Lovely weekend at home

Friday: We both skipped the usual after-work drinks and headed back to our little suburb of Khandallah, where we had dinner out at its nicest restaurant, "Taste." Since it's such a nice little place, I added a small tip to our bill. It almost seemed a bit odd because it's been a while since we've tipped anyone. 

Saturday: We had some fantastic weather on Saturday morning, so we headed out for a walk in the botanic garden first thing. Wellington has a pretty amazing botanic garden, and even though we've been there a couple times already, we found some walkways and monuments we've hadn't seen yet, including this birdbath.

In the afternoon we headed out to Kilbirnie Park, where the KPMG rugby team, in blue, took on a couple other accounting firms. 

I can't tell you much about how our team fared because 1) rugby still doesn't make much sense to me, and 2) Jake and I were in charge of the grilling. 

It was an important task they wouldn't leave to just anyone, or at least that's what we told ourselves. I learned that a typical barbecue involves sausages and grilled onions that you slap on a piece of white bread along with a bit of tomato sauce (otherwise known as t-sauce or ketchup). You can find a barbecue like this at a lot of these neighborhood rugby events, often run by organizations raising money for this or that. Because ours was sponsored by KPMG, we didn't have to charge anyone... just serve the dogs. Big thanks Brett for all the help -- I think he loved having the opportunity to talk to all the girls who came through the line. And also to Matt (in the background of this pic) who didn't really help, but stood around and chatted with us. ;)

Sunday: Really enjoyed taking it easy today with housework and prepping for our trip to the Cook Islands next week. Our friendly neighbors Peter and Elaine invited us over for tea around 3 p.m., and I have to admit, I'm still learning what "tea" involves. This time, they had another neighborhood couple over, Stewart and Robin. We drank tea, snacked on scones and had the most interesting discussions about the American healthcare system, the nation of Vanuatu (where Peter and Elaine visited for three months this year), New Zealand's goofy traffic laws (just one in particular that actually deserves its own blog post), and what it's like to be married for so many years (Stewart and Robin just celebrated their 50th anniversary). It was so interesing! Jake and I have some amazing neighbors.