Wow it’s been a while

In case you missed it…

Countdown

12 days to go! Tim, Mum and Dad are here in Sydney, Olo flew into Auckland this afternoon and various other people are elsewhere in Aus, NZ or in the air… Stace and I had our Sydney hens and stag on Saturday and are just about recovered. Pete organised mine – drinks in Bondi, then water taxi to Balmain for more pubs and lawn bowls, then more pubs round Balmain afterwards. Balmain is just to the west of the city, on the water, and it’s a very attractive suburb, made all the more so by my get-up of g-string and tight yellow sparkly blouse. The sun shone and it was a really enjoyable afternoon where I don’t think I stopped laughing (apart from when I had to ask random girls whether they were from Jamaica cos Jamaican me crazy).

Stace went to a hat restaurant in Kings Cross where they all had to wear silly hats and there was a shaven gentleman whom I don’t want to hear anything more about, and then out dancing, coming home in the early hours to find me passed out in front of England’s abysmal game against Scotland.  Yesterday was a write-off but there’s more to come next weekend in NZ! See you there!

Summer in NZ

Well, I’m back in Bondi after spending 4 brilliant weeks in NZ with my friends and family. Christmas was fantastic, as usual, with far too much yummy food!

I was also really spoiled with lots of pressies from the family and from Simon. He surprised me with a treasure hunt which lead to a youtube clip displaying a new guitar he bought me! It was awesome!

New Year’s was also great; we sat on the deck around the table with my family and ate and drank a great deal. We sang songs to the guitar and then after midnight we all walked down to the stream (Vicky had a bit of difficulty as she was smashed) and stood on the bridge to see the pretty lights Dad had placed along the stream. We also checked out the glow-worms along the bank and the star-filled sky. The stars were like nothing you’ve ever seen! Amazing.

Simon and I made a quick trip to Whakatane to see the cuzzie bros and Nan and Pop. Karen and Mark’s baby boy Caleb is gorgeous!!! Check him out!

So awesome to catch up with everyone. We ate fresh oysters Karen andMark had gathered that afternoon, met Mark’s palimino horse Dusty and Simon managed to fit in a round of golf too with Mark and Uncle Alan. Karen took Simon for a run and she caned him! What was he thinking trying to run with one of NZ’s top runners? He was tired for days afterwards. Poor thing.

We then headed to Pukehina Beach where my mate Aimee’s parents have a bach. There were 12 of my good mates staying there too. We ate beautiful food including bbq’d Tua Tua shellfish we got at low tide, drank Pimms and sat around a camp fire on the beach. We saw a couple of small sharks 5 metres out from the shore, so Simon waited until the morning to go surfing with Skip. They were out for 3 hours though and were the only ones out there for miles! He said it was like surfing in your back garden – we were all on the deck of the bach eating breakfast as the guys surfed right below us.

The rest of the time was spent doing loads of wedding planning and wedding consultations (only 10 weeks to go!!!), hanging out with the kids, swimming in the waterhole with Jess and her whanau, weeding and pruning the garden with Mum (we must have filled more than 4 trailer loads), working on the land with Dad (digging, shovelling, driving the digger), eating xmas cake and going shopping.

The weather was fantastic pretty much the whole time (which is very unusual for NZ weather) and I arrived back in Bondi on Friday where it has been raining off and on since!

I had such a great time! My holiday is not over yet though! I don’t go back to work until 29th Jan and Vick, Mo, Jamie and Matt are coming to stay on Friday for a week! Choice! Work is for losers! xxx

Me and my new guitar (I’m not naked, I just have a strapless dress on!)

Dutch moustache

It’s been a strange week – I flew to London for the weekend then Amsterdam for 3 days with work, leaving Sydney at 5pm on the Friday after only confirming about 6hrs before that I was going. Surprised Mum and Oliver which was fun. Ran the line for Timo’s football and caught the end of Oliver’s rugby match in Winchester before having a couple of drinks with J Dan and Ryan down there. Did a poo in the woods. Went for an early morning run through the red light district in Amsterdam and nearly fell in the canal after being frightened by a cross-eyed man lurching out of a doorway. Didn’t have any strange looks due to my moustache (it’s Movember again), probably as it’s normal to mo & flow over there. Speaking of which if you’d like to sponsor me please click here.

30th

This is the house Colin & I celebrated our 30ths in last weekend, about 1.5hr north of Sydney on the Central Coast. In appropriately 30 degree heat we spent a couple of days eating, drinking, surfing, pooling and jacuzzing and apparently breaking a $450 pond pump, which we dispute was our fault…

The weekend before Mark & Collette came up from Melbourne (they’ve just moved there from Vancouver & you may remember their hilarious blog ) and we had an epic day on the 14th (day before my actual bday) which started at 5am in the Bondi Hotel to watch England beat France… unbelievable. The pub was packed at that time & there must have been 200 French to about 50 English. What a sweet, sweet victory – I won’t forget chanting ‘au revoir, au revoir, au revoir’ to the rapidly departing French contingent as all the English went mental when the final whistle blew. Even Stace nearly joined in! As far as the RWC went it was nearly as good as beating the Wallabies the week before, which we watched in Notting Hill just prior to flying back from our trip home.

Lesson 1: How not to behave at our wedding (else we’ll set Dion & Jamie on you)

We eat the dinner

Yesterday we went to Tetsuya’s for dinner with work for an end of project celebration.  We had an 11 course tasting menu with nine different wines to match. The food was good, mostly involving raw fish, but the wine was better. Nine different wines came in nine different shaped glasses and that nearly made for a delightful glass rim symphony from Stace but she chickened out!

England & Channel Ten can s my bs

We haven’t touched the blog for months, sorry. However, I did get up at 4.30am today to watch England get smashed by SA and it made me want to throw a cup of tea at the TV because of all the adverts on Channel Ten whenever there’s the smallest break in play. So in summary, we are well and apart from the rugby, happy, and we’re both tired becuz Stace woke up with me to watch it, and our dedication to blog writing is no better than the Smith family trip to Florida (not the one in matching Lucozade shellsuits) when Mum tried to make us write diaries and we just glued leaflets and tickets in an exercise book to make it look as though we were.

The last four months in 4000 words

Dear Blog, sorry for not writing in you for the last four months. We have been very busy. Here is a picture to illustrate just what we’ve been up to:

Let’s make a start in February. Since then I’ve been on 7 trips to Melbourne and one to Perth with work. I’ve started to get complacent and

Is Kirk hot or not?

Our good friend Kirk is about to become a Dad. He’s a long time fan of our website and would like to reach out to the global www community to help him resolve a little argument he’s been having with himself. Is Kirk hot or not? Vote now (ps if you need extra help deciding, don’t forget to dig the size of those pistols) (pps these are his best shorts, he wears them all the time; a bit like that bloke Timo used to play rugby against who would score try after try cos no-one wanted to get near enough to tackle him)

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