Checking in.............

Life is buuuuuuuuuuuuusy and fairly full.

This new auto-immune diet is consuming vast amounts of my time and energy. I seem to be spending every spare minute in the kitchen cooking all manner of auto-immune friendly food. I'm so hoping that it will be worth it - it's not a cheap or easy journey by any stretch of the imagination.

AIP snickerdoodles - yummy but went a bit soggy the next day

mint ice cream - very moorish

Wraps made out of nothing but coconut - a revelation for our Mexican nights

Zucchini cheese - not sure I can get past the yeasty smell to make them again though

salmon and parsnip cakes

Smoked fish, kumara and kale patties

I have made a myriad of different foods so far - some with more success than others - zucchini cheese (not sure I can get past the smell to ever make it again though), garlic breadsticks (went a bit soggy), mint ice cream (yum!), blueberry cheesecake bites (yum!), salted caramel blondies (too good!), salmon and parsnip cakes (so good on my lunchtime salad), smoked fish, kumara and kale patties (yeeha!), and my all-time favourite smoky maple breakfast sausages (the stuff dreams are made of!).

Smoky maple sausages - these are so much like our favourite New Yorker Porker sausages it's unreal!

I've also made lots of vege soups (that tends to be my breakfast these days) and been trying to eat a lot more fish and red meat with my dinners to go along with all the veges.

In between all this, the past couple of weekends the boys and I have also made chocolate caramel slice, rocky road, honey rice bubble cake and lolly cake for them to eat - although not all at once ha ha! It's a huge test of my stamina not to indulge in any of this stuff or to lick the bowl while we are doing the baking - it's almost like a slow torture sometimes, but I'm proud of myself for sticking to my guns so far, and I love that they are enjoying their baking experiences. Next weekend we will be doing our share of baking for the great NZ ninja baking drop for some lovely local people.

The boys have been busy running cross country and getting ready for their school production in just over a week's time. The week after that Noah heads off to camp for three days at Pirongia - Mark is going as a camp dad too - hopefully it will be a great experience for them both! Noah also had a playdate at his mate Noah's house (so confusing!) last week - it was his first official playdate - he was so excited all week at the prospect.

Last weekend we had our dear friends Emily and Ezra come to visit - they relocated from Wellington to Auckland about 18 months ago so we were comparing notes on long distance moves and settling in. The kids enjoyed catching up together and we checked out the velodrome and the bike skills park before sitting down to a tasty lamb roast before they had to get back on the road north again.

Soon we hope to have some good news on the house building front - we are still waiting on the title and building consent but once that's through we expect things should kick off next month - there's a chance we might be in by Christmas but we are trying not to pin our hopes on it.

One big frustration for me is that I haven't taken a damn photo in months - not since Rarotonga - I really do need to get out. It's not as if I'm not seeing lovely skies morning and night or admiring beautiful sights on my drives to work and around the countryside but driving and taking photos are a bit mutually exclusive - funny that! And finding the time (and non-frosty mornings) to go out on my own is proving challenging in the weekends but with the footy season nearly finished (only 2 more weeks after this one) and lighter/warmer mornings/evenings on the way I really hope I can get back into my snap-happy groove soon.

Blogging has also fallen a lot by the wayside - I think back to the days of posting 3-4 times a week and wonder how the heck I found the time to be honest - maybe I'll find that mojo again one day but it won't be any time soon. At the moment I don't really feel like a have a whole lot to offer. Most days seem to be a cycle of sleep (never enough!), exercise, go to work, cook, eat, sleep and repeat and that doesn't make for terribly exciting reading for you readers!

But I'm trying to tell myself that short and sweet and erratic posting is still better than not at all!

Life lately... {throwing in a hospital stay for good measure!}

It's been fairly full-on recently in these parts.

Noah turned 9 last weekend - it was a quietish celebration compared to some of his other birthday parties, but just right for the stage we are at right now just starting out in a new town.

He invited three friends (one couldn't make it) from his class at school. They had fun doing a short scooter ride around the block collecting scavenger hunt clues for a prize on their return, played some Smash Bros on the Wii U, ate KFC and smashed a toffee ice-cream cake that Mark had made.

On his actual birthday, Noah requested pancakes for breakfast which he helped make. After a Skype with Grandma and Granddad showing how cool his Harry Potter robes looked that they'd sent him for his birthday, we went out for a walk on the Te Awa cycleway to try out his new Blunt scooter.

After lunch Noah had ANOTHER party to go to - one of his friends who came to his party was having his own party but I picked him up a little early as we had Nana, Poppa and Aunty Alesha coming over for a build-your-own burger night.

My tummy hadn't felt great that day - I got a stitch like pain while we were out walking but put it down to either the steak I'd had the night before or a possible side effect of a nutritional cleanse programme called Isagenix I'd been trialling for 2 weeks - it was meant to be a 30-day plan but it hadn't really been making me feel any better and my bowels had been a bit all over the place so I made the decision to stop doing it.

It was a busy week with both boys having cross country practice every day, and practice for their school productions. Noah's class is doing 2 songs from Hairspray and he's thrilled to have one of the 6 main parts for the songs.

Mark spent three days driving up to Auckland each day for a retail management course - leaving home at 6.30am and not getting home till 7.30pm which made for a long day. On Wednesday, the pain in my side returned and got progressively worse throughout the day.

I made the decision to call on my mum late afternoon to come and look after the boys so I could go to the after hours medical centre in Te Awamutu (Cambridge doesn't have one) since I knew Mark wouldn't be home for a couple of hours at least.  I battled through getting Noah to his football photos and getting them some dinner and then headed off in the dark and rain for the 20 minute trip.

When the doctor saw how much pain I was in, she said she thought I really should get it checked out at the hospital and she didn't think I should drive there - oh great. So my only alternative was to take an ambulance - I felt a bit of a fraud but didn't have much choice as Mark was still over an hour away and the medical centre was shutting shortly. As it turned out, taking the ambulance worked out in my favour as I was able to get straight into the emergency department.

Even so it took a while to be seen - blood tests and urine etc but they came back clear. The doctor who saw me had an atrocious bedside manner and basically said they couldn't do much more for me other than give me pain relief and suggest booking an ultrasound through the GP to rule out any gall bladder issues - they would have then sent me home at 2am except I had no way of getting home. By then the codeine had helped a little and I was moved to the short stay unit - luckily there was only one other old guy in there but I swear he must have got out of bed about a dozen times in the next four hours - he didn't have a clue where he was. Anyway I managed to doze a bit and morning eventually rolled around.

Poor Mark had to get the boys to Nana's at 6am on Thursday morning so he could still make the trip to Auckland in order for Nana to then drive them to school.  I spent the day at home working quietly on the couch and by evening was feeling a little better. The ultrasound on Friday morning was also clear.

During the week when I was feeling OK I made baked apple chips and applesauce - I had a special little helper coring and peeling and spiralling all the apples for me.

Over the weekend the boys made lemon muffins and gingerbread for them, Mark made focaccia bread, and I made lamb and cauliflower soup, bone broth and chicken liver pate for my new diet. I also made my delicious chocolate orange cake for Alesha's birthday and homemade muesli bars for the boys - so it really was a weekend of baking amongst the other craziness! I've also been thinking about doing the autoimmune protocol diet for a long time - it really does have huge health benefits for anyone with autoimmune diseases like my Crohn's disease is. I've held off doing it until we got up here and got settled in properly but this latest episode has me convinced that I need to really give it a good go.

I'd already cut out coffee, grains, refined sugar and alcohol the past few weeks so the next steps is to eliminate eggs, nuts and seeds which is the hardest for me since I LOVE eggs and I love baking with almond meal. Anyway I know I need to commit to it and think I'm finally mentally ready to do so - it will make me a fun free zone for a while but it's for a very good purpose.

During the strictest part of the phase I'll just be eating meat, fish, veges (although not all - can't eat potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, beans, peas as they are classified as nightshades and legumes) and fruit and baking with things like coconut flour and arrowroot instead of using the nut based flours I do now.  After a certain amount of time (1-3 months probably) I will then start reintroducing the things I have eliminated but gradually to see which things have an effect on my digestion and body. It's really the only way to be sure how much things in the diet are affecting me - I already know gluten isn't great for me but I'll be very interested to see which other things I currently eat might be playing a part in my overall digestive health.

I know it won't be easy but I also owe it to my long-term health to do it! No doubt you'll hear more about my AIP (autoimmune protocol) journey as time goes on.

We are hoping this coming week is a little more mundane and uneventful on all counts!

On life lately......

There are not enough hours in the day right now it seems - when did I ever find hours in the days to post 3-5 times a week I'd like to know!!!!! So for the sake of not losing touch with you all here's a short n snappy summary of what's been going down at our place lately:

The chilblains are back - gutted! I thought I was doing so well and that buying my woolly slippers and socks would keep them at bay but it clearly wasn't enough....grrr.....I've now heard that once you've had them once in a winter season you can just keep on getting them... so lucky me!

Apparently it's 4 days and 9 hours till a certain person in the house's 9th birthday - don't worry we're getting regular updates so we can't forget how long it is!

Speaking of birthdays.... a couple of weeks ago Noah decided that it was his monkey's birthday that day and he wanted to make fudgy banana muffins for the occasion. Lo and behold I was then reminded by Facebook that night that it was exactly 5 years ago to the day that we'd dreamed up the idea of monkey having a birthday - how FREAKY that Noah picked that exact day - especially as we'd never mentioned it since!

I went to my first ever live netball game on Sunday night with lovely Jackie and my mum - the Silver Ferns beat South Africa quite convincingly. I was struggling not to fall asleep for most of the second half - not because it was boring - I'd had a late night the night before and Sunday nights are usually a wind-down so think my body was trying to tell me it needed to rest before another busy week ahead.

We made a flying visit to New Plymouth during the school holidays - heading down and back within the same day on a wet, wet weekend. It's something we could never have contemplated from Wellington and I know Gee Gee really appreciated the effort we made to see her but boy was driving home in the dark in the worst rain I've ever driven in a scary experience! It was like someone had turned a firehose onto the windscreen at points! Thankfully we made it back in one piece.

We had one of the only power cuts I can remember in a very long time the other night while Mark was dropping Noah at Cubs. Mylo was pretty freaked out by the whole experience as he'd not had it happen at night while he was home. I was pleased we had a few candles and torches on hand - we managed to shower in the near dark (the one plus point of having a mains cylinder) but all the washing up from dinner had to wait and poor Mark ended up eating a cold dinner when he got home as he couldn't heat it up again in the microwave! In the end we only had to wait 2.5 hours for the power to be restored but it was a LOOONG time when we had so much to get ready for the day ahead and to tidy up after dinner!

We've been making good use of our outdoor bedroom here at the rental already and have had both my cousin Gwyl and wife Charlotte to stay as well as our great friends Jackie and Heidi in the past month, as well as an overnight flying visit from Nate on his way home from the UK too. It's been so lovely to share all the things we love about our new environment with others too including plenty of visits to the section where our new house build will be.

Visits to the local Lilypad Cafe and Punnet Cafe went down a treat with us all too!

There was even time for a game of Trivial Pursuit - it proved quite challenging for any of us to remember what was 'current' 11 years ago when our version of the game came out though - not helped by the fact that Jackie and Heidi are also 10 years younger than us too - ha ha!

The boys also enjoyed showing the girls around their school and took Heidi on in a game of giant chess.

After a month without a dining room table, we have been loving eating back at a proper table with this gorgeous new table we bought from Vast Furniture. We sold our other table with the house as we knew it wouldn't easily fit in the rental or the new house and took the opportunity to brighten up the decor with some colourful aluminium chairs to accentuate the colours in the new table. Can't wait to see how they look in the new place too!

And on the subject of the house.....we are just waiting for the title to come through - if it all goes to plan the build might actually start late August or early September which would be super exciting if it happens - fingers crossed - it could mean we might squeeze into the house just before Christmas but we are trying not to get our hopes up too much and leaving the timing in God's hands. He's worked everything out pretty SWEET so far so have to give him the opportunity to do it again!

Past freezing

One thing I had definitely not really appreciated in making this move north was how FREAKING cold it gets overnight in the Waikato.

Many people have been surprised that we have been finding it so cold in the mornings and have commented 'but surely it's colder in Wellington?'

And that's partly true. During the day the wind chill factor in Wellington would make a sunny 10 degree day feel much, much colder. Even in a nasty southerly storm when the temperatures were at their lowest, we could usually guarantee an overnight minimum of 3-4 degrees even if the midday temperatures didn't then rise much above 5-6.

Last week we hit another patch of frosty temperatures overnight - I think yesterday morning took the cake - when I looked at the metservice website it said it was -4.4 outside - the coldest one yet. Although earlier in the week, there was also a morning where I'd had to physically yank the car door open as it was frozen shut!

But the biggest issue for us over the past month had been the lack of proper heating in the house. Unfortunately the heat pump broke down about 2 days after we moved in and it took several visits by the repair company to be able to properly diagnose the problem, and then fix what they thought was the problem with the control board only to find once that was finally fixed that it was actually another problem with the fan motor.

So not only was it colder overnight than we were used to but we were limping along with one oil fin heater trying to keep one room warm (and also take the chill off in the kids rooms using wall panel heaters). It basically meant we never really felt warm at all. In the middle of this all, we got a lovely email from the people who bought our house in Wellington saying how lovely and warm they were finding our house with its central heating - which was somewhat ironic to read and went down with us like a cup of cold sick!

So it's probably no great surprise that I got the worst case of chilblains I've ever seen on a person. Basically all the backs of my toes on my right foot had chilblain blisters as well as a giant one on my big toe on the other foot. I spent the best part of two weeks hobbling around until they gradually went away. Chilblains basically come about when your feet (or hands or ears) get too cold and go numb and then get too hot too quickly straight afterwards. I put mine down to a cold morning of exercise where my feet went numb and then I probably warmed my feet too quickly with the car heater on them on the way to work.

Morning exercise - working out on the bike trainer in the cold garage complete with hat, gloves and puffer jacket is a completely new experience for me!

Lesson learnt though. I subsequently went to Kathmandu and invested in some merino socks that were thin enough that I could wear two pairs at a time AND bought some new sheepskin boots on special at Farmers called Mi Woolies. Cold feet begone I say!

And for the past two days of below zero temperatures overnight, the heat pump has finally been fixed. Oh man what a massive difference a warm house makes!

Right in the thick of it...

The days are fair flying by at a rate of knots at the moment - I blink and another one is gone! And I suddenly realised that whoops I haven't even been near the computer in a week to even contemplate any blogging.
Well that's a lie, I've been on the computer. Just anytime I turn it on I find myself busy working. Working. Working. I'm busy trying to train my replacement at work and finish writing all my process notes - all 130 odd pages of them - and there just aren't enough hours in the day right now it seems. And now there's only 3 more days of work before we head off to Rarotonga next Tuesday. Eek!

The boys had 14 of their mates to Mission Inflatable last weekend for a fun 1.5 hour run around. You'd have thought it was carnage having 16 boys in one space but we hardly saw them - easiest party ever! They will really miss their friends - a lot of them are just delightful boys - they are really lucky to have made such lovely ones - even some just in the past six months. As sad as it is to have to leave them behind, I am truly hopeful that God has some lovely friends in store for them in Cambridge.

I did manage to sit down long enough last week to get my hair done - first time in six months. I wasn't necessarily planning on going blonder but that's just how it turned out. And I like it.

In other news...Noah made the most amazing chocolate caramel slice ever...with a little help from me getting it in the tin. And Noah ran his little heart out and got fourth in cross country this week - the only shame is that he won't get to run in the Western Zones because it's run after we leave.

And I know it's nearly two weeks ago, but I can't forget that I had some lovely Mothers Day treats and enjoyed seeing some great performances at the Arise Mothers Day services, and watching my boy play footy too.

We also helped try and rescue a shag that had gotten itself in a bit of a state at the Kelburn shops. We were on our way to the vet to get Murphy microchipped when we spotted the shag on the side of the kerb in the middle of throwing up a couple of fish. He was clearly not well and then proceeded to dice with death by waddling across the road in front of the traffic. I called Zealandia (who couldn't do anything), then the Department of Conservation (who said they would call back when they'd found a local advisor). In the end we were running very late for our appointment so had to just leave the shag on the footpath. The vets were also quite keen to help (but they couldn't leave the surgery right then). In the end when we came back we found him again still making a nuisance of himself but another sip owner had managed to call the SPCA. We managed to corner him in a courtyard which was much safer than out near the traffic but he then escaped and half flew up the road and ended up in a pohutukawa tree. We had to leave him at this point as dinner was calling and I had to go to Pilates so we really hope that he was rescued safely. A bit of unexpected excitement for a Monday night!

This weekend the boys have their last football game for Karori FC, we have our family farewell at Southern Cross on Sunday afternoon, and we are also going out to Hippopotamus restaurant at the Museum Hotel for dinner on Saturday night.

It seems rather fitting don't you think that the very place that brought us together at the very start of our journey as a couple 17 years ago will be the very last place in Wellington we will enjoy a romantic dinner out together. As if everything has come full circle somehow.

This time next week we will be gearing up for my brother Sam and Alesha's wedding at the Pacific Resort in Rarotonga. Nic (my other brother) and I are the wedding photographers and I have to admit to being a little nervous at the prospect as my camera has mostly been sat gathering dust in the corner these past couple of months. I hope that God just gives me some divine inspiration on the day as I'm feeling a little under prepared for it!

Not that I want to think about it, but there's also my damn stomach which started playing up again a week ago. By all rights it shouldn't have, it should be completely behaving itself as I'm still on half the dose of steroids and a higher dose of my usual medication Pentasa. Even the specialist is a bit mystified as to why it's happened now. It's not quite like the last flare up - this time I'm getting a really tight and inflamed tummy which seems to be at its very worst in the small hours of the morning. And typically, just as the steroid dosage had decreased enough to allow me to sleep properly - then this went and kicked in. I tell you I'm a bit BLOODY sick of this body of mine which seems to be letting me down left right and centre at the moment. I hope and pray it doesn't stop us from having a wonderful break away for the wedding, that I can actually carry out my role as wedding photographer to the best of my ability, and that when we get back from holiday I can get through the final 3 days of packing and moving without completely falling apart. It is worrying me how I will be able to cope - so if you believe in the power of prayer could I trouble you to pray for all that too!

As far as I can make out, Wifi and roaming charges are RIDICULOUSLY expensive in Rarotonga so you can be sure that we will be unplugging as much as possible and I very much doubt you will hear from us for the next week! All I can say is bring on those warm temperatures and beautiful beaches!