Moving right along into 2017 at speed

Phew, the year is only eight-days old I'm already having trouble getting here to write! Seriously, if I don't write regularly I find it hard to tame my thoughts down to a manageable blog post.

Last Thursday school started again and I started back at my work in greater earnest. Since then life has sped up quite a deal, as our eyes turned away from the slow-paced winter holidays to the high-paced months ahead. Today feels a world away from last Sunday, New Year's Day.

In preparation for the upcoming weeks, I made a triple-batch
of chocolate chip cookies. Most of them have been safely
stowed in our chest freezer.

After the first day of school it was straight back into wrestling training for our two boys and David too, as assistant coach. David and our eldest didn't get home until after 7pm! I spent a lot of time catching up on email, and other matters related to the magazine that is in the design phase.

On Friday I spent a lot of time getting organised for the coming magazine issue as well as answering questions from our design team. In the afternoon I spent a couple of hours with my language exchange partners and then greeted our weekend guest at the train station. She's an OMF missionary based in Sapporo, who supports missionaries with children. She slept here Friday and Saturday nights, using us as a base to go out and meet a couple of other OMF families as well as catching up with us.

I'm very aware that this weekend is the last wrestling-free weekend until the last weekend in February! That is both scary and exciting. I can see a whole lot of stuff that needs to be done in the coming weeks and I'm going to get tired. I wish I could bank the extra sleep I got over Christmas and bring it out later this month when I need it! 

But on the other hand I'm looking forward to seeing our guys (our two boys as well as the rest of the 20+ wrestlers on the team) wrestle. One of the exciting things are plans coming together for me to go with the team to Korea in February for our eldest son's last high school meet. It will be a marathon: three days of wrestling! But I'm excited that I have the opportunity to experience it firsthand this time, rather than via disjointed messages and emails like I did last year.