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Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Baking Again

Today was another fairly average day.  Tessa and I went to Narrow Neck beach and played on the slide, swings, watch some dogs play in the water and some people swim as well.  We came home, she went down for a nap and I tidied the house, hung out the washing and baked some cookies for Julia's book club.  She was having the meeting here tonight, and apparently the do dessert pretty big during book club meetings!  She brought home some NZ cake/dessert thing, or the ingredients to prepare it.  I'm forgetting the name now but she said, like we have pumpkin pie, NZ has this.  I'll probably try some tomorrow but by 10:30 I wasn't too hungry so I didn't try any tonight. 

Tessa answered the TV today!  Libby turned on her program when she got home from school, with hosts that ask questions about the things they are doing and start the show with "Hi, how are you today?"  And Tessa right away relied, "good!"  Libby and I laughed and she smiled, half knowing what she did was cute because it was silly, and half still thinking the guy on the TV heard her respond...she has also newly discovered the word "mine" and uses it quite frequently now anytime anything new lands in her hands, and sometimes even if she just wants it be hers.  Slowly but surely, she is learning what it means to be a 2-yr-old!

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Missing Football Season :(

Tonight, unfortunately, the Patriots game was on exactly during working hours.  Well, it was more like this afternoon, but right before I had to go pick up the kids from school.  However, watching the highlights made me very happy, but also a bit sad that I was missing football season.  It's nice to have a Sunday tradition, I suppose I've just kind of replaced watching football with playing tennis.  It'll just have to do for now!

Tonight was the 2nd round of the business house tournament at the club, but because the first week was rained out, we're squeezing those for games into these next weeks so that we don't have to play the week of Christmas.  Tonight we played 6 20 minute games, so the dinner following was a bit late!  Don't think I actually ate anything until 10pm!  It was a nice yummy baked ham though, so worth the wait and worked up quite a hunger playing tennis!  I actually missed most of the first game, someone filled in for me, because both John and Julia were stuck in really bad traffic coming home.  Apparently, there was some kind of accident on Lake Rd (the only main road in a out of this peninsula) so the cars weren't moving at all!  They both rang and said they'd be a bit late as the kids were finishing dinner.  As much more time started to pass, I decided to get Tessa and Libby in the bath and ready for bed.  Then Reuben went in the bath after them.  They rang again at about 6:30 when Reuben was having his bath to say that they'd tried going back into the traffic, but it was still not really moving, so they went to get something to eat in Takapuna and would hopefully be home as close to 7pm as possible for me to get to tennis!  I had all three kids ready for bed and Tessa even quiet in bed by 7:20 when they arrived home, so didn't do too badly!

Libby went to gymnastics with a friend after school today, so it was also an accomplishment to get here there even a few minutes early before 3:30.  Usually we haven't even left school yet by then, when they get out at 3pm.  Tessa and I did our usual park morning this morning and she was telling stories again in the car.  She's trying to say more and more words, and knows a lot, but when she tries to compile them into sentences, somehow nothing makes any sense.  She just makes up her own language sometimes.  Soon, I think she'll just have a breakthrough and start speaking real, understandable sentences because she know what she wants to say and usually has a lot to express!

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Lots of Tennis!

On Saturday morning I was up bright an early and at yoga by 7am for two and a half hours of pranayama breathing!  Let's just say it definitely woke me up!  We even had to have a bar of soap and a wrap bandage.  The soap we had to pin to the wall by keep our shoulders back while at the same time keeping our chest lifted and chin tucked, holding the wrapped bandaged under it.  This was not the most comfortable position to sit in for an extended period of time, hence why pranayama takes years of practice and training your body to be comfortable in the positions. 

After yoga I came home and made a manicotti for tennis interclub.  I played as a reserve for one of the teams (women's doubles then mixed doubles) and as the home team, we bring a dish to feed everyone after we play.  I arrive at about 12:45 for short warm up and then started playing right at 1pm.  I played with Julie, who was also a reserve playing her first interclub match.  We ended up taking the first two sets to tie-brakers and then finally winning in the 3rd set!  Then we went straight into mixed doubles, as that match had taken forever already!  I played with Neil and we also went to three sets!  Unfortunately we ended up losing in the 3rd set in that match.  By the time we were finally finished our match it was after 5pm!  So it was a VERY long day of tennis in the sun, which decided to come out right as we started!  It had been pleasantly cloudy the whole morning. 

After tennis I attended an xmas bbq!  Kind of a strange phenomenon for me really...it's pretty difficult to associate a summer bbq with Christmas time...but I guess that's something I'll have to get used to because it's what everyone does!  The tennis club is having an xmas bbq after Sunday doubles next weekend!