By this time in the year, I expected to be able to regale you with stories of travel to Melbourne in route to a wedding on the West Coast, and if we were lucky a stopover in Hawaii on the way home. Alas this was not meant to be, but we have had other things keep us busy enough. I do not think this will be the most exciting post I have written, but still thought it might be worth putting something up since I have not been good at adhering to any sort of regular blogging schedule lately.
The most exciting news is what has been happening on the husband front. Troway very successfully completed his Personal Trainer certification in August this year. Cross your fingers and toes that he will soon be gainfully employed in the fitness world, unfortunately dear 'ol COVID-19 resulted in delays in the interviews he had scheduled.
Even more exciting in Troway's opinion is the outcome of his rugby season. They managed to have a short season in between bouts of lockdown. His team had an undefeated season and got to bring home the trophy as Taranaki champions! His team is largely made up of fellas that have been playing together since they were in junior high and high school, and the last time they had a shot at the championship was about 7 years ago (the first rugby game I ever watched haha).
Outside of education and rugby, life has been pretty quiet. I have six piano students, who present various degrees of challenge. They range in age from 7-37 years old, and are all at different levels of enthusiasm and skill. Troway and I joke that we collect other foreigners and this seems to be the case with my students as well; only one of the six is a Kiwi :) Hopefully at the end of the year I will be able to organize a small house recital for them to showcase their work this year.
Since things have been a bit less hectic this year, we have tried to be more adventurous in our cooking. Partly this means being organized enough to menu plan and therefore have the ingredients for interesting things. But we have worked to incorporate new things into the mix. Recent favorites are meatball stuffed pitas, shrimp tacos and the Japanese night we managed to pull off.
Much of my free time of late has been taken up with various forms of craftiness. My big achievement was finishing a wedding album. One for the honeymoon is next on the list, although I am tempted to be lazy and do an online photobook... But I also recently acquired my own sewing machine (had been borrowing the mother-in-laws) and have gotten familiar with it by making some baby quilts (lots of babies being born around us).
Hope you are staying healthy and well. We tried this tasty delight from the Asian market the other night, it was surprisingly delicious!
Spring is finally arriving :)
