Holidays Part 1

When there are long gaps between blogs there are always two options: take a long time to record what was missed, or just record the highlights. Typically I just want to cover the main things, but so much happened over the long holidays that one blog just isn't sufficient. After all, this is as much for me as others that read it. So here is the beginning of the details of my holidays.

Last year for Christmas Matt and I wanted to go to Jervis Bay 3-4 hours south of Sydney. I have friends in Nowra near there that offered us to stay with them for Christmas. We drove down to Nowra Christmas Eve and spent the drive listening to the audiobook version of Outliers. We made a stop at a lookout with a Gelato shop. Unfortunately it was chilly and cloudy so the lookout wasn't that impressive.

Later we stopped at Kiama. There is a blow hole where the ocean spouts out a big hole in the rocks. Although the hole was neat, we had more fun just climbing around the rocks and looking for creatures in the little pools.

Matt's favourite part was one of the rock fisherman came by us and opened up one of the things that shoot water at you when they step on them. After it cut it open he scooped up the thing into a bag and walked off. I was bummed I didn't think to take a picture. Below is what it looked like afterwards.

We got to Nowra for the perfect time to start our Christmas Eve dinner. We had brought a Turducken (chicken, duck, and turkey wrapped in bacon) from a store called Aldi for dinner.

Dinner was great and I think Turducken may become a new Christmas tradition! Additionally we enjoyed spending time with the Quinton family. I knew Kelly from way back when I studied abroad here in Australia. It was great to see her after so many years and get to know her husband and daughter as well. (I apparently didn't take any complete pics of their family, but I got their adorable little girl).

The stuffed dog we got her was a hit!

For Christmas morning we went to the beautiful beach in Jervis Bay. Dan Quinton brought his jetski, but the water was too choppy for more than a quick ride. Since the bay is south of Sydney the water was a bit cooler than Sydney so after a bit of snorkelling we called it a day. The water wasn't ideal for snorkelling, but we at least saw a bunch of fish and a couple of big octopuses hiding in holes in the ground.

After some much needed naps, we went over to the home of Dan's parents for a big Christmas dinner and a gift exchange. It made me feel right at home since the typical Christmas get together with my family is the same, including the small gift exchange game! Later we played some games and called it a night when most had already left.

The day after Christmas we went to see some of the sights around Nowra including a beautiful lookout at the top of a mountain and a small city with a bunch of fun shops. Matt was excited that one of the stores has loads of American candy and they even had his favourite A1 sauce.

When we got back Kelly and I made cinnamon rolls which we finished at Dan's parents place. They had a lot of leftovers so it was like we got a second Christmas dinner! The cinnamon rolls turned out great and I think everyone enjoyed them. It was Kelly's first time making them so I was glad after all the effort they turned out good.

The next day was Sunday and so we went to Sacrament with the Quinton's before heading home. We didn't go straight home though. As a beach south of Jervis Bay supposedly has the whitest sand in the world and wanted to see it before going back north. It was definitely white sand and your feet squeak when you walk on it. Our favourite part wasn't the beach though, it was all the rocks that we explored.

Overall we had a wonderful Christmas, enjoyed spending time with the Quinton's, saw some beautiful beaches and green hills, and completed the audiobook Outliers. It was an amazing and relaxing holiday which was just what we needed.

Parties & Halloween

What goes up must come down, and so does my motivation! I've been quite overwhelmed with things at the moment and so far the only thing completely falling behind is the house cleaning. A usual sign that it's time for spring cleaning is when the spiders start taking over, but I've decided that even though the # of spiders in our home has increased I can live with that versus taking the significant time needed to clean the place and spray it for spider prevention.

I've had some interesting discoveries over the last month. For a long time now I have had wrist problems where twisting and using pressure hurts. Sometimes just typing and using the mouse at work hurts. I can't do the dishes any more because that REALLY makes them sore. On top of that I have been having more hip, knee, and ankle joint pains lately. Additionally, when Matt commented about how my hands are cold all the time I started doing some research on why I seem to be abnormally cold a lot. In the end I discovered I have the majority of the symptoms of hypothyroidism. This includes the sensitivity to the cold, joint issues, brain fog, acne, etc. The brain fog is a huge pain - for example I went to the doctor to talk about my wrists mainly and ended up forgetting to talk about them and only talked about my hormone issues! I feel as if I am some 50+ woman with developing Alzheimer's! I had multiple blood tests done and apparently I am 100% normal. Only one test came back positive which suggested I have psoriatic arthritis in my wrists and I need to see a specialist. I'm glad I don't have any serious hormone issues, but it is frustrating when I have so many abnormal symptoms (for me at least) and yet there is no clear reason why. The next step is to see a naturopath and a rheumatoid specialist.

My other discovery was that selling on Ebay is not always easy. I did two auctions for my old computer and the first time someone "accidentally" purchased it so I had to cancel. The second try the person who won never paid so I had to cancel the sale again. The third try I just did buy it now with immediate payment and that finally worked out. Geez!

October has been an eventful month! Here are the highlights:

General Conference for the church
- The two days we had for conference were entertaining. I enjoyed working on my puzzle for the Saturday Sessions.

- The Sunday Matt and I arranged to take a new member to the stake centre for General Conference. (he is 65 but long years of work and smoking makes him look like 80). After the first session we had to meet with one of the stake presidency to get our temple recommends renewed. When we returned to the seat, the old man was gone! Although he moves slow we couldn't find him! Eventually we gave up and joined some friends for lunch. We ended up making some new friends so I was glad we went. When we got back in the chapel for the second session the guy was back. Apparently he just went on a walk. Ironically this is the second time we have lost someone at that building.

Car Repairs
- I finally got my car to the shop (it had to be done before I could renew my registration). It was about $1000 for all the repairs, but I figured as much. There were a lot of things that were to the point of the car having a BIG problem. I'm glad I went when I did!

Breakfast in the Park
- We had a fun activity for church where we ate breakfast in a nearby park. We made bacon and egg sandwiches and hashbrowns. Matt had to use his painting tools to help clean off the BBQ, but it all worked out in the end. We played a bit of sports afterwards before everyone went home. It was a lot of fun.

Mexican Fiesta
- The Stake planned a Mexican themed youth dance last month and asked our ward youth to coordinate the food. This would have been fine if they had given me more than 1-2 weeks to plan it. I was very stressed getting it all sorted, but due to some AMAZING members we were able to have everything sorted for "build your own nachos."

What we didn't expect was that few of the youth new how to make the nachos since the majority are polynesians. We started creating the bowls with the chips, meat, salsa, cheese, and sour cream and slowly but surely more and more would disappear. In the end we still had about half the amount of food left. The Mexican sister in my ward even made some traditional Mexican cakes as well and few were willing to try something new like that. The brownies were gone quickly of course. Luckily we got rid of all the leftover food by the following Sunday after church.

Hanging out with Friends
- We went to a house-warming BBQ for our friends Mike & Erika Barnett at their new home. It was a lot of fun and there were heaps of people there. The following day we got to hang out with them again at a friend's place to play games. It was loads of fun and I made another new friend!
- Another week I went by myself to the Barnett's for a small get together and we all brought some cheese and snacks. As usual it was great and it made me hope for some day where I can have a great place to have people over and hopefully I can be just as good of hosts. Lately I feel like anything I try to host flops.


Halloween
- We did pumpkin carving with the youth which I learned that what I think is simple may not be simple for someone who didn't grow up doing it. The youth did a great job regardless.

- We had a Trunk or Treat activity organised outside the chapel on Halloween. It was awesome to see so many people in costumes and the trunk "boot" decorations were great. We didn't have any great decorating plans so we packed the car with stuffed animals and the pumpkins we had carved. I thought our "trump" card would be that we brought our cat, but he was too scared with everything so we left him in the car.

Our Car - It's so Cute it's SCARY

In case you can't tell - it's a spaceship

November is an insanely busy month. Between church meetings, organising the next church Christmas activity, work, social visits, and other plans we've had for a while, it's no wonder I am struggling to finish this blog!!

Matilda
- Matt has been busy working 12+ hour days, but he made sure to make time for the musical which we had book months in advance. It was AMAZING! The songs were very clever and fun, the actors were spectacular, and the script was full of good humour. Even non-musical fans would enjoy it. There were some differences to the movie of course, whether you have or haven't seen the movie the musical can certainly stand alone. I definitely would recommend it to everyone.

Melbourne Cup
- Every year there is the Melbourne Cup horse race which has often been called "the race that stops the nation." At work we get pizzas for lunch, do an office sweeps and watch the race together. It was my first time ever watching the race so I even bothered to dress up a bit. I ran the sweeps and we all put in $2 to draw a horse name out of the hat. It made it more fun since I suddenly had a horse to cheer for. This year was amazing because the horse that won had odds of 100:1 at the start, meaning that it had minimal chances of winning (click here for results). Additionally, it was the only female jockey in the race! Not quite your Secretariat type of story, but it was a historical moment and I'm glad my work provides an opportunity to watch.

Baby Blankets
- More to come on baby blankets. I have worked with the youth at two mutuals to make baby blankets and have determined that sewing is not their forte. I need to finish them all up at this stage and there are lots of little issues. Let's just say that I hope the owner's can appreciate the evident home made look to the blankets.

Well I know Shade likes the Baby Blankets!

Well I'm overwhelmed with life, but I'm just moving on. I keep having this feeling that I need a big change, but I don't know what or how yet. I trust the Lord will guide me and I will just have to wait to see how things play out. TTFN!

Another One Bites The Dust

I remember when I started this blog I had ideas of writing about important issues and perhaps some hot topics that I never got to write about when I was a columnist for my school newspaper. Too often life seems to take a turn you didn't plan on and plans or dreams go out the window. I realised this last month that some of my dreams that I had ten years ago are likely never going to happen. It is what it is.

Depression update - with motivation comes realisation.
I came to a turning point where I was motivated to do things again, but discovered that can also make me feel overwhelmed. It's like I was so focused on ignoring everything around me during depression that as I started to "wake up" I began to see the chaos around me. Although I am talking about my very untidy home, I am also talking about life in general.

I described it to my psychologist like this: Life is a mountain and before depression I felt I was about 3/4 of the way up and slowly moving upward. Throughout depression I kept falling down until I hit the bottom and just circled around it since I wasn't motivated to climb anymore. Now that I can climb again I tried to run up as fast as I could, but realised I was a long way down from where I used to be. Not only do I realise it will take me a long time to get to where I was, there is just as much likelihood I won't reach the same spot. For example: I remember always being good at following up with people and remembering important things without writing them down. Now there is no hope of remembering anything it seems if it is not written down, and even then I forget. The reality is that who I was is not who I am now, but I can only focus on my current strengths and hope that who I will be in the future is even better than who I thought I was before.


Now for my list of events:

• Discgolfing! 
• For those wondering what that is, it is also called frisbee golf where discs slightly smaller than frisbees are thrown into baskets and the rules are basically like golf. There are even long, mid-range, and putting discs. 
• We went for a Saturday with our friends Dean & Crystal to the only course I could find in Sydney. It's located on government property and you can only go on holidays or weekends, and this has prevented the course from having official signs to show you where to tee off and what not. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful day and a lot of fun. 
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• Relief Society Activity
• After discgolfing I went straight to a relief society activity. There were uplifting talks and messages given (of which I missed some from being late), and then afterwards we were served lots of yummy goodies. I was really glad I went and had some fun talking about missions with a couple of ladies in the ward.
  
• E-Marie's B-day
• A bunch of us celebrated E-Marie's birthday. We spent most of the time chatting about different things and even a lot of gospel topics. You know it's a great group of people when you can just talk for hours about anything. It was also humorous because our host went and took a nap so it was like we had just taken over their apartment. 
  
• Sewing Projects
• As I said before I am definitely doing some more sewing projects. Here are some pics of my latest. 
  
  
  
  
• Kitty update
• Shade no longer has conjunctivitis but still has teary eyes that the cream from the vet is not helping. At this stage we don't know what else to do. He is happy anyway and Matt has completed his new shelf that he absolutely loves! He climbs up to it multiple times per day. 

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• Aquagolfing
• We went aquagolfing with Brock & Kaytlin and had a blast. I thought it didn't sound that fun to just hit a bucket of balls into water, but they have targets where you can earn money or coupons which makes it more interesting. Matt hit a target twice and got vouchers for a buy one get one free. I was the fastest at going through my balls and didn't hit anything. Nevertheless I had some good distance at times, but absolutely no control on aim. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Goodbye to the Barnetts
• After aquagolfing we went to the McKeown's home to say goodbye to the Barnett's who are moving about 20 minutes away to their new house. We also celebrated Flavia McKeown's birthday of which I had made a cake for. I've made red velvet cake a lot lately, but this time I stored it in the freezer and later iced it using decorating tools so I could make it even. It worked great! Unfortunately my chocolate curls did not work out so well and when she blew out the candles little chocolate shaving went everywhere as well. 
  
  
  
• The following day we also visited the Barnett's at their home for a nice dinner and games. We have really loved all of the families in our ward and it will be sad to see the Barnett's go, but at least they are still close enough to visit. 
• Ward changes
• I'm not going to explain a ward as I hope most that read this understand my church lingo. A couple of weeks ago we had a special church meeting organised the stake where they changed our ward boundaries. This means that about 1/3 of the other ward that meets in the same building will now be a part of our ward. This created all kinds of changes. For our little ward it is almost like doubling the numbers. Our bishopric got a new counsellor and the other ward got an entirely new bishopric. 
• The biggest change for me in this was getting three new young women! This will be great in helping plan better activities as we will likely have more girls show up regularly. On record I have 15 girls, but I will likely only have 8 or 9 regularly attending church and activities. This also means the workload will increase, but I hope to get people called to help me soon. 

Well that pretty much sums up my month. The weather has been getting better but this weekend has been very rainy. I can't wait for summer, except maybe not the creepy crawlers that tend to be around during that time.

The huntsman on our porch - this one was actually aggressive and bit the stick Matt tried to poke him with.