Trapper's Dinner

Saturday night, Andrew and I went to the NH trapper's dinner.
Every year, the association gives a fur coat to M.iss NH.
She helped with the raffle and stuff.

 

 

I also got to meet a famous Midwife, Carol.  I read her book a while ago and LOVED it.  I am actually going to watch her speak this Saturday at the Midwife convention! I have a ski race that mourning way up north, and then ill drive way down south, but I REALLY want to attend both things. She was in the photo above, but I cut her out of this pic, but she had a skunk hat on, and I had my fox.

 

My dad in his beaver coat. My mom had Anika and my niece at my niece's ski team party, so my dad brought a date. HAHA. She was in this photo, but I cut her out too. She was very pretty and is the wife of my dad's friend who couldn't make it.

 

Me and Mi.ss NH.

Fun Randoms

I had another race on Saturday. I won again. Best female time by A LOT. And, I actually got 3rd overall. Only 2 men beat me. I beat the guy on my team I like to beat by quite a bit. He beat me last race though.   This league doesn't have the biggest competition, but it is fun, its affordable, and it boosts my ego :)

I had on a jacket I haven't worn in a while I guess!! Its actually my spring skiing jacket, and it really wasn't that warm, so I don't know what I was thinking wearing it. I was on the lift, and noticed I had a ticket from 2005 on the jacket!!! HA. the ONLY time I skied out West. This ticket was from Heavenly. I went out with my guy friend, T, and his friend.  It was so much fun and I was working really crazy hours at the time at my first firm, on a 3 month trial, so it was a short little break for a delayed birthday trip. I want to get back out there one day.

 

On Sunday morning, Anika dressed up in her hula gear my mom brought her back from Hawaii, and she did some hula dancing.

 

 

This was from last week. Anika got to have dinner with daddy twice while he was away via Facetime/Skype! She was trying to feed him some dinner! ha. She really doesn't get to use our iphones or ipad, etc, but I am SO happy the technology exists for times like this when Daddy is away. 

 

I have been coloring my hair blond since I was 15.
I'm thinking of letting it go darker/natural. Maybe.
Just to see.

The photo above was me in NZ in Dec. 2005.  I had been in NZ since July and had no hair color in those 6 months.  The roots are natural.  I wonder if that is what it would still look like.

 I have a hair apt. this coming Saturday so I think I am going to do low lights to start the transition.
HAHA- Actually, as I type this I forgot that my stylist reads sometimes! haha I haven't told her my plan yet. I actually had a nightmare about it last night.

This is my hair in late 2006. I LOVED It then.  The color, the feel, the length, etc.

 

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Hmm, what else.

Andrew helped me fix up an old cast iron pan.

We no longer have any non stick in the house, except the bread maker.

We use cast iron and steel to cook on.  I even got a new rice cooker with a stainless steel bowl. Pretty reasonable on amazon. Our old one was non stick and the non stick coating was chipped- it gave me anxiety. ha

 

I had to cook some fatty stuff this week to season the pan up.

 

Anika came home with a new hat.

 

One of A's valentines. She also got one with a friendship bracelet in it and she has been wearing it ever since. I liked the idea of the bracelet instead of candy. I posted A's valentines last week.

 

On Sunday, we went to brunch.  I know its winter here, but Anika is ready for spring, obviously. ha My gram gave her a bunch of jewelry, like these yellow beads and she loves playing with them.

 

 

 

 

Monday, I worked for 2 hour in the morning after the gym. Then, met my mom and Anika for lunch.

Then, Anika and I headed south to do some errands.  One store included the NH food Coop.
All local and natural foods, but it was PRICEY!  Might have spent my week food budget on TWO bags of things. whoops.

We also went to Target.

That was fun. It really was, until the end.  Anika ran out of the store without me. I caught her and then it was so windy, my poster board in my hand blew away! I chased after it with A in one arm, my purse, my bags, etc but I finally gave up.

I put Anika in the car seat and drove around the parking lot looking for my poster board...

IT took a few hits. haha

While we were in Target, I would pick up things and say "Should we get this?" and Anika would say "No mummy. back"
Sounds like Daddy has been training her! haha

 

It was a REALLY fun day, even though we had a lot of excitement!

 

Anika's sitter gave her a gift card to the local bookstore for Christmas, so ANika went and picked out some books!

 

 

She also got some bath crayons!  Above is her drawing a rainbow.
Also, we had our FIRST tub poo. YUP, first one. She got so distracted by the crayons I guess. haha
She had brought her baby in the tub with her.  And after I saw the poo in the tub, Anika's reaction was "OHHHHH MY GOODNESS!!  GROSS. BABY, Gross!"

yup, she blamed her baby doll. 

Anika usually goes poo on the potty and has been wearing undies at the sitter, but personally, I think she has a long way to go with the pee. 

We shall see.

 

I love straws. I have some new stainless steel ones, and I love them. Anika likes them too.

 

Really loving Baby!

 

Brushing our teeth Tuesday morning before work.

 

 

 I tried these black bean spag noodles. Andrew wasn't a fan, but I liked them.
I also made some mashed cauliflower as a side. YUMMY!  The stuff on top of the noodles is leftover crock pot soup I made. I make a crock pot soup with veggies once a week in the winter- like this:

 

 

A few little projects

And, I mean little.

Our house came with this ugly tile. Just one strip above the kitchen sink.

It is UNDER the window trim, so cant remove it without taking off trim.

After a while, I just forgot about it...as I do with many home renovation ideas.

But, this past weekend after A FULL day home because of the blizzard, I decided it was time.

 

Andrew sanded it a bit, put some primer on (the kind meant for shiny surfaces) and Then, he put white paint on.

But, we thought the white was boring and just blended in with the rest.
He took a look in the basement and we had some light green from our living room, so he painted it light green.
We kind of want to make it a bit brighter. Any suggestions??

It was quick to paint so we can paint it again very easily.

Before and After:

Andrew has this big chunk of Amber. Might see if I can get something made out of it, like jewelry :)

 

My niece turned TEN yesterday! I cant believe it. It seems like she was just Anika's age.

I have always wanted to make these Vday cards!

I saw them somewhere even pre pinterest days.

Anika can give them to the kids at her sitter.  They are all older than her and can have lollipops.

 

I saw this on FB and thought it was interesting. I eat all of this stuff regularly, so I should be super skinny, right? ha.

 

 

Guess what was going on a year ago this week??

MY husband was in the hospital with his mystery illness. The only thing I wanted last year for Valentines Day was a healthy husband and for him to be home....

This year, I am back to normal and want flowers or a gift! haha.

In all honesty, I am SOOO grateful for his health and that entire episode made me appreciate so many of the small things in life and about him.  He is one helluva a guy and I really don't take that for granted like I used to. At least, I try not to :)

Another Friday Here

Knock, Knock!
I was looking at my old blog yesterday for some things.

Wow, I used to write a lot. And, people used to comment! HA.

I guess that's what happens when I fall off the  face of the blogging earth.

That's ok. I do record a lot of things on a calendar I keep near Anika's rocker, so at least I have a lot of my memories about Anika stored away there.
My memory is SO, SO bad, so its imperative I write all the little things down. Even the things I don't think I could Possibly forget.

I have become a master at Legos...well, the toddler version.
I put this together by looking at a photo that came with them.
And, it was pretty sad that I was really really proud of myself and then looked at the box and saw they are for children, age 3.  So, I guess I shouldn't be so proud.

 

 

Yesterday before we went to Miss W's and work, I took a this picture of A.
I got that Alpaca sweater in NZ at a market for $10 NZ dollars, so that's like $8 US. Its so cute. The rest of the outfit is hand me downs, as many of her clothes are. Or gifts- she still wears a lot of gifts!
 

 

It is snowing here...you might have heard about the blizzard on the news, but I still went to spin this morning and captured this beauty of myself. Its not too bad here yet, but I guess it will be coming down for a while.

 

I was supposed to have a ski race tomorrow, but it got cancelled because of the snow! In my 20+ years of racing, that has NEVER happened.  OH MY GOSH- I had a race two weeks ago, and I WON. BEST Female time of the day.  I forgot to tell you all that.

Anika has gotten in a few ski days too. I need to post pics.

 

Last wekend, I spent a fabulous weekend in Boston with my friends- my INTERNET FRIENDS turned real life friends!!!
YES!!  Except one Internet friend is actually friends of friends with someone I know in real life, so that was cool. Two friends came from California and one from Ohio for the weekend.

One of the girls has a son that was due the EXACT SAME day as Anika, but he was born  a week early (Homebirth) and Anika was 2 weeks late so they are 3 weeks apart.   SO Cute together.

 

I hope you don't get hit with snow too bad where you are.
I wish I could just give someone my photos and speak my stories and have someone write them all here for me :)

 

Freakin FRiDAY!

I already cried this morning. Anika hasn't seen my mum in 10 days because my mom and Gram went to Hawaii for my Gram's 80th Birthday! When we pulled into the gym this morning, Anika saw my mum's truck and she got excited "Nona's truck! Nona's Truck" And when we walked in she was looking and calling for her, and then she spotted her across the way and just smiled huge and ran and ran into Nona's arms and gave her the biggest hug and my mom was exploding with happiness.  I stood there with my arms full of gym bag, diaper bag, lunch bag, her jacket etc and fought back tears (I had the about to cry feeling in my nose- does anyone else get that?)  THAT moment just reminds me no matter how much we want to move, we can't ever take Anika away from my parents. Everyone at the gym looked on in Aww. They all know us- its a small gym and we are friendly with the other members and employees. Anika knows most of the people who work there by name. 

 I recovered and got myself to spin and every time I pictured their reunion, my eyes started flowing again, along with my sweat...all down my face. My heart ached and stomach felt it- i could literally feel their love for each other. I'm crying again now thinking of it.
Anika is just so, so lucky to have them, and so am I. I am also very close with my Gram (My mom's mom) so its a wonderful feeling.

 

Now, instead of crying, I am just SOOO excited for Tonight. Anika and I are driving down to Boston to meet some friends and staying at a fancy hotel!  Something is VERY speical about these friends!!

Happy Friday!

 

Day 1 in NZ after the Long Trip

We arrived at Christchurch airport and my FIL and MIL were there to meet us. My FIL took these photos.  Andrew's best girl mate K was there with her daughter too! We had not seen her or her family in almost 5 years!

They brought Anika a pressie.

That is what I look like after 30 hours of travel.  ha

We said bye to K and S and piled into both of my inlaws cars. We needed both with all our luggage. MY MIL had rented us a car seat and that was all set up in one of the cars. 

We drove right to our new house. We did not take any photos while at the new house because a renter had JUST moved in.  It was a little smaller than in photos but the gardens were better in person. The neighborhood was cute. LOTS AND LOTS Of floor to ceiling windows, like many houses in NZ.

Then we went into city centre to see where Andrew's dads shop used to be....
The entire block has been demoed since the earthquakes and his store is now a parking lot :(

 

We went to my inlaws house to have lunch and settle in. I showered and got out of my  2 day old outfit and into something better suited for warm weather. 

 

We went to Andrew's old house...it is going to be demoed soon. It doesn't look bad from the outside in these photos, but it is off the foundation and the roof is all falling in. It is very warped.

The house is named Awhina- A Maori name. It Pretty much means "The Friends House" from what I understand. 

The Photo above is Me sitting in front of the house (LEFT SIDE in a red shirt) back in 2005 when I was dating Andrew.

 This is 2012. All grown in. Anika and I standing to the left of house. You can see the broken window.

The walkway is all grown in now.

 

The main hall in 2005 and 2012. He redid the wood floors in 2006.

 

 2005 and 2012 in the carport

2005 and 2012 out back.

 

Andrew got pretty emotional seeing the house.  I felt bad for him.  Sad to know it will be gone the next time we are there. He worked really really hard to buy that house. When I was there for 6 months, he pretty much just worked and we were at the house a lot because he had no extra money to do fun things.  I was a young college kid and didn't get it, but I get it now.  He made a lot of sacrifices.
The area the house is located is very posh and we love it.  I love walking to the café, along a the river and to his friends house.  UGh, if I could just MOVE my family there and rebuild on that land, we would.

 

 

Anika had her FIRST meat pie!!
She likes to put herself in her seat and she was eating this while parked, and her straps were correct while driving. I noted this because I take car seat safety pretty seriously. We were  hit when Anika was an infant. I was also hit Yesterday in a snow storm. A guy couldn't stop and hit me from behind.  Also, car accidents kill more kids age 0-3 than anything else.  AND, lastly, I have a lot of friends and family who are VERY passionate about car seat safety so when I posted this on fb I didn't want them to blast me :) 

 Yum!!

 

Hanging out at Poppa's house.

 

Well, it only took me 2 weeks to write this post.  Life is just really getting in my way of blogging.
I don't even know if anyone is still reading, but I will keep plugging away when I can.
I would love to share more of our trip with you and record it for my memories before I forget!