ATAAHUA ORA

But the good news is that next week is probably the last one of “those”.

On Saturday morning we both did some housework - Lukas went into the garden and did some spraying, watering and weeding. We have a problem with passion vine hoppers but unlike Andrew we don’t bother with “organic” solutions. I tidied the house a little bit, did some laundry and worked on my outfit for Agata & Tom’s wedding.

Around 1pm Lukas went to K’Rd to get a camo shirt for the paintball game he organised for Tom and then we had coffee in Alleluia. We were planning on attending Adina & Gabi’s housewarming together but ran out of time. So I went to Adina’s and Lukas went to play paintball.

While driving to Howick to see Adina I noticed the horrible traffic jam on the opposite side of the motorway. Made a mental note to check out the reason later, I also noted mentally that choosing an alternative way to go home might be wise. Spent a lovely afternoon at Adina’s place and drove home around 7pm, completely forgetting about the mental note I made earlier about the traffic. Thankfully by then it had dissipated and I was home in no time (not counting the 352 traffic lights on Papakura Highway - and I caught ALL of them). The reason for the traffic turned out to be the three different festivals on at the same time (Devonport Food & Wine, Ellerslie Racing Carnival and Mission Bay Jazz & Blues Streetfest) and Queen Mary 2 departing in the evening.

After coming back home and relaxing for a little while I went to Agata’s where we had some fun trialling button holes for the boys, fathers and mothers for next weekend. We were interrupted by our boys asking us to come pick them up (separate post will follow, that’s a long story) and after we came back we watched Finding Neverland. Around 2am I decided enough is enough and went home, where the boys were playing poker so didn’t manage to get to bed until around 5am.

Next day was Agata & Tom’s ceremony rehearsal. We stayed for the first 2 hours and left shortly after Fr Bruce arrived (only 2 hours late). It was funny watching the rehearsal from a spectator’s point of view, but it went exactly like ours had - “so should I stand on your right or your left?” “which way are you going to turn me?” “do I sit on your left or your right?” “how fast should I walk?”. Lukas got to lead the bride down the aisle and I got to be the bridesmaid and walked down the aisle pretending I was holding a bouquet of flowers. Fun, fun, fun! After we left, the rehearsal went on for another 2 hours, as reported by Agata. Phew!

On the way to my parents’ we dropped Ania & Zuzia home and had some Maccas for dinner (starving by then!). My mum helped me shorten my skirt and then we watched a little bit of The March of the Penguins while talking. Went home with the DVD and finished watching it - highly recommended! I have never seen anything quite like it - a wild life documentary, which is as gripping as a thriller but features only penguins (and one leopard seal as a villain). I know one thing - I wouldn’t want to live in the Antarctic.

Crashed after the movie finished (around 9pm) and slept until 8am this morning. Woke up physically tired and went to work. What a weekend.

We do celebrate Valentines! It’s a great excuse to go the extra mile for your loved one - and a great excuse to try out that new French restaurant in Kingsland .

Lukas woke me up with flowers (second time in the last 2 weeks!!!) and a new Hotel Costes CD (which is great, by the way). He also surprised me with some heart-shaped chocolates slipped into my lunch. We shared those when meeting for coffee at lunch time - yum!

In the evening it was my turn to romance my husband so I took him out to Winehot, a new french wine bar-slash-restaurant. This was interesting - the owners are DEFINITELY French, all the walls are painted black, the wine was served in glasses without stems (so they looked more like tumblers than wine glasses) and the food deliciously simple. The menu is rather scarce but everything was just perfect. The wine can be ordered in small glass or a big glass size - the big glass being “I can’t drive” big. We had potato croquettas with blue cheese and bread & dips for starters. The bread was amazing and I managed to find out where they buy it - Wild Wheat. I think I might steal their “recipe” and have this for lunch on Sunday. The mains where somewhat smallish (but the price reflected that) and again perfectly delicious in their simplicity. Lukas’ French Burger with eye fillet steak was mouth watering and he didn’t need a knife to eat it. My Garlic Prawns on Soba Noodles were abundant (we counted 9 tails left afterwards!) and simply gorgeous. Highly recommended.

When leaving Winehot, I noticed a big enlargement of a turn-of-the-last-century wedding. It looked suspiciously similar to a picture my Dad showed me once when my great-great-grandparents were getting married. I guess it was the only occasion in those times that warranted a photograper’s fee. The best thing about the picture was that they had everything in it - the bridal couple, the guests with their children, the wedding cake (held by a woman in her lap), their house and a very busy-looking hen. Turn-of-the-century village in Bretagne looked just like turn-of-the-century village in Silesia…

Finally managed to catch up with posting photos taken during our holidays after the wedding and up to last weekend. Phew! I still haven’t managed to describe them all but that can wait.

While I was doing that I got thinking that I would like to have pictures a bit bigger and a bit better quality - I’m being limited here by the GDI library, which I’m using for dynamic resizing of the photos for display. I guess that’s something I need to investigate but when will I find the time? That’s the question.

From other news - messaging is back but you must prove you’re a real person, who knows maths. Really simple maths! Check it out.

For yesterday! My husband (ha!) woke me up with flowers to tell me that my gift will be late. Doesn’t matter, I loved the flowers! Then at work my friend Adina gave me roses from her garden (a small tradition started by Charlie, who would always give a single rose from his garden to all girls in the office on their birthdays - now Adina and I continue the tradition for each other. I always get a rose from her garden and she gets a freesia from my garden). After numerous phone calls, emails and smss with wishes it was time to go home and be taken for dinner at Euro. What a fancy menu! We had their bread and dips and calamari salad for starters, then I had a parsley-striped salmon with caramelised beetroot (mmm, I love beetroot) and Lukas had rabbit with chicken liver (yes, one liver). Both served on HUMONGOUS plates (which make the food look tiny) but we actually felt pretty full afterwards. Everything was delicious and we had to at least look at a dessert - so an almond and berry pie followed, accompanied by egg nog ice cream (which was weird on its own, but very good with the pie). I think the pie had black currants and plums in it - I don’t think either one classifies as berries, but whatever. It was good.

After that we stumbled to the car to meet Agata & Tomasz at home, who arrived with cheesecake baked by Agata (delicious, as always!) and we had sparkling wine with feijoa liquour, sat on the deck trying out our new patio heater, waving mosquitos away and talking long into the night. A perfect birthday!

Oh, and did I mention that Lukas’ gift arrived during the day - a brand spanking new Sandisk Ultra II 2GB SD Card for my new(ish) toy - Panasonic DMC-FZ50 camera. Now I can shoot raw and it takes under 4 seconds for each picture (which is as fast as the camera will go and compared with 12 seconds on my “fast” Transcend - yay!)