Vege-ary is complete

Firstly, please let me explain my blog absence with a number of excuses/reasons you may choose to accept as legit for not posting:
1. my hard drive on my 1.5 year old Dell lap top crashed. completely. as did my faith in Dell and Windows software, in general
2. i traveled non-stop for 3 weeks and am not quite fully recovered
3. we turned 95% vegetarian (2 isolated instances for fish) as such, i was spending a lot of time chopping vegetables and not blogging
4. Forrest and i were hiking, something
5. Forrest and i were attending or planning or hosting parties
6. work is tremendously busy and rather stressful
7. it's summer time. you don't do anything related to blogs or photo updating in the summer either.

ok hopefully that is enough and you find my absence justified. moving on;
most notable happenings of January 2012 (in no particular order, except for #1 since i'm exceptionally proud of my sister):

1. My older sister (Erica) gave birth to two healthy babies, welcome to the world Michael Gregory and Ellen Elizabeth
2. after 4 months of searching, i bought a car, a 1994 toyota corona (the corolla's older sister)
3. we took a hot air balloon ride in New Zealands largest balloon (carrying 20 passengers)
4. we hiked the the tallest mountain in the Banks Peninsula (Mt. Herbert), in the rain
5. i restarted my boxing classes, sand volleyball league and zumba classes
6. hosted a sushi-rolling birthday party, complete success
7. attended a Mexican party and Forrest made a pinata out of 2 corona (beer not car) boxes
8. we have eaten no red meat and have eaten approximately 10 cups of rice
9. hiked up to Sugar Loaf Pass and on our way home got our first speeding ticket
10. became exhausted enough during the day to sleep through the night and through any aftershocks (there are many)
11. bought a mountain bike!!


here are a few select photos of January. enjoy!