Bit of an exciting week - LOTS OF RUGBY!!

So after my amazing weekend, I ended up being quite sick - which was not so much fun. Just coldy, but feeling real yuck and blocked up and gross.

So on Monday, I literally slept till 12.30 and then was super hungry - so made some super slimy pasta which felt amazing going down my scratchy throat. When I went to pick Jake up from school, we went on a bit of a box hunt after school. He had to go as something number related to school on the Friday coming up, and Emma and I had talked about it on Sunday night and decided we should try make him a dice costume. So for that, we needed a box.

Once we took it home and I managed to cut it down to size (again, no injuries people, can we all marvel at this?) we gave it a nice coat of white paint. It was a huge job. Only because Jake made it so difficult. As Emma put it, Jake went way to Jackson Pollock on us, and managed to get paint everywhere, even under his armpit (I don't get it). But once we had tidied up, and the box had dried a bit, it looked pretty good.

A pre dotted di(c)e

Tuesday, I was meant to go to the gym, but I had missed out on booking the early class, so decided to catch up with a mate for coffee who I hadn't seen in a while, and we had a lot to discuss! So by the time I got to the gym for my pilaties class, I was feeling full of yuck, so I went back home again, and had another nice afternoon sleep, which left me feeling a lot better! That afternoon, I cut out a whole lotta circles out of cardboard and painted them black. Jake wasn't so into that, but once I stuck them on the dice he loved the final product!

Wednesday, I still wasn't feeling great, but I'd booked in for a personal shopping thing at Forever 21 in Oxford St, and I really wanted to go, so I did. I had a great time shopping with this lady, she had picked out some outfits for me and then after trying them on I went all around the store showing her what kinda stuff I liked and she was great at helping me put it all together into an outfit and showing me what works. It was awesome!

It was a super nice sunny day, and Jen and I had agreed to meet up and go and eat some lunch in the park. So we went to M&S. As we were going in, I saw a rather large, tall, familiar looking man walk out of the store. It took me a few seconds to place who it was, but then when I looked around his mates, I realised it was Jeremy Thrush, and Ma'a Nonu, and a whole bunch of the All Blacks! I went a little giddy, and was just talking to Jen being all "OMG Its the All Blacks" and kinda moving forwards a little before I was just like, Oh wtf, and I went up to them and asked for a photo. They were kinda surprised to be recognised I think, cos they all looked a little stunned, but I eyed up Jeremy Thrush and just said "Oh come on, I'm from Wellington" and all the guys did that little "oh she actually knows who we are" kinda laugh thing. So I eventually conned them into taking a photo with me. Liam Messam didn't wanna be in it, so he took the photo while Jen just stood by awkwardly watching, cos she didn't know who they were! It was all very surreal, running into the All Blacks in the middle of London, but it was also super cool, and I got very excited! After the photo, Ma'a Nonu asked me where the nearest Nando's was, I had no idea and I tried to direct them in the general direction, but I got it completely wrong. But then I tweeted them about it and I think they found it eventually. When we went into the shop, the security guard pulled us up and was like "who were those guys?" and when we said the All Blacks, he had no idea who they were, lolz.

Jen and I had a great picnic in the park after that and then I had to mission it up to the Sports Fields to pick up Jake and then he had a play date, so I pretty much had the evening to myself.

Thursday I attempted my gym class in the morning, but it didn't go down to well, I was a sweaty heap of mucus at the end of it - yuck! I came home, and slept the arvo away haha.

Emma's Mums' were here for the Weekend, her mum Jen and her partner Soo. It was cool to have them here and finally meet them, and have them look after Jake! We hung out in the afternoon, and I spent the evening cleaning my room, while they were all down here chatting. I think thats something I miss a lot from home, is just hanging out and chatting with people at night, I need to start to get out more!!

Friday, I missed out on booking my gym class this day, which turned out to be a blessing!

But first up, Jake had to go to school in his costume. He was super proud to be wearing it, and it seemed to get a really good reaction when we turned up at school!

One of my friends over here was slightly gutted that she missed out on seeing the AB's in town the other day (I don't know why, she's not really into rugby) and so she wanted to go to try and see them today. So I manged to find out which hotel they were staying at (which wasn't too hard, because of all that press about the English Journo that snuck in, all the papers printed the hotel name) and we hung out there. We were the only females there for most of the time, although a few more showed up when the AB's emerged. They were in and out all morning for the first few hours we were there, but we just kinda watched. There were a couple of older guys there who were actively sourcing AB's signatures for their rugby balls, and we just watched. We did try tweeting Cory Jane a lot, but we got no replys....amazingly! So we started tweeting Dan Carter, and Jim Kayes, and anyone else we thought might actually reply...

But when the team bus turned up and they started coming out, we got all excited and started getting pictures!!

The first guys that came out, I didn't really know. One of them (the guy in the pic with just Lexi) we talked to him for a bit about how we could get a photo with all 3 of us in it cos he was so tall and Lexi was so short. But we ended up with this....

Then the next guy started coming out, and no one was going after him for photos or autographs, so I felt sorry for him and got a picture, so we ended up with this.....(Looking at it now, I'm wondering who took the photo....)

And then the mayhem started, because I spotted Cory Jane. We went over to him and started chatting with him about why he didn't tweet us back (apparently he fell asleep, typical) and we just had a good ol' chat. Hes so much fun! And then we asked him to follow us, and he said "you never know your luck"....ohh....ominous.....and then we got a picture. Cos he has a big ego and likes getting his photo taken. I love Cory. The guys who had been with us all morning said to us that they wanted to be sure we got to see Cory cos they knew we had been tweeting him all morning and wanted to see him, so that was sweet.

See, this is my STOKED face

Annnnd then I looked up to the hotel, and I saw TJ coming out. TJ's club back home is Norths, which is the club Dad takes photos for. I mentioned Dad, and TJ totally remembered me (At the time, I wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not, but it turned out to be brilliant...more on that later). And of course, I got a photo. I had to get two, cos the first one was blurry, and Rusty wouldn't be impressed. I told TJ that it would go up on the Norths FB page and he laughed and said cool. I'd lost Lexi by this point, she got lost in the crowd!!

And then I turned around, and saw one of my other favourite Hurricanes - Beudan Barrett. He was carrying some Rice Crackers and I told him they would be better with Nutella on them. Him, along with me, lamented the fact there was none in the team room. sucks!

Then Richie came through, but he just barged through everyone :(, no one had a chance. By this stage there were about 20 people there, mostly wanting autographs. There were some guys there who were after the big guns, Richie, Dan, etc, cos if they could them to sign a pic of them, then they can onsell it for a massive profit, so that was a little unfair I thought.

And then there was Aaron Cruden. I don't really remember what happened with him, but he was there, so a picture was taken.

And then I managed to catch Julian Savea just before he got on the bus (hence the pole). I personally thanks him for staying with the 'Canes. He appreciated it, I could tell.

And then it was the moneeeeeey shot! Dan was signing a whole bunch of autographs but I managed to wheelde my way in to right beside him, and asked him for a photo. He said yeah, and then motioned for the camera while he was signing, quickly put his head up and smiled, and then got on the bus. I was GIDDY!!!

 I turned around from that, and it was Steve Hansen. He's really not much of a looker, but hes pretty neat, so I totally asked for a pic from him too!!

So yeah, all in all, it was a great adventure.

I found Lexi, we both geeked out for a bit, and then I saw some media guys. Turns out it was the sky TV guys (found that out the next day) and I asked them where Jim Kayes was. They said he was down at the market and they gave me a whole lot of details about what he was going to eat haha.

Lexi and I were hungry anyway, so we headed down to this Natural Food market to poke round and see what it was like. And it was expensive haha, so we left and found an M&S for some food. Om nom nom.

After that, I quickly had to pop home to get changed, cos I was working a Harlequins game that evening. Its like the British Super Rugby. But it was all the way down in Twickenham, so I had to mission it down there, and work.

I was behind the bar in a beer trailer thing, and it took me a while to get used to saying pounds instead of dollars, and all the drinks and their weird requests, but I got used to it, and was working with a lovely Aussie girl and we worked out a system so we were on FIRE! I also gave a lot of banter about the AB's. A couple of people picked me out as a fellow kiwi so we had a little bit of a natter, which was fun!

Didn't get home till after 11, so I was knackered!! But straight to sleep because it was to be a MASSIVE weekend......

Halloweeeeeen

So this week, Jake was on half term, still. So I had a lot more time with him - which was awesome!! Here's a quick account of what we got up too..


Monday we spent at home. Jake had the new neighbour over to play for a bit, so that was fun. But the weather outside was just super shitty, so we didn't really go outside much. Lego it was!!

Tuesday I pretty much spent all of Tuesday at the gym - as usual, and when I came home, Jake had to go off for a Dr's appointment, so I didn't really end up spending a lot of time with him, but all we really did was play lego....hahha

Wednesday was fun! Jake was going to a mates place for a play date, so I got a few hours off in the middle of the day. I managed to head into town to meet a friend (Arna) who was about to leave for home, and she gave me a whole bunch of books and things she couldn't take back home with her, so that was ace. And we had GBK, I mean, come on, YUM!

When Jake got home, Emma had been out that day and got him a pumpkin to carve for Halloween the next day. And the friend's nanny that he had just been with had given him a carving kit, so we carved!! Pulling out pumpkin insides was a messy job, but once I got my hands in there and yanked at the gross-ness on the sides, and encouraged Jake to do the same, we were all good haha. I ended up doing most (all) of the carving, somehow I'm more trustworthy than a 5 yr old with a sharp knife (when this happened, I don't know!) but I managed to get through without cutting myself in any way, so thats always a positive. I was quite proud of our finished product too! I've put some pics in of the process....

Thursday was Halloween!! I went to the gym in the morning, and I still didn't have a costume...whoops! So on the way home, I managed to pop into Waitrose (supermarket) and they had a witches hat and some black hair chalk stuff, life saver! I then went into the cheap shop down the road and got some poster paint - which turned into great face paint! I was lucky when I got home that Jake had an impromtu playdate with the girl next door so it gave me time to get my face on and all dressed up. I freaked the crap out of the 9yr old when I went to pick up Jake from next door though, it was brilliant!

We went around the corner (well, a few corners) to get to a mates house to go trick or treating, with another 5yr old girl, a 3yr old boy and their au pair. It was dark by 4.30 (WTFFF) and so out we went! It was a really cool area to do it in, cos you knew which houses you could go into, thanks to the pumpkins outside. Super good system! The kiddies loved it, I had my photo taken a few times by randoms who thought I looked great, aww shucks.

The kids got a heap load of candy, my god! We went to about 25 houses - just in 2 streets! It was awesome. When we got back to the house, I ended up giving out the candy there, while the kids ate. I only made one small child cry as I was cackling as I opened the door and she got a little freaked...fair enough. Came home to a very messy shower hahaha.

Jake was a skeleton pirate

Me! SCARY!

Friday as you can imagine, was a little bit of a chilled day. Jake had his mate Santi over, and I convinced them that we should go down to Regent's Park, so they took their scooters and we got some bread and went. AHHH the geese and pigeons down there are sooo super scary! They literally see you have bread and chase you. Santi and I did not enjoy this experience at all, but Jake loved it, so we happily gave him the bread and he chased them all around and had a great time! We went back on the bus and I went to my aerobics class, before heading out to do a lovely spot of shopping and getting of craft supplies before heading home again.

On Saturday, I was up super early to go to Reading with a bunch of people from a new agency I've joined to pick up some extra work. It wasn't much, just handing out flyers, but the bar was super picky about the type of people that it wanted us to hand the flyers out too, and super indecisive. It was just annoying. But I got paid a bit, and it filled in a day where I hadn't been planning on doing much, so that was ok.

Sunday I literally did nothing all day, but I had tickets to go and see a taping of "It'll be Alright on the Night" which is a TV show for ITV here, so a mate and I went to that, that was pretty fun. It was like a home video show, but all the videos were bloopers and gags from famous people....not that we knew who half the people were! Still bloody funny!

Thats a quick catch up on that week anyway! Not a lot really happened, but it was fun, and I probably spent too much money!!!

xx