I spent Friday morning at head office attending a briefing on the new HR Academy which the bank is running for all the HR people in the bank. I must admit that I am extremely excited about it ~ the bank is supplying us with some serious development at no cost to us, except our time and effort. The next step is a development assessment ~ which was heavily questioned in this session as many people believe that this will lead to people losing their jobs. Dean Retief who works in Group HR was at the session and assured us that this was not the case and that the assessment would assist each one of us in drawing up a personalised development plan ~ only time will tell if we can trust the system.
After this session I popped into the Ombudsmans office as it is in the Conference Centre at Head Office ... Dumi Ncala is the Ombudsman for the bank and is a very special man and I love chatting to him. He shared some of the experiences he had on his recent trip overseas with the Daily Bread organisation and also news from the Cotlands AGM ~ having been a volunteer at Cotlands a long time ago it is still interesting to me to keep up to date with what is happening there. I am always amazed at how many things he is involved with. From there I decided that I would surprise Connor and collect his ID document. He was so excited when I got home and he found his ID in my folder.
We decided to take Mom out on Friday night as a surprise for her 70th birthday which is on Monday 19 September ~ The reason we had to do it early is that on Saturday morning Noleen and Gordon
were leaving for Umhlanga and in the afternoon Richard was flying to
Germany. We decided on Torino's as it is before payday and their food is good and reasonably priced. We told Mom that we were taking Connor to Spur and would see her on Saturday morning. We left the house at 6h15 and Noleen & Gordon collected Mom at 6h30. When they arrived at the
restaurant Connor, Courteney and Matthew were outside so she knew that we were there. We decided to have foccacia and greek salad on the tales as starters then everyone ordered their own main course followed by coffee and a yummy cake which Wendy ordered for us from Pick 'n Pay ~ we knew this cake was good as we had a similar one on her birthday.
As usual the cameras were out in force ~ I cannot wait to scrapbook this occasion.
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| The York Girls & Mom |
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| 3 Generations |
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| Mom & Connor |
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| Linda and the cake monster! |
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| Wesley and his cute girlfriend Sam. |
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| Dean and his girlfriend Marissa |
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| Richard and Gina |
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| Connor, Courteney, Matthew, Liam and Jarod got themselves stuck in the lift and we had to wait for the lift guy to come and let them out (thankfully he was visiting in South Hills otherwise it would have taken him much longer to get there from Vereeniging!!!) ... Linda Wood could not understand how Wendy and I were not hysterical ~ Well they were stuck, what could we do about it??!!! |
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| Matthew, Courteney, Connor and Liam |
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| The reason for the kids being stuck in the lift ... Connor wanted them to see this view. So we stopped on our way out of Aspen Hills to take a photo ... gotta scrapbook this!!! |
This morning Connor and I slept a little late and then I decided to have a bath and took one of my new Jon Gordon books, Soup, with me. I emerged three hours later having finished the book. He is an amazing writer and gives business lessons in a story format. When I was finished we dropped Mom off at Gold Reef and Connor and I went through to Hyde Park and to our amazement, Exclusive Books is closed for renovation and they have a little shop set up in the courtyard downstairs. I sat and had a cuppaccino while Connor trawled the isles looking for a book. When he could not find what he wanted he asked if we could go to The Glen but on our way he asked if we could pop into Killarney ~ thankfully Exclusive was still open and he found the book he was looking for. We fetched Mom at Gold Reef and stopped past a garage shop to get rolls for dinner and instead found some delicious pies. I phoned Richard to see what he was up to and he said that they were going to look for a Burger King to have dinner. I watched Strictly Come Dancing and Kitchen Nightmares USA and then decided to update my blog ... Now I am going to jump into bed ... Sleep tight!!!
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