All

September/October 2024

Bert Holl

Dec 31, 2024 — 7 min read

Well time has flown, and I've not gotten around to writing even a monthly blog post!
Here is a quick recap of September and October of this year!

SEPTEMBER

Fathers Day

1st Sept was Fathers Day, so Nathan and Christine took me out for dinner. We went to Lone Star and had an enjoyable meal there.

Their portion sizes are quite large, so we always end up taking at least a meal home which we generally give to Christine's parents.

Christine's Surgery

Two thirds of the way through September Christine had an Open mesh incisional hernia repair surgery.
She had surgery in the past (10+ years ago), and the incision line was "peppered with defects" as the surgeon put it. So this surgery was to fix a couple of big hernias along with a bunch of small ones
The surgery was fairly major where they cut a 10" incision pretty much along the original surgery line, inserted some mesh, and stitched it up again.

The surgery went well, it was suggested she'd be in hospital for a few days, but they sent her home the day after. Recovery also went reasonably well, although one day we did go to the after hours clinic as the plaster had filled up with fluid, but when they looked at it and cleaned it up it all looked ok, and it didn't reoccur.

To round out September, here are a couple of random photos taken in September. The skinks like to sunbathe on the fence, and a couple pics from Church.
One was from a choir that was visiting - I love a good choir!, and the other is from a course that I did in Sept/Oct at church, looking to shed light on topics that guy's don't often talk about. (and holly of course!)

Some random photos from my photo roll taken in September

OCTOBER

Uncles visit to New Zealand from Holland

On Wednesday 2nd October three of my Uncles came over from Holland (The Netherlands) to visit Dad. They flew in via Auckland, so I met them at Auckland airport for a few hours before they carried on to Wellington. It was the first time I'd seen them in approx 2o years!

Someone may or may not have had an Orange in their bag that had to be resolved before they were officially allowed into NZ

Officially coming through the international arrivals gate

It was a bit of a struggle to have a conversation in Dutch (a language that I do not use very often anymore) in the airport where it was noisey etc, but was great to get some alone time with them!

A few days later on the 7th of October we drove down to the Wairarapa to spend a few days there with the (wider) family. This was only a couple of weeks post surgery for Christine, so we were taking things pretty easy on our drive, and while we were down there.
We stayed at a nice air bnb in Featherston which had lots of room (and allowed dogs of course). One of the days were were down there, we had Dad and the Uncles over for dinner. We got some Chinese which everyone enjoyed.
Interestingly Chinese food in NZ is different from Chinese food in Holland... Holland Chinese food has an Indonesian inspiration to it.

While we were down there we did various things such as

Several family gatherings
Visited the house we used to live in when the uncles came over previously. We just stood outside and looked at it and reminisced about what was the same or what was different etc
Visited Mum's grave at Clareville Cemetery.
Visited the site where (one of) my sisters are gonna build a house

We had a lovely time with the extended family - it was a good chance to use my dutch again after all this time. Some of it came back reasonably quickly, but I still had to think and/or use english words when I was not able to think of the correct word/s.

Once a fortnight I have a meeting at work with someone who speaks dutch fluently, so now I like to practise my dutch on him. I'd like to try maintain it more than I did in the last 20 years and maybe we will be able to visit them at some point in Holland.

some photos of our trip to the Wairarapa

Christine's Migraines

As you would have seen in the post that Christine wrote - she had some pretty major issues with Migraines. This came right some time in October - After the surgery in September she changed iron supplements to Maltofer. Turns out that the pervious iron supplement she was on wasn't being absorbed!
We are thankful that her current GP listens, and suggested to try this supplement instead of the previous one she was on. (The GP suggested this one because its gentle on the stomach and the prescription iron was causing stomach pain)

Nathan prize giving

This is Nathan's final year at Glenfield College, and next year he is planning to go to AUT and study Computer Science and Psychology.
We got an email from School mid October advising us that Nathan would be getting an award at the School's senior prize giving. They didn't tell us what the aware would be for etc, so when we went on the day we were waiting and waiting for his name to be called - It didn't get called till near the end as he was getting a very special award.... The Resilience Award. As well as the award he also got some Scholarship money to go towards future studies!

Below are some random photos from October
- Nathan visited me at work one day
- We had an orchestra at church made up of people who go to Windsor
- Photos of Holly