July was busy!!

For my 40th birthday we rented out Pickleholic and invited every single one of my friends to come and play pickleball. So many different groups all made an effort to come and it made me feel very special. We had tons of family, including the Lonards who came up from Sydney, work friends, weightlifting friends, pickleball friends, Discord friends, board game friends, old friends, and new friends.

Unfortunately I only remembered to take two photos on the day.

Almost everyone had a try at some point!! Love it!!

We got banh mi delivered in and had tons of snacks as well. And a Costco cake. Scott made a speech, and I disassociated while they sang Happy Birthday to me. Please do not perceive me. :P

Overall I had a blast and felt very spoiled and I hope everyone else had fun too. A good start to my 40s.

The next day we celebrated Luca’s birthday in Boronia. The kids smashed the pinata that we forgot to do at the party. It’s probably a good thing we forgot to do it at Pickleholic because the pinata was very durable and the candy got a bit pulverized and made a huge mess.

The fam went to watch Scott at hockey. It was fun to see him play and see how much he’s improved since the last time I went, but everyone’s favourite part of the game was when he got a penalty and had to sit in the penalty box.

We did some dogsitting while Priscilla went to Adelaide. This is Fanta. She spends most of her day lying down on the floor or the couch. A very chill doggy. She has pyjamas! I am not really a dog person but I didn’t mind this dog. In fact I did feel quite sad after she got picked up.

I got a bunch of new board games for my birthday! The Quest For El Dorado is right up my alley as it is relatively simple but can get strategic! I also like that it is El Dorado when that’s where we used to live in Vancouver. And Everdell Silverfrost is great as well, as I always sort of thought that the original Everdell was a bit too simple, and this version adds a bunch of chaos elements that make every game slightly different. We still have a couple more new games to try as well!

I attempted to make a red velvet cake for Ash’s birthday but accidentally added BLACK food colouring instead of red!! It came out a really appetizing shade of swampy green. But it tasted great and was still probably my most successful layer cake ever. We won at trivia that night too so overall that was a great evening.

This year we decided to make a whole weekend of the Bendigo Wool Show. We booked an Airbnb and had a great little weekend away. We went to the wool show on two different days, which took a lot of the urgency out of the shopping. We scoped out options on the first day, and then figured out exactly what we needed, and then went back with a plan the second day.

Highlights for me were all the beautiful hand dyed sock yarns, beautiful gradient packs of mini skeins, chips with cheese and gravy (as close to poutine as I’m gonna get here), the little wooden drawer thingy I got from the woodworkers association, craft cinema, Dani using a chair as a swift, pattern sharing, the immaculate lawn at the airbnb, and the fix for the car breaking down only costing $33.

This was my haul. Mostly sock yarn and the blue wool will be for a shawl.

Scott organised a blind taste test event for me as a #SMAJ activity. They do stuff like this on Masterchef Australia all the time and we always thought it would be fun. He had different categories and I had to name the flavours/types. Like cheese, Pringles flavours, Oreo varieties, juice types. And dark chocolate that I had to guess the percentage. I did better than I expected! The only thing that really confused me was the apple juice, it just tasted like pure sugar but I couldn’t figure out what flavour.

Priscilla and I did yet another pickleball tournament, at Pickleholic. It was a tough tournament! We only won one game and lost three. Was still fun though and we know lots of stuff to work on.

I love double hand backhand but it’s starting to hurt? I’m not sure what to do about this.

I finished my second Anyday Sweatshirt! It still needs a final blocking but I’ve been wearing it heaps already. It came out bigger than I intended but is actually so cozy like this I don’t even mind. I raced to finish it in time for a chance to win prizes in a knitalong, but unfortunately I did not win anything. I suppose the motivation was good though otherwise it probably still wouldn’t be done.

I made this little onigiri pouch as requested by Rose. It looks cute in this picture but in real life it’s not great.. it’s way too thick and the top can’t even close. I will make my own version sometime… maybe in 2029.

Unpictured Stuff:

• 50 million physio appointments
• Scott finished working