Saturday, December 26, 2015

2015

Well, there goes another year in the blink of an eye! The beginning of the year seems so long ago, we have fit so much in and our lives in December 2015 are just worlds apart from where we were in January of 2015.

We have ended up in a much better for our careers and life experience which has led to being in a much better state of mind.

The year started / last year ended with the adoption of our beloved dog Clooney. Over the year he has become so engrained within our family. He is very dear to us and I can't imagine not having him around. He is a beautiful spirit to have in the house with us, and just brings constant joy!

January, February and March were all Iron Man related! I need not write more about this. That led us to a holiday in Melbourne for Iron Man Melbourne in March. This has ended up being a very special race as only a few months ago, IM Melbourne was cancelled and will never occur again! This is. Ashame as it was an amazing race in a perfect location. Two weeks later I raced the Silver Sands multisport festival! What an amazing weekend. Sat saw a 10km run followed by a 2km ocean swim! One of the most amazing swims ever! Sunday was an Olympic distance tri. If I can remember correctly the 10km was about 40mins, the 2km swim was about 37mins and the Tri was about 2hr18.

Following Iron Man life settled into mundane 9-5 with a lot of training.

I set a PB half marathon at the Adelaide Greenbelt half marathon-1hr24.

A solid injury stopped me in my paces in May I think. This lasted a good 14 weeks before I could run again. So I swam a lot, only pull bouy though as I couldn't kick. Adelaide set into a miserable cold winter so I swam at Marion indoor pool a lot.

Kate raced some great trail races including the first Belaire Challenge, run by the Adelaide Running Company. She also raced the 25km Mt Crawford trail race and smashed it. I was injured so I volunteered!

This all led to June, at which point we confronted a momentous decision to make. The opportunity to move to NZ presented itself and we had about a week to make the decision! We wrote out the pros and cons of making the move on paper! The pros to move to NZ far outweighted the cons! Needless to say this led to some sleepless nights wondering if we made the right decision!

At this point we had a month to move our lives OS! We packed our lives into a shipping container and became landlords-something that we never thought would happen!

On July 22nd we landed in Wellington. It was windy and cold! But we were loving it. That night we ate at the Laundry on Cuba st! Already feeling a lot happier.

A week later we had found a house with a huge yard for clooney, and over the following month we set up our lives in Wellington. We bought a car early in August. On Aug the 8th we moved into our house in Ngaio. It was a bloody expensive process, but it is the best thing we have ever done! Welly really feels like home and a really nice place to 'settle down'.

I started working at Weta early in August! The immense satisfaction I get from working there is amazing! I realised how much I need inspiring work to maintain work satisfaction. I found I was so driven to learn and give my best to try and produce the most amazing work I could! I have now been there for nearly 5 months and am absolutely loving it! I can't believe how amazing the projects are that I am getting to work on!

In september we travelled back to Adelaide for my sisters wedding which was such an amazing opportunity to see all the family and was a very proud moment as a brother.

The next months were very busy at work and flew by! Kate excelled at her job and iss thoroughly loving it. We purchased a lot of camping gear and went for an amazing camping weekend at Kaitoke campound! It is dog friendly and Clooney was great to camp with.

By mid september I was running again, and happened to bump into another trail runner who has become a good friend! We often go out for two to three hours running on the trails in Ngaio and surrounds each Saturday! I also managed to get the odd run to work in, although 16kms before work is a bit taxing!

Funnily the last time I swam was in Marion pool in mid July! I havent swam since then.

In December I decided we beeded a second car! I found an '86 Mitsubishi Mirage with only 66000kms! She is in mint condition and is such a fun car to have as our 'a to b' car.

Finally we were invited to our good friends place for xmas day! Tim and Tahlia were nice enough to have us over to share xmas lunch. It made it really feel like xmas.

I am excited about the coming year! I love work and we both love living in Welly! We have proven that we live a bit of a spontaneous life so Who knows what the coming year may hold. I do know for sure that it is going to be a busy one!