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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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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.

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Delicious Malaysian food at Pappa Laksa for my birthday. We had Beef Rendang Nasi Lemak, Pappa Special Laksa, Ice Cendol and Teh Tarik. I felt like I was back in Malaysia (besides the price, lol). Now that I’m thinking about this meal again I want to go to the restaurant again.

Happy 15th anniversary! We just went out for a casual lunch after pickleball because the real celebration was coming later (I’ll make another post).

Even though I vowed to drive to the Bendigo Wool Show after our experience last year, Ash convinced me to take the train again, with some modifications. We drove to Southern Cross, made sure to allow more time to find the platform, and crossed our fingers there would be no global technology meltdowns on that particular day. It all worked out, we had a very nice day out in the country and saw lots of cool stuff.

Loved these cute lil amigurumi vegetables!

I bought way more stuff this time haha. The yarn stash is plentiful at the moment. I told Scott to tell me off if I try to buy anything more now. I swear I have plans for all of it!! (Just need to quit my job so I have time to knit all of it…)

Lara invited me to go to the Peninsula Hot Springs with her and her mum. Very glad she suggested we pay a little extra to go on the adults only bathing side because we had a really lovely relaxing day in there, despite the weekend crowds. Our spa lunch was yum as well. We stayed for a long time!! My muscles felt very relaxed after that day.

More Critter Kitchen! It really is a cute and fun game. And pretty unique mechanisms compared to our other games, but not too hard either.

Scott has to get glasses. He hasn’t picked a pair yet. Rosemarie thinks this makes him look like that shooter guy from the last Olympics. I see it.

I had to go into the city to see my allergy doctor, finally a chance to try one of the places on my To Eat map that is only open weekday lunch times. I went to Warkop and had the Beef Brisket Rendang and Pickle sandwich which had way more cheese on it than I was expecting, but was really tasty. I would like to go back to try the Satay Chicken sandwich, but I only need to see the allergy doctor once per year!! Long wait.

Finished these stripey socks for Scott. Self striping yarn is very fun and easy.

The start of a hat for Lauren. The brief was “colourful hat”. Hope he likes it!

I am experimenting with crochet again for a commission project, and while I have managed to get my crojo back, I don’t know if I like how the piece is turning out so I might give up on this project. Need to discuss.

Unpictured stuff:

  • Sally had a crafternoon at her new apartment and cooked us a FEAST!!! There was so much food, and she made pretty much everything lactose free so I could eat it all! My favourite was the lactose free cheesecake. We are truly spoiled. I knitted Lauren’s hat, and Scott ended up playing Magic with da boys.
  • I started using my fitness passport to go to the pool near my work to swim and use the hot tub after work. If I use my imagination, I can pretend I’m back at the Peninsula Hot Springs. :D
  • We went to see Jurassic Park as our July #SMAJ. It was very stupid.
  • Trivia. The usual.
  • Pickleball. The usual.

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Pat turned 70 and the whole family got together for a succulent Chinese meal in Boronia. It’s always nice to have the family together (only missing Michael and Luca), and I think Pat really liked it because he teared up a bit when he thanked us all for coming.

We had the girls over for a sleepover before Ava and Jess’s flight back to Sydney. We played some games and watched a movie and had snacks. I heard a lot of thumping and bumping coming from the living room over night!!

An elder millenial giving up her skinny jeans (for now). Ava is my style inspiration.

Geared up for an excursion into and onto the roof. A lot of the insulation had been thrown around during the renovations so we spent some time nestling them all back in place. It felt like doing every single hip mobility exercise in a row. I think it’s worked though (along with some of our other draft reduction projects) because this winter hasn’t felt quite so miserable as the last few.

Michael and Gina had us over for an excellent lunch. I felt like we were at a Japanese restaurant! We played Critter Kitchen and Nekojima. Critter Kitchen is really fun! Lucky that we won that from Sonika’s raffle.

Dumpling dinner in the city. Scott was very brave wearing his brand new hoodie, I definitely would have dropped something on myself.

Scott organised for us to do a printmaking class in the city for one of his #SMAJ activities. It was fun, although I felt very rushed, but maybe that is good for me, to not try to perfectionize every activity.

Scott and I did a pickleball tournament at Eastern Indoor Centre and managed to come second! The tournament ran very far behind schedule and we had to wait AGES in between games so it was a weird evening of warming up and then getting cold and having to warm up again. We only finished second in our pool to make it into the semi finals, but played very well in the semis to make it into the final! And then we got smashed in the final, haha.

We had a family birthday dinner at Jemma’s. Myles and I made lots of origami shuriken, which he later combined into a ULTIMATE SHURIKEN. Love it.

Tiny bit of progress on the cable knit blanket.

Unpictured stuff:

  • So much pickleball. Social sessions, drills, and private lessons. I also did a DUPR session at Eastern Indoor with a random old man partner to try and get used to the courts/balls before the tournament. Good thing I did because I was hitting everything out of bounds that day. Sorry partner.
  • Scott worked hella overtime running exams. Very long days for him. He has a lot of TOIL.
  • I went to a Discord meetup. Was nice to see everyone again and meet a few new people as well. The highlight was the apple caramel slice that one person brought. Delicious.
  • I started doing Bodypump classes at the gym near my house. It’s a bit silly and I spend a lot of time flailing around, but it’s also fun and at least I am doing something. Gym motivation is very low these days.