I'm feeling wrecked

I am feeling so tired and it is only Tuesday! Joanna has been a little off-colour the past 2 days (undetermined slight illness), so has been a bit more high maintenance with wanting to be held/cuddled more etc. So that has been tiring me out a bit more than normal. It also meant I didn't get the baking done yesterday afternoon that I needed to take for playgroup morning tea this morning (it was my week on the roster). Which meant that instead of being able to blob after the kids went to bed, I spent my evening in the kitchen baking.

Roasting sucess

Wednesday night, last week, I couldn't go out with Tom Cruise, because I was cooking lamb roast. (Not that I would want to go out with Tom Cruise. Also I don't know if the Lamb people would choose him now - getting a bit old, scientology fanatic, crazy jumping on the couch incident on Oprah etc.)

Anyway...it's the first roast I've cooked in quite a while for a number of reasons.
a) time factor - not actually me having to stand there cooking, just it takes a fair bit of cooking time, which means I need to be home a couple of hours before dinner. Which when I was working, didn't usually happen. And since having kids I just haven't been bothered planning for.
b) past failures - back early in our marriage, we (back when Peter and I had time to cook together) tried to do roasts a few times and always had trouble getting it cooked all the way through. Now I think about this it might have something to do with the previous point - and us not factoring in enough time for it to cook properly.
c) no need - Peter's mum used to do roasts a fair few times when we were there for dinner, so we weren't totally missing out on them, even though we weren't cooking them ourselves
d) Peter doesn't like all the dishes/washing up that cooking roast creates (dish for meat, potatoes, other veg, with associated baked on sticky oil/meat juice etc.)
e) only small part of year when weather is suitable in Brisbane. Don't really want to be cooking roasts between September and May as it's too hot to have the oven on. (Which is actually a reason I'm thinking of having roast more often over here, it helps to warm the house up!)

I now remember the last roast I cooked. It was for Christmas day 2007 (I did the catering for the main meal for my family's Christmas lunch) - it was a beef eye fillet roast and it turned out really well. a) because it was being served cold we cooked it the day before and therefore had plenty of time; b) being a pretty good (and expensive) cut of meat, it was easier to get it to turn out nice.

Anyway this time I used an 'oven bag' to help cut down on the mess and hopefully help it to cook more evenly. To flavour the lamb I just cut a few slits in the top and stuffed a whole garlic clove in each and sprinkled fresh rosemary on top. I used a recipe from 'Destitute Gourmet' for the baked potatoes which meant they cooked in the correct amount of time and were nice and crispy on the outside - for the first time ever!

The family verdict was overwhelming approval. The favourites were:
Ben: potatoes and mint jelly (I bought a bottle of this from the supermarket)
Joanna: pumpkin and potatoes
Peter: potatoes and lamb and pumpkin
Me: all of it - potatoes, lamb, pumpkin, gravy...

Lack of posts...

I realise that I haven't been posting as much recently...This is not for lack of things to say, just when I think of stuff to say I don't have time/aren't near a computer. And when I do have the time/am near a computer, I've forgotten what I wanted to say - I blame it all on pregnancy brain.

Rugby...

Last weekend I decided to take Ben out to a game of rugby - it seemed like a good thing for Dad and son to do. We headed to the university to catch a bit of premier grade Waikato club rugby - they were playing Morrinsville (a little farming town about 30km away, as opposed the sprawling city of Hamilton!). Anyway, Ben enjoyed watching a bit of rugby, enjoyed some hot chips even more, and enjoyed running around with his football and falling over in the slightly muddy grass even more than that.
He also wanted to wash his pants off outside when we got home so Mum didn't see the mud :)

It's cold today...

The air is quite chilly. I think I need to invest in some stylish winter hats to keep my head warm when I'm walking for kindy drop off/pick up. (Only have a daggy beanie - suitable for when we're camping/bushwalking, not for walking around town)

Weird weather

Well, not exactly weird, just extremes. Brisbane has flooding, we've been having an early winter.

Movies we've watched...

Last week, I borrowed a couple of movies from the library to watch during the week.
First was 'Music and Lyrics': nice romcom (romantic-comedy) that wasn't too brainless.
The other was 'Elizabeth - The Golden Age': neither Peter and I know much about british history, and haven't watched 'Elizabeth', so we had to do a bit of research on the internet to find out the history for the period, plus what had happened in the first movie, as well as the general plot of this movie so we weren't totally lost. Again, nice enough movie - we managed to follow/connect the events to make some sense, but it didn't help watching over 3 nights and having numerous interruptions on the 1st night (from a little boy who didn't want to go to sleep).

Yummy risotto...

I made a really yummy risotto last night. I just made up the ingredients myself, so I thought it might just be average, but it turned out really good.
If you're interested the ingredients were:
2 Chorizo sausages chopped
1 carrot chopped
1 onion chopped
1 clove garlic chopped
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1/2 cup semi-dried tomatoes
1 1/2 cups brocolli
chicken stock
1/4 cup grated parmesan

Pie taste test...

The pie tasted pretty good. It was steak and cheese flavour (ie. chunks of steak) and the meat wasn't junky and was nice and tender. But as Peter and I both commented, fundraiser pies have to be fairly good, otherwise people won't buy them when they have the next fundraiser.

Pies have arrived...

The fundraising pies were delivered to kindy today and I was able to bring ours home. They look like any generic family pies. We are having one for dinner, so I'll fill you in on how they taste later.

Winter has arrived...

The past week or more the weather has been maximums under 15C with showers throughout the day. Some days we see the sun, some days we don't see it at all. Peter has been informed by the locals at work that this is typical winter weather.

I don't mind the days where the sun comes out a little bit as it helps warm up the house, and so inside it isn't too cold, just outside is a bit cool. The days the sun doesn't come out are really cold, because the house doesn't warm up at all, so inside is pretty cold, not just outside.

Gymnastics update

Had a different teacher for the kids gymnastics today. She is the teacher who normally takes it, but has been sick for the last couple of weeks. I didn't think she did as good a job as the teacher that had been filling in for her. The warm-up activities she got them to do were rather static and boring (basically dumbed down adult stretches), especially for a group of 2-3 year olds who are full of energy and ready to run around. She also didn't seem to take control when she needed to (during organised/teacher directed activities), so therefore the kids seem to think they could do whatever/whenever.
Hopefully these were just 1st week issues of her getting to know the kids etc. and that it will improve in the next couple of weeks.

Making medicine too attractive for kids...

Had to do the whole worm treatment thing today. But instead of having to convince Ben to eat the tablet...he had a tantrum because he wanted to eat the whole box of tablets in one sitting (one tablet was the dose required for his weight). This was caused by the tablets being exactly like a square of chocolate - size, taste and texture (they are actually made with Cadbury chocolate!).

What to do with the placenta?

Had my first visit from the midwife last week and she gave me some information about birth centres/giving birth in NZ. Included is a 'birth plan' worksheet which goes through all the various parts of pregnancy/labour/birth/post birth and all the various things that I can choose from. One of these includes what I want to do with the placenta, after the birth including - seeing it, or keeping it.

Now I know that in some cultures it is normal to keep the placenta (including Maori culture). But what I wasn't aware of is the options for what people actually do with it. Just by coincidence I ended up in a conversation with a couple of women the other day - one who has planted the placenta from each child under individual fruit trees; the other made them into capsules (through a process of steaming it, cutting it into thin slices, drying in the oven, then crushing into a powder and putting into capsules) to take just like a vitamin. Apparently it has a whole lot of hormones in it which are good for you (especially when you are going through menopause). They also told me about some mothers who just cook it up and eat it like a piece of meat.

My experience/involvement with my placentas in the past is: with Ben, they showed it to me to show that it was intact - it was kind of cool to see, looked like a dark red pancake. With Joanna, I don't recall seeing it or anything. I haven't decided what I'll do this time round, it's not really a big issue to me. I am interested to know what other experiences/choices people have had with their placentas. So what have you done with yours?

Mother's Day

I quite enjoyed my day. I got a lovely breakfast in bed - pancakes with blueberries and yoghurt. Received a nice bunch of flowers. Went to church. Had a nice lunch at home. Enjoyed a nice afternoon rest. Went clothes shopping with Joanna. Had yummy dinner - cooked by Peter. Nothing complicated and pretty relaxed with no family to go visit.

Back to the gym...

I went to the gym and actually exercised today, for the first time in 6 weeks. Dealing with morning sickness and extreme tiredness means that for the past 6 weeks I have been dropping off the kids at the gym and then coming home again to rest for the duration of the session. But I'm starting to feel a bit more normal again and don't feel any worse tonight. I only did about 45 minutes of very slow cross trainer/recumbent bike - I didn't want to go too hard, just ease back into it.

What makes a good church logo?

Our church is in the process of designing a logo (the currently don't have one). They had a few options at church on Sunday that a guy from a local sign writing company had come up with and Peter and I personally weren't impressed/happy with any of them (there were 4 different options, but all along the same lines). So we have been trying to come up with some alternatives. They want to use it for signage, letter head, and on the bulletin each week. So if you have any thoughts, suggestions, opinions that you think would be helpful, please comment!

I have a midwife...

After asking a few people for recommendations for midwives (ok I asked my 3 friends - all who have had babies in Hamilton in the last couple of years - plus the list the Dr gave me); a strange phone call; waiting a week; and another phone call...I now have a midwife. And best of all, she does home visits for all her visits - which means I don't have to worry about working out what to do with the kids when I've got appointments! I'm seeing her for the 1st time on Thursday afternoon.

Race report

Well, I said I would post a little about what the Rotorua Marathon was like. So here it is.
We left home pretty early (about 6am) to get there in time to find a parking spot, pick up my race number etc without having to stress about being late for the start (which was at 9am). The weather didn't look fantastic - cold, grey and breezy. At least it wasn't raining I guess.
After a haka, we were off through the streets of Rotorua before heading out of town and around the lake. I was feeling good - it was feeling easy. At about 18km we hit the first of the two big(ish) hills - Hamurana. It was mildly steep, but didn't feel that bad to me - it still wasn't feeling hard. I went through halfway in 1h54 I think it was. At 24km you hit the other hill - Mourea. This one still didn't feel that bad - on the way up at least. Going down the other side is when I started to feel the pain - my calves and quads started feeling pain. I managed to hang on for quite a while - keeping on going until 32km when my legs were hurting too much and I started walking/hobbling. This is where cold weather doesn't help - the last 10km of the race is fairly flat and exposed - so a cold breeze just meant my legs seized up even more. I managed to "run" a little bit more, but not much. I was determined to run the last km, so I gritted my teeth and ran. 4h23min at the end. 1078th out of 1901 finishers. And a lot of pain.
By the evening, my right knee had started aching a lot - I've worked out that it's my ITB that's flared up badly, probably caused by having to run on the right hand side of the road the whole way - the camber exacerbates the problem.
So, I ran, I finished. I missed my PB from Gold Coast last year by 2 minutes (or thereabouts), but this course was a lot harder. So I guess I have to be happy with that. And live with very sore legs for the next week.

Milestone in Parenting

We filled out the form for Ben's first Kindy fundraiser tonight - a Pie Drive. There we were deciding how many and what flavour pies we were going to buy. With there being no compulsory fees for Kindy, we feel a bit more positive about contributing some money to Kindy via fundraisers (especially when we remind ourselves of how much we were going to be paying in Brisbane to send Ben to the the local C&K kindy). Although the whole experience feels a bit weird for us as we can still clearly remember our parents filling out similar fundraisers when we were young kids at primary school.

24 hours to go...

Until I'll be running around Lake Rotorua.  I've been trying to make sure I get lots of rest this week to make sure I'm as ready as I can be, considering the lack of training I've got through.  Weather forecast doesn't look too bad - just have to wait and see how I go now I guess!