Saturday

Seija, Joona and Jenni have moved from their house high above Hout Bay to another location on the other side of the valley. Matias spent the night there. We saw the new house as we picked him up this morning and quite liked it. There's a lot of climbing, though, as the house is divided over three storeys.

Heikki and Anna Kaisa went out driving for the day. Anna Kaisa was planning to spend a year here, but she's now going back to Finland on Wednesday. So far she's only seen the Llandudno beach, so Heikki and I have decided to take her places during her last days here. She hadn't even seen Cape Town yet, and we only live 15 minutes away. Heikki and Anna Kaisa went first to various places in Cape Town, then for lunch in Rhodes Memorial, a tour in the Constantia vineyards, and finally took the scenic route back home on the Chapman's peak road.

We got Sinekaya to play with Matias for the day. The boys worked on music boxes. Matias needed to make one for school.

The roof builders were here for the day, which meant that they were unable to travel home for the weekend. I got them some Coke, cake, sausage rolls and chicken pasties. I'm not meant to feed them, but they are lovely lads and they were doing a favor by working today. I hope the building company paid them well for the extra work they did.

The roof is coming along fast. The thatchers might start already on Monday. I'd like to say that was a way sooner than was planned (the structure builders were supposed to work for a week or two before the thatchers start) but since the whole roof project is weeks and weeks late, I won't. They're now multi-tasking. The structure builders will work a couple of steps ahead of the thatchers to save time.

I go up to the roof several times a day. Now that the roof is being raised there's loads of space up there. There's the threat that the rooms will be disproportionately large (huge) compared to the rooms in the middle floor. Yet, the lack of windows will limit the number of rooms up there. We can't put too many windows in the thatch roof, as it would look silly. My current plan is 4 bedrooms, 3-4 bathrooms and a study. But we won't make any fixed plans until we see what the space look like with the structure and the windows up there.

I did some gardening today. Nothing major, just a couple of hours of trimming the hedges etc, but I'm exhausted. I don't exercise enough. And since we don't ever even clean the house ourselves, we're not as fit as we used to be. Perhaps I should take up some light house work just so I'd get some exercise.