Danielle's parents have just been for two weeks and it was such a precious time - full of all kinds of activities from her dad making a model boat with James, to Danielle speaking on a students camp, to visiting penguins at the beach, to having a birthday party for James and Charis with both grandparents there for the first time. We just said goodbye to them and we're off tomorrow for a week to Hermanus to stay in a beautiful place in the mountains with lots of ducks! Very exciting...

We had a fantastic day on Wednesday celebrating James's birthday. His bedroom and the lounge got decorated the night before with streamers and balloons; he had breakfast in bed (and we all joined him); and I took the day off so we could all have fun together.
We went to Aunty Elle for morning tea, then off to the Scratch Patch at the Waterfront where we all had lots of fun collecting semi-precious stones.
Fish and chips for lunch (although James didn't want any) and then James and Charis were both so tired they fell asleep in the car. We went to century city, put Charis in her pram and James in a trolley (with a blanket!) and let them both sleep while we had a drink together (a nice unexpected treat!)
Then we went to the Science Center which is basically a gigantic play area so that although little kids may not appreciate everything that's being taught through the activities they can certainly have fun!
Visited the Loizides on the way home and then had Gramps and Granny round for pizza in the evening - and James even ordered it over the phone! (With some coaching from mum...)
There's definitely something special about taking time out to celebrate!

It's quite an adjustment... James being on maintenance means he's freer to do things with other people, eat more food, etc...
Last weekend was amazing - going to church for the first time together as a family - not being able to go has been hard and it was amazing being there. We also went to the aquarium, visited a few friends, and went to one of his friend's birthday parties - quite a gear shift!

Yesterday James had his J-line removed which means once it's healed over he'll be able to swim etc... That means when he gets up in the night we'll no longer hear the soft click-clack of the lum

A small but very helpful victory for us - for the last few months James hasn't wanted to swallow tablets so we've had to crush them up and mix them with his vitamin syrup. His steroids he has to take (for 5 days a month now) are very bitter and he hated the taste...

But since Monday he's been taking them coated in syrup and washed down with juice... making the amount of time to mix them up and persuade him to take them a lot less.

Also we took Charis to the paediatrician yesterday as she wanted to check if there was some ongoing problem that had been interfering with her sleep ... the go

Haven't updated this blog over the last few months - we had to return from Japan because of James being diagnosed with Leukemia in August... and have since then been going through fairly intense treatment with him.

Well ... the great news is that we found out today that James' bone marrow is free from leukemic cells!!!!! Wooohoooo!!!! We are officially on Maintenance treatment now. This means 3 years of:

- monthly intravenous chemo
- five days of steroids every month
- daily oral chemo tablets
- lumbar punctures and bone marrow biopsies every three months to check how things are going

Just discovered DiddleFinger which lets you use Google Maps without having to understand Kanji, etc...

For example, a certain building in Tsurumai...

We've added a Photo Gallery section (using Gallery 2) and started uploading photos - so far just Leaving Cape Town and Stopping over in Joburg but more will be added soon!

Using DigiKam to manage our photos - shame it doesn't run on Windows yet - so we can tag them and the tags and comments get uploaded directly into gallery and are searchable which is nice.

I watched a talk on linkglobal and their work in North Korea and it is profoundly disturbing what seems to be happening in that nation - and has been for many years - yet most international criticism seems reserved to things that will affect other nations. It's as though a government can crushingly oppress millions of people that happen to be in its own territory for years, and others are only worried if it may affect them. (See Liberty in North Korea for more info).

After thinking about de-nuctifying the world I've started to investigate creating a Pidgin (formerly Gaim) plugin to control Skype. This means you're still using a closed network, but from an open program, which makes migrating easier (and allows people to try multiple networks from the same interface).

The Skype API docs are pretty good and it looks like the API can support at least controlling status, sending and receiving text messages, and making and receiving phone calls. So in principle a Skype plugin for Pidgin is a possibility.

I found PyToddler recently and had James having lots of fun moving crayons round the screen and trying to make a mouse eat some cheese and say "Yum yum yum yum yum" - great watching him say "Go over there mouse!" and trying to encourage him to move the actual mouse (as in the computer-type one, not the rodent-type one). Just the kind of thing I wanted to write... the annoying thing in teaching James letters is that it's easier to learn lower-case letters but computer keyboards are all usually decorated with upper-case ones. Once we get to Japan we'll have plenty else to worry about :-)

You can download it from here although its a bit awkward - separate downloads for Python and PyGame and then you have to unzip PyToddler.zip - but worth it for the fun :-)