Last night the Jakas family got together for a nice family dinner at Baba's (grandma's) house.
Having just completed a marriage counselling session with Sally, she quickly rushed over to her hip-hop/breakdance class, run by a couple of our good friends, Angie and Jege. You can have a look at their website here, which includes some photos I've taken for them: http://www.breakandenterdance.webs.com/
After hearing about Ella's disheartening test results a couple of days beforehand, I wanted to see her and everybody else, so headed over to Daniel's mum's house.
I arrived a bit late for the food part, not that it's relevant to me anyway, but came in while the older people (over 5) were sitting at the dinner table. I'd had my jejunostomy tube switched over on Tuesday which was rather brutal, mainly consisting of a doctor trying hard to pull the old tube out, before snipping the bottom part off and putting the new small port in. I'm in the middle of writing another blog post about that, so keep an eye out for that in the near future.
But anyway, after showing them the changed tube site, I walked into the main room where Ella and Scarlett were watching The Wiggles on TV. Ella was sitting back on a mini lounge chair, while Scarlett was half-buried in a large beanbag.
Going up to say hello, Scarlett waved her arms and legs around like a turtle stuck on its back in the beanbag, while Ella quickly looked at me and said hello. Still watching the TV, a few seconds later she called out 'Sally...?!, expecting her to be with me. She asked 'Where's Sally?' and I said she was having some fun at her dance class.
I said hello to Scarlett as well, and helped her struggle out of the big dip she'd made in the beanbag. Ella went up closer to the TV, while Scarlett wandered and jumped around a bit.
I'm not sure what was happening here, but it looks like something on the floor was funny.
She then jumped back onto the beanbag.
Bored with the current DVD, Baba and Zoe helped Ella pick out a new Fairies DVD to watch; who are generally at least more bearable than the Wiggles. Or maybe I just haven't heard them repeated quite as frequently.
With the new show playing, Ella settled back down on her little lounge, fixed on the screen.
Obviously that was way too boring a viewing choice for Scarlett, and she decided to see what the fairies looked like upside down.
She scampered off again shortly afterwards, leaving Ella enthralled with the dancing routines taking place on the beaches of Second Valley. (A guess that was confirmed by the end credits; having been there in person several times, the coastline and rock formations looked very familiar)
Scarlett and Zoe came back in with a weird looking knobbly ball, and mucked around with that for a bit, before Scarlett ran back out of the room again.
She had a bit of a cuddle with Baba, before struggling to escape so she could get a drink of water from her backpack near the kitchen bench.
The family dog Lilo (The name has a couple of Ls in it, but that's probably not right) was pretty keen on playing with Scarlett.
Holding the bottle out towards her briefly, Scarlett then gulped some water down while Lilo pawed at the window.
A short time later some desserts were on the table, including rice pudding, chocolate and a nice bottle of red wine.
After clambering onto a couple of different chairs, Scarlett sat down between Daniel and Emily and shoveled spoonfuls of rice pudding into her mouth as we all chatted.
Scarlett takes after her mum in quite a few ways, one of which is a love for chocolate.
After a few pieces, playing in the backyard started to look like fun....
Coming up in Post #2: Playing outside.
