Tuesday 21 October 2014

Rather belated news...

Erm.... so.... *looks shamefacedly at her feet*.... yeah. Hi. How are y'all doing? It's been a while. Sorry about that. *sweeps away accumulated dust and tumbleweed off blog*.

Don't worry! I haven't forgotten you! It's just, well, there has been rather a lot going on of late, out there in 3D land. And rather embarrassingly, it's stuff that I usually would be jumping straight online to tell people about. Big things! Important things! But I have been running around in a manic ball of whoopdeedoo and huzzah and yippedydoodah and things of that manner and rather neglected the old blog.

Anyway, as this blog started out as a reflection of major life events, I shall start with the biggest life event thing first - Jan and I are engaged! After a mere ten years, five house moves and two continents, we have decided we'll probably not kill each other after all. Happy days!  

Jan and I like to make all our major life decisions in a thoughtful and serious* manner. 

* ridiculously flippant

Moving to the other side of the world, away from all our family and friends, to a place we had never been before was done via text (Me: Fancy moving to Sydney? Jan: Yeah sure).  So the story to be passed down to children and grandchildren about the auspicious day we decided to splice for life runs like this:

It all started on a sunny Saturday morning in Coogee. We sat down at our favourite coffee place, in the sunshine sipping flat whites and musing on holiday plans for next year. Somewhere on this side of the world, I posited - after all we moved here so we could explore the area more easily (for some reason, before we got here, I thought Japan, China and Thailand would be merely down the road. Yeah.  Should have Google Mapped that some more....)  Jan piped up, "Or I could take you back home and make an honest woman of you"!  I laughed for a while, then went to work. After a nine hour shift involving rugby and V8 supercars, I returned home to a beautiful dinner on the table and Jan asked when we were getting the rings.  Oh. OH. It's.... it's not a joke?! To top off all the unrelenting romance, Jan got a heavy cold and remained under a blanket on the sofa for the rest of the weekend.

It took another 48 hours of me harassing a runny-nosed Jan with, "So it's not a joke then?" and "So, are we really engaged then?" before I though it might be worth ringing the parents.  Jan and my dad agreed on 16 sheep and 2 goats and the matter was settled. Although, I think my dad might think he is marrying Jan, as his response when Jan asked for my hand was, "Yes, of course you can have my hand in marriage"!  

And so we enter the next stage of our adventures together, when in June next year, we will head to Germany's lake district and get married.  And yes, I did finally believe we were getting engaged, when Jan presented me with this, on bended knee: