My last H3 hash

My last hash with the Hen House Harriers here in Brunei was the St Patricks Day run at Lower Diplo. I got kitted out with the traditional last-run-bells, and off we went.
Anna and I, and me together with some of the Loan Service girls:

It was a really nice run, with a few rather deep water crossings and a few challenging hills. I liked it!

Anna signing me out for the very last time, after 211 runs!

Who's that?? We got photo bombed!!!

So the on-on went in green, for St Patricks Day.

Some people had dressed up a litte bit more than others...

This girl Kate did her first hash, on my last! Quite funny since she is one of these people who had read most of my blog before coming, and I knew her from a few emails we exchanged:

I got a nice canvas as a farewell gift, filled with photos from my many hashes. They had been very clever considering the packing, and hadn't framed it! Phew.

For my last hash meal in the Borneo jungle, I enjoyed some delicious vegetable curries. It was a really lovely evening, such a good hash to end on! Thank you all the girls of H3, I'll be missing you and my Tuesday nights!

My BFF ♥

Even though I had extra kids at home, and was actually planning to take them to sushi for dinner last night, to make it easy for myself - Nicole insisted we all came down there for dinner, extra kids and all. Ok then, she didn't really need to ask twice - I needed a good chin-wag!

She had made such an effort and cooked a lamb roast, with all the trimmings... mmmmmm, delicious! And, for dessert, all in my honour - a super yummy pavlova de luxe, with peaches, strawberries and Ferrero Rocher! Omg...

Even though the house was full of kids, we managed to have a really nice evening with some lovely heart-to-hearts. Might have been the last lovely dinner together we managed to have, who knows, time is running away from me...

I'm so lucky though to made some of the best of friends here in Brunei.
I will miss especially Nicole terribly, but I know we will meet again.
Because we will make it happen.
Over and over again.
Because we will. ♥

Pandora Kiwiana style

I was wearing one of my Pandora bracelets the other day, and only put Kiwi charms on it! Well, apart from the heart, but that's because I ♥ NZ!

From left to right it's a pavlova (that I got from Tash for my birthday, so I wont forget her, she always makes pavlovas), the ♥ charm, a kiwi bird, a white murano (for the "long white cloud"), a charm that symbolizes Aotearoa and some jandals (also from Tash, but that's a story for another blog post).
Cool huh!

Girls morning

Saturday morning while the boys were left in peace to play Xbox, the Turner girls and the Watson girls went to get pampered at the salon! We all had our hair washed, massaged and blow dried and came away with super nice hair dos for the weekend ahead!

Linnea's hair is quite long now. When they blow dry it super straight like this, you can see it's all the way down to her shoulder blades. She looked really pretty.

Hannah got pretty curls done in hers.

Me and my girl.

My birthday

The plans for my birthday changed many times before we reached yesterday. It was a bit tricky, since we didn't know at the start when I was thinking about what to do, if Nathan was going to be here or not. When we realized he wasn't going to be, I was initially planning to take a handful of friends and go over to Singapore for the weekend prior to celebrate - but, it turned out Misuzu wasn't going to be there, and the logistics with sorting the kids all got a bit too complicated.
I also much prefer celebrating ON the day, so in the end I ended up doing a bit of a double birthday celebration all yesterday.

In the morning Anna and I had our nails done, and then we met up with a few other friends at one of my favourite lunch places, the Canadian restaurant Chez Fio. It was really nice to be a big group for lunch - and any excuse to get together and have a bit of a chin-wag of course!

I got celebrated by the staff at the restaurant with a little piece of chocolate cake! Hip hourray!

For the evening I had decided I only wanted a very few couple of friends around, for an intimate but fancy dinner. Only girls, since I didn't have my man here!
I hired the French chef Sebastien, again, since it was such a success last time, and he came and cooked us all another amazing meal.

I had asked my friends to wear their prettiest long dress, to make the evening a little bit more special, even though it was a Monday, and a school night! They were all so very pretty!

I got so many lovely gifts... Oh, I got truly spoiled! I realized that my friends know me really well, all their gifts were spot on!
I got a lovely sofa table book about 'Abode of Peace', wine glass markers and a gorgeous bangle, a beautiful necklace, a Fossil handbag, NZ Evolve charms of a pair of jandals and a pavlova, leather bracelets, A Vinturi of course (a bit of an inside joke/thing!), bath salts, pretty flowers, body lotions, home made buns, a hand made crochet bookmark and much more...

I had picked a different menu to last time. Always nice to try different things of course, even though the paté we had last time was going to be hard to beat!
For starter we had 'Mi-cuit salmon with creamed cauliflower and watercress'.
S-u-p-e-r-b.

For main course 'Slow cooked pork belly with butternut squash risotto and a mild garlic cream'. Mmmmm!

For dessert 'Vanilla poached pineapple with mango sauce and rhum cakes'.
Double yum!

Cake time! I had two cakes!

Group photo! My lovely friends who made my birthday so special! Thank you.

And as at any birthday party, there was party bags when the guests left. Very special tall and slim ones at this party, ha ha..!

40!!!

It was MY birthday too yesterday..!

I don't want this day to end

When your birthday falls on a school day, it's no surprise it feels like it's really, really short. The kids (now both!) have touch rugby after school on Mondays, so we didn't get home until just after 4pm yesterday. There was just enough time to Skype a bit with family, before the neighbourhood kids came for pizza and cake. Then there was just about enough time to give the new Infinity Xbox game  a quick trial, before it was already bath- and bedtime.

Lucas just didn't want this special day to end. At least he was very happy and he did have a great day!

"Someone" had been to our house in the morning with a little birthday surprise for us! But it was fairly easy to figure out who that "someone" had been, thanks to the clue in the balloon colour..!

A quick photo of the birthday team on the school run!