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Good things that happened in 2025:

  • Scott got the hole in his spinal canal patched up and successfully got through the no-BLT time and recovered back to normal! He also started working again.
  • Rosemarie and I ate our way around peninsular Malaysia and had the best time. We ate kaya roti twice in 12 hours. We didn’t die on the world’s longest zip coaster.
  • Rosemarie came to Melbourne and we played 4000 board games and twinned at pickleball, which they have still not recovered from.
  • Scott and I finally got to go on a real holiday together. We went to Hanoi for six jam packed days of fun and eating and shopping and sweating. I survived crossing a parade line clinging to the back of a scooter.
  • Dad and Diane finally made it to Australia! Two family visits in one year, what a treat! I won a game of Wizard!
  • I found out that I am neurodivergent. Maybe confirmed is the proper word.
  • I started going to Bodypump and pickleball drills sessions.
  • Made some new friends through pickleball. Many fun meals out and lots of laughing.
  • A lot of games days and crafternoons and trivia days with my pals. My friend Bis prepared the most epic New Years Eve hot pot party that put me into a food coma, but I did actually stay up until midnight this time!

Favourite Books:

I actually only rated one book 5 stars this year and that was The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne, another sad book, I just found the way the parents interacted with the son really funny.

Other good ones were:

  • You Are Here by David Nicholls – nice story about people walking across England
  • Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy by Lisa See – historical fiction about life in China in the 1900s
  • The Women by Kristin Hannah – historical fiction about American women who served in the Vietnam War
  • Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton – a thriller that talks a lot about nature
  • The Trees by Percival Everett – a wild book that is kind of funny and also ultra depressing?
  • Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (audiobook) – cute story
  • Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid – easy read, good story
  • The Dutch House by Ann Patchett – easy read, good story
  • Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (audiobook) – nerdy science entertainment

Board games:

I played 27 games this year, with 20 different people, in 13 locations.

11 were new games! Critter Kitchen, Finspan, Qwixx, Uno No Mercy, Deep Sea Adventure, Nekojima, Farkle, Micropolis, Wayfarers of the South Tigris, Verdant and just snuck one more new one in last night: Flamecraft Duals.

Critter Kitchen was definitely my favourite new game. It’s so cute and unique and fun! And Wingspan on Steam continues to be our go-to game, we played even more than last year. I played Wingspan 65 times and I have improved my win rate, I am now at 49% and Rosemarie down to 38%. Muahahaha.

Great new recipes: The Moroccan slow cooked lamb shoulder I made when dad and Diane arrived was probably my favourite new recipe, but it’s from the Recipe Tin Eats cookbook so I can’t really link it.

This beef rendang was also delicious. And I finally made Singapore carrot cake (black style) using a combination of this recipe and this recipe (and advice from Doreen).

Favourite bird pics:

I am not actually that happy with any of my bird pictures this year. I saw a lot of cool stuff through my binoculars but by the time I got my camera in the right spot the bird would be long gone. This is ok, I like seeing birds with my eyes too. I do wish you could just take like a screen capture of what you can see in the binoculars though.

Knitting:

I knit one sweater, one tank top, two beanies, three pairs of socks, and one pair of fingerless gloves! I just posted individual pics on my Instagram here.

I learned how to knit with mohair, how to alternate skeins to avoid colour pooling, and a new way to do really neat folded collars.

2026 Goals: I didn’t make any resolutions last year! We had enough going on. This year I’m resolving to PHONE LESS KNIT MORE. I have uninstalled all the dumb games on my phone.

Last years thoughts: “2024 wasn’t our best year. Unemployment x2, injury, chronic illness, saving up for trips that might not actually happen, and leaving weightlifting. But alas, we truck along. Hopefully we can get things back on track again in 2025.” I think we did.

This years thoughts: A much better year. We are healthy. We got to travel, spend time with family and friends, eat delicious things, and play A LOT of pickleball. What more can you ask for.

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November was more exciting! It seems like every year my November is actually way crazier than December. Everyone wants to get the celebrations started early.

We had my work Christmas party like a week and a half after our Halloween Bake Off haha! It was delicious. I picked steak for my entree for the exact opposite reason our boss doctor didn’t pick the steak: “I could have steak at home!” (We never have steak at home.)

Our second pickleball tournament went better, but it didn’t get recorded in DUPR so did it even happen?

And then our third tournament went very bad. We lost every game and it was quite discouraging. I was a bit pickleball depressed after that. (Better now.) We haven’t signed up for any more tournaments yet.

This group of friends had been talking about going out for peking duck for literally years and we finally went. We went to Hua Lu in the CBD and it was amazing!! As usual I was too busy stuffing my face to take any pictures of the epic amount of food. We had duck pancakes of course, plus the extra two duck courses, a mushroom dish and two types of tofu. Yum.

Naomi had the old work crew to her place again for a Christmas catch up gossip and pizza lunch. It was too cold for the pool this year but the bird show made up for it. :D

Scott planned a #smaj where we went to the driving range and then got Vietnamese food. The last time I hit a golf ball was with the Monnon’s when I was probably like… 11. Scott is a pretty good instructor but I was still extremely awkward. I missed the ball a lot and hit the ground many times. I can see why people think it’s fun though.

I got my hair cut and then went to a meetup with Discord friends. It was a pretty small gathering compared to some other meetups and I already knew everyone so it was pretty chill. Someone was talking about Caesar salad earlier in the day and then I had to order it for dinner. Hit the spot.

I had a really big fun day where first I went to an anime movie with Maz and Candace. I haven’t watched much anime before but I said yes to this outing because I’m Taking Charge Of My Saturdays (Scott always has bowls) and also it looked quite cute. It was called The Concierge at Hokkyoku Department Store and was about a department store where all the customers are different animals.

After the movie we got delicious Indonesian sandwiches for lunch and then walked to the Design Market. There was tons of cool stuff and I was able to get a lot of cute Christmas presents. Quite enjoyable.

Then we caught the bus to Bis’s for games, crafts, and dinner. I opted to do hand building with Jen and made a cute sturdy scalloped ash tray dish.

We got fish and chips for dinner and then I finally headed home. A big day.

We got a Ninja Creami from Costco during Black Friday sales. (I sold the big compressor ice cream maker because we weren’t using it much.) I think the Ninja Creami is fitting our lifestyle better. My favourite mixtures so far have been strawberry sorbet (pictured), which was just cooked strawberries and a bit of maple syrup, sticky date protein ice cream, and mango sorbet. It’s nice that we can make them with healthy and lactose free ingredients.

It rained A LOT and then we had a couple random super hot days so everyone’s yards went bonkers. Love how we have more stuff growing outside the garden boxes than inside.

Flying along on the pastel tank top. I really like the way she designed the neckline and sleeves. Took a while to do the sewing but it’s sooo neat and tidy.

Nanaimo bars ready for Christmas! I used a new recipe this year and I was quite pleased with how they turned out.

Unpictured stuff:

  • We had lunch at Jemma’s on Melbourne Cup Day for April’s birthday.
  • I went to the Western Treatment Plant with the birdwatching group but I’ll make a separate post about that.
  • We had another #smaj where we went to The Jar and rented a pickleball ball machine and tried to practice our drives (I am still quite bad at forehand drives.)

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October was a pretty routine month… lots of pickleball, trivia, a lot of appointments. We had two catch up #smaj events, one was a wine tasting evening at Scott’s bowls club, and the other was writing wills, lol. I didn’t take pictures of either.

Scott and I signed up for three successive pickleball tournaments. The first one was in October and we did… fine. We won two games, and lost three games including getting pickled in one. We didn’t make the finals. Some fun was had.

We went to a pen convention with high hopes of seeing cute stationary and picking up some Christmas gifts. In reality we barely saw anything because it was sooooooooooooooooo crowded. And Scott battled through the crowds to finish the stamp rally but they had already run out of prizes, like an hour after it opened. Then we got heavily rained on. Not the most successful outing.

I started knitting a tank top. It’s a 4-ply blend of merino wool, alpaca, and silk. Rosemarie thinks a wool tank top is funny but it’s actually very light feeling!

I finished the neon barf hat. This one is hand-dyed merino wool and it’s super soft and cozy.


My first time cooking with jackfruit. I made a jackfruit bulgogi bibimbap, which would have been vegan if I didn’t plop a fried egg on top haha. It was delicious!

My work held a Halloween Bake Off and this was my entry. It had a brownie base and spiced butter cookie tombstones, with Oreo dirt and coconut grass. I thought it turned out pretty good! I got a lot of compliments but didn’t win any prizes.

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I went to a birding outing to Cranbourne Botanic Gardens. My first time there. It is quite an elaborate place.

There were plenty of birds around, including tons and tons of New Holland Honeyeaters, but again I didn’t get any fantastic pictures. Still feeling a bit rusty after not really using my camera much over the last winter.

I like the background and perch of that New Holland Honeyeater picture but why does he only have one eye??! And this galah picture really made me laugh… you want as much foreground as possible in a bird picture, yes? I submitted it to Crap Bird Photography on Facebook and got a pretty good response, hehe.

I do like this picture though.

After a pleasant morning of wandering around looking for birds I headed over to Ash’s house, who moved out to the boonies over a year ago and I hadn’t visited yet. After chatting for a few minutes I looked up how long it would take to get to my pickleball drills session and realised it started half an hour earlier than I thought it did and I only had ten more minutes to visit. OOPS. Well it was enough time for a tour and a cookie. My bad.

We played Critter Kitchen with Nick and Lara. Nick made chilli and Scott made lemon tart. We also played Wayfarers of the South Tigris which was a little bit confusing, and took us most of the game to figure out what was going on, but then was ok, but we’ll probably never play again because there are always new games to try, lol.

We watched the AFL Grand Final in Boronia with Vicky and Brett. It was a good game, extremely even until half time for excitement, and then Scott’s team (Brisbane) dominated the second half and won convincingly.

I got some new ear plugs made and spent the hour waiting time at Bonbeach. Was pleasant until it started pouring.

Post Pickleball Pizza Party. Our usual Friday night pickleball sessions at Ashburton have come to an end, so we had one last dinner out together. Fun group. Hoping they migrate over to the new session at the venue right around the corner from our house.

Good lunch, bad lunch. Diane brought me Kraft Dinner powder!! Happy Katrina. Another day I completely forgot I was cooking a gozleme on the stove until I smelled a lot of smoke… oops… Sad Katrina.

This is probably only interesting to me but whatever. My pickleball coach kept telling me that the handle of my pickleball paddle was too thick for me, but I also needed to put overgrip on it because I am so sweaty. So I took a risk and peeled off the factory grip that it came with, and added overgrip directly over the bare handle…. and it’s ok!! It took a session to get used to it again but now I feel One With My Paddle.

Finished budgie paint by numbers. I kinda want to add a little speech bubble… what should it say? Something short.

I started making a hat with the neon hand-dyed yarn I got at the Wool Show. I had to split the ball into two balls and learn how to do alternating skeins to avoid colour pooling.

Unpictured things:

  • We also had a games day with Michael and Gina but I guess I took no pictures! Scott made pulled pork for lunch and we played Crokinole and Empires End.
  • Scott came to pickleball drills sessions a couple times because they were in the evenings during school holidays.
  • We saw One Battle After Another at the theatre as a #SMAJ activity and I did not like it. Three hours of bad people and someone banging on the top keys of a piano… it gave me a headache.

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After years of talking about it, dad finally came to Australia! They spent a week with us in Melbourne, in between visiting Sydney and Cairns. Here are some of the things we got up to, in jumbled order.

We wandered around some alleyways. I took them to the Sofitel toilets, obviously, and we walked all around the CBD.

Hot jam doughnuts at the Queen Vic Market. The market looks so different to the last time I was there!! We found my old workplace, Green Leaf Produce, but it has different owners now and I didn’t recognize anyone working. The signs still look the exact same though.

It would be fun to go to the deli with $200 of someone else’s money and make the most delicious picnic lunch.

Diane found our house too cold. It wasn’t even as bad as when MEP and Paul visited. :D

Perhaps our future visitors should visit in Daylight Savings Time only.

We went to the Healesville Sanctuary. We got to listen to a few rangers talks, and the bird show was fun as well. The echidnas were extremely active.

After the zoo we did a tasting session at Four Pillars. Gin is not my favourite but it was still interesting. We also went to a bakery for lunch, the chocolate shop, and Yarra Valley Dairy, so that was a delicious day overall.

This has got to be one of the most satisfying victories of my entire life.

We had lots of nice family dinners at home.

I made a RTE Middle Eastern roasted lamb shoulder with couscous and garlic sauce and it took 4 hours but it was sooooo good.

We checked out the Brighton Beach boxes. Cute.

Dad’s CPAP machine broke so Classic Dad he took the whole thing apart to try and fix it. We found the problem eventually but it would need a replacement part, so I guess he just didn’t breathe while sleeping after that.

Scott brought us to play bowls. Dad found it interesting. We also brought him to pickleball.

It was nice to have a week off work and spend a quality week with Dad and Diane. There were lots of good chats, good food, relax time, shoulder rubs from Diane (was she just warming up her hands?), and plenty of games of Wizard. I think they found Australia too expensive but hopefully they can visit again somehow.