Christmas in November / Dog Hunting / New Door

Saturday morning I got up nice and early, go the kids fed and then explained I'd be going for a run, which I did.  I did 11km this time, I didn't really mean to do more than 10 but I didn't plot the course out as well as I thought I had and it turned out to be 11km instead of 10.  Oh well.  I went quite well, though the heat really started to kick in about 8:30am or so for the last 15 minutes and I started to struggle a bit.  I started out with a pace of 5:30s per km and ended about 6:40s per km.  Still it's good practise for long distance of 42km so that's why I do it.  If I had to run a half marathon tomorrow I think I could do it, not that I'd want to.

Once the run was over it was time to take Theo to swimming, then we came home and got ready for the afternoon's main event.  Sarah had cooked a lovely Salmon too, so we loaded that into the car along with the kids and off we headed to...

The regular Christmas in November on Saturday afternoon at the Chatterton household.  The Dannevirke gang came down for the event, it was lovely to see everyone.  Amy is looking very pregnant, 11 weeks to go.  It was great to see Harley again, as well as Amy's kids Maddie and Kaden. Our kids got straight into the "We want to open the presents" song so after 30 minutes of being pestered that's what we did.  Theo got a doggy backpack and a nerf gun.  He pretty much loves them both equally, though I think maybe the gun is winning by a small margin.  Beth got a new Dolly, a unicorn bag and a sequin love heart cushion.  Also both of which are loved and cherished.

The rest of the afternoon was spent with the kids in the pool having a great time, it was quite a hot day.  They'd get cold though and have to hop out for a while, then want to get back in, then hop out etc.  Had to keep an eye on them the whole time of course, especially Theo who thinks he's the world's greatest swimming but really just needs to be rescued all the time when he goes in and then can't quite get back around to where he came from.  He does know to turn around in the water though which is what they get taught at Jillyfish, so that's good to see actually happening when he's not being instructed to do it.

We've decided to get a dog.  We've been umming and arrring for a while, but each time Beth sees a dog she gets all melty, totally different to if she sees a cat.  She loves it when Rusty visits, she'll spend ages playing with him, just throwing the ball back and forth for him.  She doesn't always have that much attention span for other things, so we've agreed a dog is a good idea.  We were going to get a Springer Spaniel but they all sold out before we were 100% sure that's what we were going to do.  Instead tonight Amy is going to look at this litter for us, we're interested in the Golden boy.  If he's all good then we'll go down next weekend and get him.  Not quite Christmas as we'd sort of planned/hoped but hey, we'll just have to remind Beth A LOT that the puppy was an early present.  Though I guess if we do that she'll think he's HER puppy and that's not the intention, he's for everyone!

New door got installed today.  It's been a right palava with the smartlock I bought.  It's just a deadbolt and I thought it was going to be fitted as a deadbolt, but instead it's been fitted as the mechanism.  Anyway we've come up with a solution that works, so get to go and programme that tonight.  The idea being we can give codes to people that are temporary, or hopefully unlock the door temporarily for the courier when they arrive and we're not home etc.  That's the plan anyway, we'll see how it goes.  It looks really good, at least what I've seen of it so far from the ring doorbell.

Rode home last night in 15:10s.  Which is amazing, I couldn't believe it.  Previous best is ~17:30 or so, I was a full 2 minutes+ ahead of my usual pace.  It was a combination of perfect green lights all the way, no wind, and the fact when I looked at my watch I realised I was doing a great pace already so I really forced myself to keep it up.  That topped off a great morning run too, I did 5km in my best time yet.  All the training is paying off, as you can see by the little weight tracker thing on the front page I've dropped approx 5kg since I started to seriously log it, but more like 7-8kg from the top weight I was earlier in the year.  So I'm quite happy with progress.

Sunday after the big Christmas day we didn't do too much, I mowed some lawns, went into town to buy me some new shorts because my current ones are too baggy and loose, then we took the kids to the bike park with their scooters.  Went and got an icecream then back home for an early bed, they'd been up really late the night before.

Flew up to Auckland on Tuesday to meet with some potential customers, that was good, let's hope some more comes out of that.

Theo's totally favourite book at the moment is Dig, Dump, Roll.  I got it from the library when I was getting some reading books for Beth, I grabbed it almost as an afterthought.  Anyway he just LOVES it, we have to read it every night.  Then at the end we talk about each vehicle and its various parts.  "What's this bit Theo?  That's the Dumping Bed!" etc.  I don't know how we're going to ever return it to the library at this rate.  I guess he'll get bored of it, but I think the plan will have to be to swap it out with another book from the library from the series.  We'll see.

As usual I'm sure I've forgotten stuff, but that'll do for the moment.

Tim