Last one for the 30-day challenge!

To be honest, I’ve found the 30-challenge quite a challenge. I have a very busy life, and don’t always relish starting or finishing my day with a story about this or that. So, what tickles my fancy right now?

This does:

Stephen and I are both waiting with anticipation to get one of these wee beauties. They are released in New Zealand in July, and I’m thinking we’ll be first in line!

Why do we want one? Because we can. We don’t NEED it, but look at it, it’s so COOL! Is it a laptop? No, not quite. Is it a PDA? No, it’s so much more than that. It is the perfect fit between our home computers (Mac Mini and a MacBook Air) and our iPhones.

And finally, this is what REALLY tickles my fancy. The man I share my life, my hopes, my dreams, my home, my family, my everything with. I love you Stephen

more than my iPhone even.

Again, let’s go with the highlights, grouped into different areas of my life:

Family hopes/dreams/plans

• Well, number one has to be getting married. I’ve been married before, but it seems like another lifetime ago to me now. I really feel like I am embarking on the adventure of married life for the first time. First time round, I didn’t really understand the significance of what I was doing. I do now. I have truly met the man of my dreams and I want to spend all my days with him. Even the ones where he won’t STOP TALKING and leaves his socks and shoes laying around for me to trip over.
• I am so looking forward to becoming a Frayle. The Frayle’s are a cool bunch of people (you know who you are) and I am so happy to have a new big and bustling family around me. I have to break the bad news though, I will be a Frayle in my heart, but not name. After we get married I want to keep my name Thompson. There is a long and complicated reason for this  – but I can explain that another time.
• I look forward to the birth of my next grandchild, due in September. I’ve loved being a Nana, and although I imagine that two of ’em will be a challenge, it’s a challenge I meet with relish.
• I am looking forward to watching Wyatt grow and develop. His little personality is starting to come out and I kinda like it. He’s a strange one.
• I look forward to watching Bronwen grow and develop. She has changed a lot in the year I’ve known her – become more responsible and a great little team player in the Frompson household. It has been a big change/challenge for her and I’m proud at how she’s stepped up.
• My little Meagle is planning on moving out of home sometime this year, so I have hopes and dreams and plans for our new extra space.

Sporting hopes/dreams/plans

• I am looking forward to finishing a season of hockey in the women’s league and then signing up for the social B grade next season, having a season already under my belt. If I fall over less often than Paul did last year, I’ll feel pretty good about myself.
• I’d really like to score a goal in Futsal. I think I’ll work on my ‘being able to kick the ball instead of squealing at it’ skills for now.

Work hopes/dreams/plans

• I am looking forward to developing my project management skills, and growing into the role of educational designer.

Random other hopes/dreams/plans

• I plan to be the proud part-owner of an iPad in the not-to-distant-future.
• I am looking forward to getting an iPhone 3GS later this year.
• I am looking forward to going to Lake Tekapo in the wintertime and skating on the outdoor rink there.

There are so many other small things bubbling away that fill my time and attention, I couldn’t begin to list them all. Suffice to say, I am planning on having a great year. I know it’s not all going to be roses. Life will always throw me curve balls,  but I know that the hard times are what make the good times so good!

Well, alrighty then! We are doing the summary thing again, if that’s okay with you.

May 2009-April 2010: The highlights

May was a good month. Stephen and I met in March, and by May we were firmly ensconced in coupledom and loving every minute of it. He was officially living with Mum and Dad, but spent most of his nights at my place.

June, well that was an even better month! Stephen, Bronwen, Megan and I all moved into our place together.

July in which we went to Auckland to visit my brother, got a load of free firewood (wootwoot) and the phone technician stole Stephen’s playstation games *sadface*.

August was a month of snuggling in front of the fire on our new two-person beanbag and lots of watching Star Trek: Enterprise.

September is springtime! Unfortunately it was also the month of the road trip to Dunedin for Megan, Antony, Grace, Wyatt and I to say goodbye to Simon who died on the 10th.

October Bronwen’s birthday! She turned 9, the party was epic.

November, oh well now, speaking of epic parties…this was the month that Antony turned 21. There was a yard glass, and many family and friends, a great night. Also, Wyatt turned one and Stephen and I turned a year older. I got Rockband for my birthday, heck yeah!

December merry xmas everyone! Celebrated in style at Paul and Angeline’s with all the Frayles. Really awesome.

January is the month that my little girl turned 18. Here I am, in 2010, with two adult children and a one-year-old grandchild. Life doesn’t get any better than this. Also, Stephen, Bronwen and I went to Nelson for a holiday.

February Megan started polytech, I was officially promoted off the front desk at work. We christened Paul and Angeline’s deck to celebrate her birthday. It was the month of graveyards…dead-relative-tracking.

March just when I thought life couldn’t get any better, Stephen asked me to marry him! I got a diamond ring! Planning ensued.

April see Day 27 – This month, in great detail

Omgosh, what a whirlwind! My life has changed so much in the last year – I’ve gone from being a single girl living alone to an engaged woman with a gaggle of children. And I love it.

Oh boy, this could be an epic! But really, I do the same thing week in and week out, so if you read the previous post (Day 27 – This week, in great detail) you’ve got the gist of it.

Highlights from the month of April:

• Went to Armaggedon in Wellington with the Frompson’s (so much fun!)
• Signed up for the women’s ice hockey league and played my first game, including scoring a goal (GO MOWGLIES!!)
• Signed up for a social futsal team and played my first game (GO BEBE GUNS!!)
• Started running in the mornings with Stephen (so impressed with my Mister!)
• Nailed backwards c-sculling at skate school
• Had lovely social times with friends: Jo, Kerry, Carol, Jen and Baxter, Michelle and Tim to mention a few
• Had some wonderful family times with Meagle, Bronwen, Antony, Grace, Wyatt, Stephen and the beanbag
• Watched my beautiful grandson grow another month older, new tricks all the time
• Found out my new grandchild is a girl
• Paid off my student loan
• Started the 30-day challenge
• Went to the Wedding Expo with Meagle and Grace
• Found a caterer for the wedding
• Found a celebrant to marry us

Alright, let’s see if we can do great detail with writing a novel! I’m going to write about Sunday to Saturday, since yesterday’s post starred the Sunday I just had…

Sunday 25th April

This was ANZAC Day in New Zealand – a public holiday. I usually start my day with a run, but this day I wanted to take Wyatt to see our friends Jen and Baxter (who is almost 2). I collected Wyatt at about 9:30am and Megan, Wyatt and I headed for Jen’s. She lives by the beach, so we went for a wander down to the local cafe (which is attached to a public library on the beach front, very cool). We had an excellent coffee, the kids made a glorious mess, and then we wandered home again. Along the way, we saw several buses, each one requiring vigorous waving by Wyatt. He rather likes public transportation.

That was the main event of Sunday. The rest of the day involved a meeting, a coffee date with my beloved, grocery shopping, and bean-bag-TV snuggling. Just the usual.

Monday 26th April

Up at 6:40am, out on the road for a run by 7am. Work work work, and then I picked Megan up from her boyfriend’s house and dashed home for a quick meal before heading out again to my hockey game at 8pm. We won 5-1, GO MOWGLIES!

Tuesday 27th April

No run this morning, so we got a bit of a sleep in. Work work work, and then a ballroom dance lesson at 5:30pm. We are trying to learn a whole bunch of new dance steps, so have decided to have private tuition for a while instead of learning in a class. After dancing we had a delicious meal at Ironside Thai and a walk in Hagley Park afterward. This was the setting/sequence of our second date and we like to relive it every now and again.

As usual, the evening finished with some beanbag-TV snuggles

Wednesday 28th April

This day started with a morning run again, followed by work work work. After work we meet at Pizza Hut for Grace’s 17th birthday party where Antony’s family vastly outnumbered Grace’s, funny! They ate pizza, I ate sushi. After dinner, Stephen, Megan and I went down to Cowles Stadium for our first game of Futsal (like indoor soccer, but much cooler). Megan sat the first game out, but promises to play next week. Bronwen would usually have been with us, but she was at camp in Woodend.

Having never played soccer before, it took me a while to get the hang of it, but the rest of the team played an awesome game and we came away with a 5-5 draw. GO BEBE GUNS!!

Thursday 29th April

No run this morning, just work work work. After work Stephen I met in Merivale at the home of Lizzie, our prospective caterer. I really like Lizzie, but she is a *little* manic. I swear she did not pause for breathe the whole time we were there. But we managed to hash out the main elements of our wedding menu, and I feel really good about how it will work out.

After Lizzie’s I was supposed to go to my regular 7pm meeting, but I was so tired we just headed straight home for a quick meal and some serious beanbag time.

Friday 30th April

Morning run, followed by work as usual. Today I finished at 2:30pm so I could meet my friend John for coffee and a catch up, and then pick Bronwen up from Grandma’s house. She was super tired from camp. I stopped at Grandma’s for a cuppa and a catch up, and then Bronwen and I zoomed across town to meet Stephen at the marriage celebrant’s place. I had met him at the wedding expo a few weeks ago, but wanted Stephen to meet him before we decided. I think we both really like him.

Glenn is a former minister who left the church recently (last month!) to pursue a career in weddings and funerals. He seemed a bit nervous, but very nice. He’ll be perfect.

Saturday 1st May

May Day! Workers of the word unite!

Up at 6:30am, on the ice by 8am for my skate lesson. As usual, Stephen and Bronwen came along as my cheering squad. I love that they come every week. It was a good session too – I’m learning how to skate backwards, and doing pretty well I think. After skating, we went and got Wyatt for our weekly fun, and went home to make pancakes. Wyatt managed to feed himself a whole pancake and half a banana with his own knife and fork. He’s growing up so fast!

To burn off the pancakes, we went for a wander down to the park (see Day 24 for more on these shenanigans). We were all in need of some down time when we got home, so we curled up on the ever-present beanbag together and watched Toy Story. Wyatt fell asleep snuggled up between us (so cute!) so we left him there and had some mousetraps for lunch. I snuck out at 1pm to go to see some friends and left them all there. When I got back about 3pm, Wyatt had been collected by his parents, and Megan and Bronwen were ready and eager to go Mother’s Day shopping.

Riccarton Mall was a mad place on Saturday afternoon, and we split up so they could shop without me. I went clothes shopping and found a cute tunic top that will be good for work. We reconvened and headed to the Warehouse to buy Futsal gear for Megan, whoop whoop! We dropped M back at her boyfriend’s place, and headed home for soup Saturday and movie night. It didn’t go as planned – we wanted to watch Coraline but Miss B was too freaked out, so we watched a bit of Grease instead (random selection from the harddrive).

Then it was bath, bed and story (Ramona Forever this week) for Miss B, and bed and sleep for us. It had been a busy week!

Sunday, in great detail.

My Sunday started with a sleep-in until 7:40am. That early in the morning may not seem like a sleep-in to some people, but since we get up at 6:30am six days a week, getting up after 7am seems luxurious to me. We had crashed at 10:30pm the night before too, so we were both well rested, a treat. We lay in bed listening to music for a while, until Bronwen pounded on the door demanding some company downstairs.

Our Sunday mornings are fairly well routined – Stephen plays EverQuest, I watch some TV on the computer (usually Survivor or Project Runway) then go for a morning run. This morning I spent some time doing other computery things as well as watching the penultimate episode of Project Runway.

Because I knew we would be having a busy afternoon, I went for a short run through the walkway around the lake by our house. The run was just enough to stretch my legs and blow the cobwebs out, and the setting was lovely.

Once home, we all got on with finishing our Sunday chores – I cleaned the bathrooms and kitchen, Stephen vacuumed and tidied, and Bronwen tidied her room and dusted. That all finished, we had cheese toasties for lunch and then headed out to Tower Junction to inspect the shops. The clothing shops I was aiming at were depressingly uninspiring.

Our next stop was the ice rink for the 2-4pm public session. A long line of birthday party children greeted us upon arrival. After a long wait in the queue, we got on the ice. Stephen was feeling a bit blah, so he sat this session out. Bronwen was meeting her coach and classmates for a lesson in how to figure skate in hockey skates. She took a few minutes to find her ice feet, but was soon spinning and twirling as usual. I had a bit of a swish around, and then retired to the cafe to keep Stephen company and wait for the crowds to thin a little. It’s lovely to watch all the kids getting their feet on the ice, but doesn’t make for much of a good time if you are trying to do laps at speed.

After a very average latte and some delicious (brought from home) brownie, I had another crack at skating, and stayed out until the session ended at 4pm. Skates off, we were back in the car to drop Bronwen off to Mummy’s until Wednesday.

Next stop grocery shopping at Wainoni Pak n Save. Riveting stuff!

I dropped Stephen and the groceries off at home and headed off for a 5:30pm meeting on the other side of town. After the meeting, I picked Megan up from her boyfriend’s place and we trooped back across town to drop Wyatt’s car seat off at Antony and Grace’s, and then home for a wonderful meal cooked by Stephen.

We had a lovely post-dinner beanbag-TV-snuggle, I got some work finished, and then went out to drop Megan off at her friend’s place before retiring for the night.

Just an average Sunday really.

An observation today.
Me and Stephen and Bronwen took Wyatt to the local park for a play. He was initially happy to play, but then seemed to get a bit worried about how high up the play equipment was.
So then we decided to give him a swing instead. They had the baby swings that have straps to hold the child in. As soon as we lifted him up he started getting upset, and then when we put him in the swing seat, he started out-and-out crying. He was even puffing and wimpering. He was actually scared.
It probably didn’t help that for some reason I found this reaction to be both cute and funny, so was giggling so hard that I had trouble getting him untangled and out of the swing.
So he got out and down and wandered off across the park lawn by himself, and lay down in the grass to recover.
He’s a strange boy sometimes, my dear wee Wyatt.
And I find Wyatt’s reaction especially startling because his father was a total daredevil. He was a climber before he could walk, and never seemed to fear anything. The child gave me many heart stopping moments over the years, but I got used to it.
Father and son might be alike in a lot of ways, but I don’t think thrillseeking behaviour is one of them.