Exploring the Land of the Long White Cloud

So, in case you don't know, we live within walking distance of the rugby stadium.  (Side note, the All Blacks are coming to this exact stadium in September. We've already secured our tickets - lucky!!) Sometimes other events happen at the stadium - a few cricket matches a year and then the random things like Nitro Circus. Dustin went with a mate a couple weeks ago and boy did the crowd go wild. (Usually you can't hear much of the events from our place but I could hear the roars - and from the stories the boys regaled me with, well it sounds like the roars matched the increasing daredevilness of the night.) It turns out they even pulled volunteers out of the audience at one point and did a backflip on a motorbike with 4 people on it (3 were the volunteers). Wow. Sorry, the videos didn't really work and they are so short it's not worth uploading to youtube... I guess you'll just have to head to Nitro Circus when it comes to your neck of the woods! (Ignore ...

So we're getting close to finally being done our renos. Yes there are still 2 bedrooms (the office and the craft/beer room) but everywhere else is pretty close. Maybe a couple finishing touches for most other places. This has got us thinking about what we want to do next. The idea of paying down our mortgage has come up as quite appealing to us. Maybe a bit boring but kind of one of those short-term pain for long-term gain kind of things. So we were running some numbers over the weekend as our mortgage is up for renewal in a couple months. We're thinking of making a better effort to pay it down. The first year we had the house we were able to put a bunch of extra money on it but then the renovations began in earnest - and the expensive projects involved! Then keeping our sanity with time away and going to weddings of friends, and the visit back to Canada... it all adds up to not putting extra money on the house. Neither of us have ever held debt that wasn't to our paren...

Countdown is on! Five more sleeps until we see Bruce Springsteen again!! We're heading up to Auckland on Friday with Bridget and Andy and the concert is on Saturday. We've been watched a couple of docos about him over the weekend, he's such an incredible artist. They had footage of them recording the Darkness on the Edge of Town album and it was amazing how everything is in his head and he won't stop until he gets the songs sounding just like that. Very cool. Summer has been coming in one-day doses but it seems like this week is finally going to have a few days in a row at least! Which meant a very hot and sweaty Zumba class tonight. We had a long weekend in early February and spent it building a shed. It's so close to being done!!  (This picture is not the current state). Porter helped too! We just have a couple things left on it! Dustin's been busy with lots of work trips - a couple nights up the mountain and a day out on the sea! ...