of it, it’s his birthday today. On Father’s Day as well. Well, we already said a prayer for him this morning. I hope he feels okay.  Everybody should feel okay on their birthday!

The other thing was that we were disappointed with the South Africans who were watching the game because they just got up and left after that. That was so rude to walk out when the players are still trying their best to win. We didn’t think South Africans should behave like that. Sis!

Also, another bad thing that happened was that our very good player, Steve Pienaar had to sacrifice himself because we needed a goal keeper and you can’t play without one so Steve Pienaar had to go out. He sacrificed himself, so that was kind of a good thing … because Jesus also sacrificed himself for our mistakes.

One night I was watching soccer in the barn. My big brother, Joshua, told me to go and switch on the pump. I was so sad and scared because it was already dark, but he never listens.  Then he said I must go and tell the security guard to come with me if I'm scared.  But the security guard sits right near to the pump so its still very far. But I didn’t listen to Joshua. I ran to my Mom and I told her. She was too sad because every time she forgot to tell Rhys that we mustn’t do the pump in winter because it is too dark and cold. And I said Thank you Mom. But then Rhys still shouted at me and said 'No I don't care you must still do the pump. Mom treats you like a baby.  You are 11.  You can do the pump.' I hope he stops now.

The weather has been very cold this week so it hasn’t been nice to play outside. We mostly just hang out in my Mom’s room and watch soccer, and soccer and more soccer. Even though we do love soccer, it does get very boring every day. We all love our Mom’s room too much, though.  It's so cozy and it smells like her. But sometimes it smells like Ruthi's stinky nappies!  If we only had DSTV like she does, we would get out of her room more often and we would watch our own channels in the lounge. Wouldn’t that be nice? But then I guess the lounge would still be colder than Mommy’s room, so we would probably still go there because many of us make the room nice and warm.  And the lounge doesn't smell like Mom.  Sometimes it smells like cat pee!

Sis Jay!

Only joking.  Okay we will go now until next week.  Bye!

Bye!