Ouch...

I have an inflamed disc in my lower back (did it maneuvring the pram off the bus on the way home yesterday). So I'm not supposed to sit or bend, but have to keep it moving (a bit hard with young kids); and I can only take panadol to help with the pain because I'm breastfeeding. I will also need to visit the physio tomorrow.

Day out...

I'm going to the Food, Wine and Jazz Festival down at the Hamilton Gardens today! It should be a great day - weather forcast is for a fine day, no kids (well except Naomi), I get to taste yummy food and wine, and I get to chill out on the grass and listen to some cool live Jazz.

Run, baby, run...

About 3 weeks ago I decided to start doing my cardio outdoors when I go to the gym. So this has involved running a circuit around near my gym.

Now I have never been a distance runner, as in I have never enjoyed it, it has always felt like had work to me. I used to be a sprinter back in my school days and even then I used to think 200m was getting a bit long! I have tried getting into running using the treadmill at the gym, but still felt it was too hard work and it was easy for me to cheat and just hit the button to decrease my speed to a nice walk.

So the circuit I have started with is only 2km long (which I have only just worked out thanks to here). The first time I just walked it, the next time I ran about 600m then walked, next 1.2km before needing to walk and today 1.4km before walking (although I did run again for a little more near the end). I aiming to run 1.6km next time and the full 2km the time after that. I am starting to find I'm getting into 'the zone' for at least a little bit of the time (ie. it isn't feeling like hard work the whole time). And I also need to start looking at a longer route to start working my way around. I would never thought I would say that I'm actually enjoying this longer distance running.

Is anybody else watching the Winter Olympics?

Today is the first that I have watched any. It's figure skating, which I used to really like watching, but today I feel like it is a bit ho-hum and wished they had something more exciting on like ski jumping or slalom.

And it really doesn't help when they are showing the same skaters now as they were before the 6pm news!

Naomi's latest skill...

Coughing. She has just discovered how to make a coughing noise and likes to sit/lie there practicing this along with giggling, cooing etc.

Waves of energy...

Why is it that I frequently feel energized when driving home from our morning activities and therefore make great plans of getting lots of jobs done at home...but by the time we have had lunch, all I feel like doing is lying down and having a nap?

(and therefor the list of jobs either don't get done or get crammed into a shorter space of time)

Revenge of the monster squash...

We have a squash plant out the front. It is supposed to produce little button squash. It ended up with very large leaves which obscured the fact that it was in fact producing monster squash instead...
Joanna might be small, but still, those are some pretty impressive squash.

The packing phenomenon...

When you pack a whole big box of stuff, yet can't see any difference to the amount of stuff left on the shelves/in the room that still needs to be packed!

VACANCY...

Tom and Alison (my sister) departed early this morning. They were the last of our visitors for the summer, with no more booked to come. Which means our guest room is empty and available. So I thought I'd advertise a few special offers/packages to encourage friends and family to come visit us...

Offer 1 - The rental house experience package.
If you want to experience staying in our current house, it is only available for the next 2 weeks (until we move). So get in quick! Highlights include:

• seeing our first home in NZ
• living only 1 minute walk from major shopping centre
• experiencing walk-through toilet
• relaxing time
• flexible sightseeing outings

Offer 2 - The moving house experience package.
If you like helping people move house, this is the one for you. Highlights/activities include:

• packing boxes
• heavy lifting of boxes and furniture
• lots of cleaning
• unpacking boxes
• staying in 2 different houses
• childcare
  

This offer is only available for a limited time, so get in quick!

Offer 3 - The new house experience package.
This package would satisfy the home handyman, builder, gardener, interior designer desires in all of you. Highlights/activities include:

• repairing and painting window frames
• cleaning, sanding and re-oiling deck
• designing and creating large veggie garden
• curtain making

This package will be offered on an ongoing basis, but will continually be re-named and the highlights/activities may (will) change without notice at the discretion of the operator.

If none of these packages suit your holiday requirements, we are happy to organise a unique, personalised package for you. So start booking your visit to us now!

Ice cream shop...

A friend from church got an ice-cream making machine for Christmas. She has had great fun making many different flavours and telling me about them. But there is only so much ice-cream you can store in the freezer at once, so she was generous enough to lend me the machine to have a go at making some myself.

First the kids chose to make 'peanut butter ice-cream'. You may be thinking that it doesn't sound very nice, but it does actually taste quite nice.

Then we had a over supply of watermelon that needed using up, so I made 'watermelon and lime sorbet'. This one is nice and refreshing.

I then decided to attempt frozen yoghurt, so made apricot frozen yoghurt. It tastes nice and creamy.

And the last one that I've made is coffee gelati. I have yet to taste this one, except for a small lick of the spatula when transferring it to the ice cream container to freeze.

There are a few other flavours I want to try making, but I'm going to give the machine back for now as we have no freezer space to store any more (until we eat up all the ones I've made so far). And with us moving soon we don't really have time to make more at the moment and it wouldn't survive the move anyway.

NZ is weird...

With the cricket season still in full swing, I've been listening to a little bit of the cricket on the radio. Nothing unusual there. What I do find unusual though is the ads that are on the radio. Seemingly the two most popular products for cricket listeners (based on advertising minutes):

• cattle dip
• vasectomies

But then again, maybe it's just me that finds it weird...

NEWSFLASH!

Those mysterious lanes marked on the road with strange two-wheeled contraptions painted in them are actually NOT intended as any of:

• space for cars to queue up in
• space for cars to park
• space for pedestrians to stand around in
• space to nose into when turning onto Grey St

Strangely enough, they are occasionally used by cyclists. Who get slightly annoyed when the above happen.

PS: I do actually usually enjoy cycling to and from work... just every now and then motorists and pedestrians can be really annoying when they seem to assume that cyclists only live on Mars or something.

It's quiet in here...

Well, not in our house, but on our blog. Tom and Alison and Joshua are still here, so we've been doing stuff with them instead of blogging.

In other news though, we're probably moving into our new house in 4 weeks time rather than 6 weeks time. So we'll be doing lots of packing in the next few weeks. Ugh. (that's for the packing and moving process, not that we'll have our own house...)

Day off...

Today is Anniversary Day public holiday, so Peter doesn't have to go to work today. Unfortunately it rained all day yesterday and is forcast to rain again today, so we can't really go out and do much. So for now the plans for the day are:

• have cooked breakfast
• visit dump/recycle shop (to acquire stuff for our new house - cheaply)
• Go to a 1st birthday party this afternoon (daughter of friends from work)