Weekend in the Waikato

I got back this afternoon from a brilliant weekend spent up in Hamilton. It was the Varsity Rugby Club's 50 year reunion, and the main event was a formal dinner on the Friday night. It was great to catch up with some of the girls I used to play with 9 or 10 years ago! It was also nice having the opportunity to dress up for an evening, a rare event in NZ, compared to the UK!

The rugby legend that is Sir Colin 'Pinetree' Meads was the guest speaker and he was quite entertaining, probably even more so for the fact that he didn't deliver his address until quite late in the evening, and by that stage he had got a fair few bevvies into him... It was too good a photo op to turn down.

My Uncle Des was also at the function and I like the pic of him below as it shows the size of the man (Pinetree that is, not Uncle Des!).

Saturday morning was pretty quiet as I was suffering a little bit from the effects of an open bar... At Midday I headed back over to the University to watch the Varsity Ladies take on College Rifles from Auckland. Ironically, a couple of former varsity girls were playing for Rifles, so it was nice to catch up with them.

Saturday afternoon I did a bit of visiting. It was great to catch up with KB & Dee, followed by Colin & Glenda. I then had a nice quiet evening hanging out with the folks & watching the Crusaders/Sharks game.

Today Tamsin & her cute wee boy Jackson, as well as my friend Roger & his family came over for morning tea, so again it was great catching up with them all. Then it was an afternoon flight back down to Wellington and back to my lovely husband.

The 3 weeks since my last post have flown by. It has pretty much been the normal routine of school, badminton and rugby. I have been enjoying my rugby, even if my old broken body hasn't! We have one more game left this season & then I am planning on retiring (again!). It has been an interesting season, we have gone from playing on glorious winter days like this...

 To playing on grounds like this!

A few weekends ago my rugby team had a court session which took place at our house. The theme was 'Hoe-down' and Will was a bit scared of being amongst 25 or so chicks all dressed as cowboys/girls so he made himself pretty scarce that night! Like all 'courties' it was heaps of fun & the judges did a great job of running it.

We did have one male there, and that was our coach Gary. He was one of the judges for the night so got off pretty lightly, but we did manage to get him into the 'hot-seat' at one stage, & then there was no holding back with the fines!

This was our team's second courty of the season. The first one near the start of the season was themed 'double-trouble' so fairly open to interpretation. My fellow prop Hiria & I decided to go as the All-Black playing Frank brothers, Ben & Owen. I don't think I posted any pics at the time, so here you go... We couldn't find any flesh-coloured swimming caps, so had to make do with white ones covered in petticoat material!

That's all my news. Only 2 more weeks until the school holidays, yay!!!

Long, long weekend

It has now been 5 weeks since I have been back from Chile, & it has been all go at school. I have survived the report writing season, knocking off 130 odd reports in a couple of weeks. While I was away in Chile Will had a friendly little visitor to keep him company...

He also did a good job at planting up some winter colour...

I am back into my rugby. I spent the first couple of weeks since returning from Chile on the bench, but have started the last few matches. This weekend we had a bye which was much appreciated by the body!

At the moment we have a Chilean house guest staying with us. Claudia is the teacher travelling with the 12 girls who are partaking in the return exchange from St Margaret's British School, Chile. She is staying 2 weeks with Will & I, before staying the last two weeks with another staff member from school. She has been a superb house guest, very easy & helpful. The other day I added an extra little welcoming touch to the chicken & leek pie I cooked for dinner...

Last Tuesday we had the Rugby World Cup visit my school. Hopefully (touch wood) it will be around a bit more over the next 4 years...

This weekend was a long one, celebrating the Queen's Birthday. My school also gave us the Tuesday off which was most appreciated. On Saturday I helped Will with our chicken fence. He had hired a 2-person post-hole borer & we concreted in several posts, all ready to attach the chicken wire too. It was hard work using the machine to dig the holes & lugging 25kg bags of concrete mix around! Who knew that digging holes could be so satisfying...

On Saturday evening we went to the rugby, along with Lucy & Paul, plus my rugby friend Hiria & her niece. It was Hurricanes v Lions & luckily the good guys won... Claudia really enjoyed it, it was her first big rugby game ever. Afterwards we had a very nice dinner at Wagamama's. We used our entertainment book to get buy 1 get 1 free main courses which is always a bonus! That is Claudia below on the right.

Sunday & Monday were both pretty chilled, pottering around the home after nice long lie-ins. The weather was pretty awful this weekend, very wet & grey. I did get out for a couple of hours on Sunday to play badminton with my Wellington Masters crew, then on Monday I took Claudia shopping.

Today has been a good town day, doing loads of bits & pieces that I can't usually do during a normal school day. I started off with a physio appointment at 11am for my dodgy knee, then took in some banking, shopping,  present buying etc. before finishing with a 1 hour deep-tissue sports massage. The massage was great, even though the masseuse couldn't quite believe the state of my back & shoulders... That would be a few months (years!) of rugby & badminton then! He spent a good part of the hour sorting them out, then got to my legs & thought they were just as bad! I probably should make a sports massage a regular part of my regime...

Tomorrow it's back to school, but a nice short week that should fly by. Then it'll be only 4 weeks until I get a lovely 3-week holiday. Bring it on!