This might take a while...

Well, the last few days have been pretty busy. I have lurked at a few blogs, but not commented, and certainly haven't got round to a post of my own - obviously.

I was intending to do a big catch-up from my hotel room (Auckland again) last night. After work I went to the gym, showered, had some dinner and sat on the bed to relax. I woke up at about 9.30, took off my clothes and got between the covers instead of on top of them. Laptop stayed in its case.

I do have to admit four days away at tournament was pretty tiring (coffee is my friend during the day, Jack Daniels is my BEST friend in the evening). But what has wiped me out this week has been getting home at 10pm on Sunday after a six hour drive, then flying out again at 6.30am on Tuesday. The 30 or so hours in between were a whirl of unpacking, packing, working out what the hell is happening at work (my offsider is away), laundry, food shopping and some sleep.

Enough moaning - here are a few events from the trip to Rotorua.

HIGHLIGHT I got to meet Lee-Anne! She very kindly came up to the motel to see me at a moment's notice after work on Friday. We managed to squeeze in a couple of glasses of wine and a quick gasbag. We have a lot in common, I think, and it was a real pleasure to meet such a lovely woman.

SORT OF HIGHLIGHT Our junior team won the gold medal in their division. I don't mean to be grudging with my praise, but I do care more about our senior team...

LOWLIGHT Our senior team only got fifth out of the ten teams in their division. May not sound too bad to you, but they are usually in the medals and have never finished outside the top four before.

INJURY LIST Jake ended his record of not subbing out of the pool at all for the last four seasons when he took a massive kick in the back - right where his stress fractures are. Of course, he was only out of the pool for about a minute. Ben had clearly done some damage to his foot (trying to forcibly open one of the motel rooms!), so we followed the age-old treatment of strapping it tight and telling him to put his big-boy panties on. Subsequent x-rays showed no major damage.

HUMOUR HIGHLIGHT On Saturday evening we took all the boys to the Heritage hotel over the road to watch the All Blacks batter the Wallabies into submission on the big screen there.
A very attractive young woman was working in the bar - and of course our older boys immediately started acting five years older than they really are in a desperate attempt to impress her.
It was an opportunity too good to miss. The sports teacher with us convinced her to slip Jake her cellphone number - but it was really the teacher's number.
An exchange of texts between them in the next couple of hours ended with Jake going back over to the hotel to meet up with her - only to get his photo taken by the group of so-called adults waiting there to catch him.
He did take it in very good humour, but I suspect the teacher will need to watch his back for the rest of the year. A revenge attack is very likely.

STUPIDITY STORY At 6.30am one morning I went out for a run. It was clearly a bit frosty out, but I just wore my usual get-up of running tights and a dri-fit shirt. After all, I'm a Wellington girl and we know all about cold. Stupid, stupid girl. Well, as I got further down into the valley it just got colder and colder. My hands were bright purple and twitching from the cold. Eventually I had to stop running because my lungs were too sore. All the local runners must have been able to spot the tourist from a mile off - they were all wearing long sleeves and gloves.

FOOD Over three days, the 23 of us consumed:
10 dozen bread rolls filled with ham, cheese and salad
12 loaves of toast bread and various spreads to go with them
2 boxes of Weetbix, 4 of Honey Puffs, 2 of muesli and 2 bags of cornflakes
38 litres of fruit juice
16 litres of milk
8 bags of pasta
8 jars of pasta sauce
4 kilos of mince
4 kilos of chicken breast
2 kilos each of carrots, courgettes, mushrooms and spinach
12 boxes of muesli bars and 8 of fruit roll-ups
9 kilos of apples and about 15 kilos of bananas
6 litres of ice cream
Assorted containers of home-baking
3 dozen raspberry buns
Takeaways for dinner on the way home to Wellington
Whatever junk the kids bought themselves
An enormous amount of tea and coffee
(about 8 bottles of wine consumed by the adults and an undisclosed amount of Jack Daniels consumed by yours truly)

PHEW!