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Now that we don’t have to go to inspections and auctions every single Saturday I can do fun stuff like go to the Big Design Market and admire cool printed clothing and pottery and things. I really liked this market. Excellent place to do some unique Christmas shopping and also blow a lot of money. Everything was cool!!

I splurged on these cups as a housewarming present to myself. I also got a frog shirt for Myles, some cards and a print.

Uncle Scotty playing Uno Flip with da boys and April.

New high score!! *sweats profusely*

Jess, Scott and I went to a taping of Hard Quiz. It was my first time being in a studio audience. It was fun! Tom Gleeson was good, the contestants were weird, and the comedian guy warming up the crowd was funny too. We OOOO’d and clapped and laughed on cue. They had to re-film a few things but thankfully not too much so it didn’t get too tedious. Not bad for a free activity! And it helped us beat the crazy 45°C heat outside as well. The episode won’t be on until late next year.

Before and After bibimbap. Seriously one of my favourite meals ever.

So many kiddos!!! Cousin Christmas at Shaun’s place.

Typical Aussie Christmas plate: several types of salad, scalloped potatoes, ham, rotisserie pork and beef, plus cold bevvies.

Christmas Eve spicy cocktail before going to see Star Wars.

We had a relaxed start to Christmas Day. We slept in and ate breakfast chocolates and opened presents. I got a sewing machine and Ben Folds’ memoir. Scott got merino sweatpants, a video game, and a bunch of new board games (really they are for both of us). Then we headed to House Jorna for more rotisserie pork and salads and family time.

In the evening my friend Sophie came over with her brother to play some games. We played Ghost Stories (co-op game), Azul and Camel Up. I made burgers. It was almost like the Burger Friday’s we used to have in Vancouver with Lesley on our Eldorado apartment patio. I miss that!!

Boxing Day. We video chatted the fam in Ontario and then headed out to Lysterfield Park for a walk. I wanted to start identifying some birds with my new bird app. We walked 7 km and spotted eight types of birds, all of them are pretty common, but four of them I didn’t know the names before so that’s fun. (Eurasian Coot, Little Black Cormorant, Superb Fairywren, and Purple Swamphen). I’m excited to go camping in a few weeks and identify some more birds.

I took today off which gave me a sweet five day break from work. We really haven’t taken much time off this year so this felt nice. Still have a physio appointment, a birthday party, brunch, and the usual family dinner/work/training to finish off the year/decade.

Other unpictured stuffs:

  • Annual EH Christmas party with the old work gang. As usual great to see everyone and eat all the delicious food everyone brings! I brought 7 layer dip, which Australian people don’t know about! It was a hit. Scott got a pair of wireless headphones in the stealing santa game.
  • Scott turned 41. We got takeaway charcoal chicken and I got him a ricotta raisin cheesecake.
  • We waited an hour in line for Taco Bell. I think it was worth it. :P They had games and stuff and we won a couple pairs of taco socks.
  • We opened our new bank accounts and did a lot of mortgage paperwork. Riveting stuff, I know.
  • Had a games night at Pete and Melinda’s house. We played Articulate, Carcassonne, Machi Koro, and Camel Up. We’d played Machi Koro once before with Rosemarie in Vancouver and thought it was kind of boring, but this time was a lot more fun. Maybe because everyone had very different strategies?
  • Phoenix Christmas Hit Out and BBQ: I didn’t compete but went to watch and then we had a nice bbq afterwards in the tiny little courtyard out the back of the gym. The club got together to get Milos a new pair of lifting shoes. Milos is our oldest (age 76) and most helpful club member (he fixes leaks in the roof, maintains the drinking fountain and water cooler, vacuums, and fixes everything else that breaks). Milos is the man. His speech when presented with the gift: “I wanted to retire, and now I can’t.” :’)
  • Speaking of weightlifting, I am now training four days a week. It definitely took a couple weeks to get used to the extra work, but now it feels normal. Hopefully it helps.

Well that’s nearly it for 2019. Rosemarie requested a few different reviews so I’ll work on that this weekend, and I’ve just drunk the last cider of the final edition of Scott’s Cider Advent Calendar so I’ll post that soon too.

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Here’s a whole bunch of things we did in May and June 2019, non-chronologically.

Made a bunch of ugly dumplings. They tasted good but the filling in the chicken and prawn dumps was too runny so I was having a hard time forming them. Scott’s pork ones looked a bit better. After this Scott signed us up for a dumpling class for June #SMAJ, which was fun but we didn’t really learn anything new besides how to make the dough, which I’m not sure I would bother doing.

I learned how to make no knead bread. IT’S SO EASY!!!

Just wanted to show off this tasty sandwich on homemade bread.

Myles being adorable at family dinner.

House hunt update: not much. This was us at an auction, ready to bid. But it ended up going for more than our budget. Shrug. The place had spongey floors anyway. There hasn’t been a lot posted lately. We’ve gone to see a few places but none of them have been really speaking to us. We’ll just keep being patient and waiting.

This is the window in our toilet. It has glass slats but it’s just open to the outside, for ventilation?? This is ok in the summer, but in winter it goes down to like 3 degrees!! It made using the bathroom miserable and even with the door shut it still made that end of the house very cold.

I asked for help on Facebook and we figured out I could remove the slats and seal up the window. I used a pillow at first until we could get to Bunnings to get a piece of styrofoam. That beige buddy is wedged in there so well we’ll have to break it to get it out I think. It’s helped A LOT.

Crocheting for warmth.

A fun quick crochet project. Scott thinks I should have left a head hole in the middle.

There was a nurse at work who loves to braid hair. Lucky me! I got so many compliments on these ones at the gym. I think they added 5 kg to all of my lifts.

Auntie Hsi mailed me a quilt! It is extremely bright. It’s very well made and the perfect size and shape to use while sitting down because it covers all the way to your feet. She actually sent another one a couple weeks later too but I haven’t taken a picture of it yet. It’s purple and geometric and really pretty. Thank you so much Hsi!!

I got to go to a dinner meeting with the company that makes the radioactive spheres treatment I help with at work. It was at the Sofitel, which if you have visited me in Melbourne I have probably taken you there, because they have the best bathroom. The view was great and the food was super fancy! I got to try freeze dried mandarin! Not bad for a free dinner and a couple hours of CPD! :)

It’s not all blood, sweat, and tears at the gym.

I had a good comp last month. I made 5 out of 6 lifts. I missed my second snatch attempt which was really frustrating because I had done that weight several times fairly easily before in training. I got it on the third attempt but I wished I had made it on the second attempt so I could have tried something heavier after. Still a 1 kg competition PB though. And then I got all three of my clean and jerks, the last one being a 2 kg PB. Not bad considering I had only been doing power jerks in training for weeks and only switched back to split jerks the two light sessions before the comp. I’m up to a 95 kg total. I really want to get a 100 kg total!!

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Well it’s technically autumn here now, although it’s currently 36°C and climbing?? But let’s just quickly catch up on this past summer.

Scott turned 40. We had a big party at our house. I greatly underestimated the number of kids in our lives! Thankfully the children entertained themselves outside by piling up all the gravel in our courtyard. We had lots of food and drinks, and lots of Scott’s family and friends from school and work and everything came by even though it was so deep into Christmas party season. Overall success, imo.

Every second year is a big Christmas at the Jorna household (the other years people go to their other side of the family) and this year was a big one. I think there was about 40 people all together? Bonkers. There was a pinata, wading pool, bbq lunch, and soooooo many children and presents.

The next day we did a very Melbournian thing and went to Day 1 of the Boxing Day Test at the MCG. It was… very boring. Even people that love cricket thought it was boring. Because the grass was too flat and too smooth so nothing really happened. They would hit the ball very conservatively along the ground to just get one run at a time. There were only two wickets and one of them was while we were scanning our tickets to get in to the ‘G.

Scott and I worked through the Christmas holidays and saved our days off for when it wasn’t school holidays. It wasn’t busy at work so it wasn’t so bad.

I wanted to do a “polar bear” swim on New Years Day so we went to Half Moon Bay Beach which is only about 30 minutes away, on the bayside. It was a little busy but it was a hot day and the water was delightful. Plus there is really good fish and chips there.

It has been a hot summer of training. I sweat a lot even in the winter but when it’s >30°C it’s a whole other disgusting story. My face is always purple.

Sadly my coach Rob (in the aqua shirt) decided to retire. We were all very sad. I had one last competition with him 6 weeks ago, and then transitioned to getting coached by his son Adam. It’s different, but not that different, which is good.

We got this sweet bath caddy in the Kris Kringle gift swap thingy. I’m looking forward to when it’s cooler so I can have more baths. It feels nice on my back (which is actually not that bad at the moment btw).

We went ATVing in Gippsland, but I’ll save that for another post.

We also went camping at Wilsons Prom again this summer, but I will also save that for another post.

Scott has been doing hockey lessons and swimming lessons lately. He says they are both very challenging but very helpful.

We made some new board game friends! They are friends of Scott’s coworker (who also likes games) and they know how to play Agricola!! It’s tricky to find games for 6 players though. Last night we played Sushi Go Party, Sushi No, 7 Wonders, Coup, and King of Tokyo. I found Coup really hard, it is pretty much exactly what I am really bad at (bluffing and keeping track of what cards other people have).

On my way to the Aqua concert. :D

I had heard that Aqua was coming to Melbourne a while ago, along with a whole bunch of other 90s pop bands like Vengaboys, B*Witched, Eiffel 65, Lou Bega… but it was pretty expensive and I couldn’t find anyone to go with. I debated what to do for ages until the day before the concert I decided I would regret it if I didn’t try to go. I mean I still love the album Aquarium!!

I still didn’t want to pay a lot though. So I scoured Gumtree and Ebay and Facebook for cheap tickets and the morning of the concert someone finally accepted my offer! They ended up being very friendly girls and invited me to hang out with them since I didn’t know anyone else there. It was very random and very fun!!!!

The venga bus is coming…

Aqua!!! It was so nostalgic. They’re one of the few bands that I actually know most of the words to the songs haha. The tickets were awesome and we got right up close. Very fun night, I laughed a lot. I’m glad I decided to try and go. Would Aqua again.