The Akinwick Yearly,
A Positive Review: A Whirlwind of Joy, Love, and Adventure!

December 2024
Christmas last year was bittersweet. We spent it apart for the first time since living together —  Tom spent the day with Lady & friends. While Carrie laid out an amazing feast,  making sure Siji was well fed before dropping him at the airport for his flight to Uganda to celebrate Noah and Shade’s wedding, which was simply epic, beautiful, and serene. They both showed up for each other and all the guest felt honoured to witness their love, for each other. Back home, there was still a warm trace of Christmas in the air, as we hadn’t yet brought ourselves to take down the epic tree Yisell had come over to decorate. We welcomed the New Year together with setting our intentions for 2025 with friends — Tom’s was to work with publishers, and Siji’s was to focus on building routines in his new role.

January 2025
Provided the opportunity for two schedules to align and we arranged to meet the Grahams down in Dundee for a trip to Olympia, a leisure pool; quite a few fun flumes, a wave machine and diving boards.  It was Tom's first time there, but Siji had be a few times before with his previous job.  It gave us a fun way to connect the Grahams (Anna, Dave, Joshua and Martha).  We've been meaning to make it a more regular thing, here's hoping for twice in 2026!  Towards the end of January we had a visit from Carrie, it was a big moment for her doing the long drive from Bolton to Aberdeen and we were very happy to have her up for a visit. We also had another house guest in the form of Lady, our friend Scotts dog. She was a delight, a very loving and quirky little house guest. The end of the month had us celebrating six years together, with a trip to a couple of bars we went to on our first date.

A trip that's turned into an annual tradition. 

February 2025
Saw the return of Spectra to Aberdeen, an annual light show to help brighten the winter nights.  We got to go around it with our friend Monika, its a series of light installations around the centre of Aberdeen. 

March 2025
Saw us set off on holiday for the US and Canada. First stop was New York, we were to meet our friend Edna at JFK... Only she had thought logically we'd be flying into Newark airport given that she lived in New Jersey.  So that created some confusion when we were at the pickup, as was she, but at different airports. 

We stayed a few nights with Edna, full of many highlights, one being a trip to Princeton University which had an incredibly impressive campus.  

We then set off for San Diego, which being California had a much warmer climate than New York in March and far warmer than Aberdeen.  We visited Coronado Island, Balboa Park and SD Comicon Museum. All in all San Diego was a great city, we'll definitely return.

Cont. March 2025
Then it was on to San Francisco via an overnight bus.  It dropped us off in the bad side of downtown, and we were both shocked by the levels of homelessness there. It seems crazy that such a wealthy country can treat its homeless population so poorly. With our few days in San Francisco we were able to see the sights, visiting the Golden Gate Bridge, Fishermans Wharf, Palace of Fine Arts, Castro, and Dolores Park.  We stayed in the Music City hotel, which had multiple rooms of live music nightly and playable guitars on the rooms walls, which Siji had kept as a secret. After San Francisco we flew to Seattle, and visited the world's first starbucks, the museum of pop culture, Pike Place Market and Central Saloon grunge bar, which was having a very quiet night the day we visited. 

April 2025
April had us arriving in Vancouver to see family we hadn't seen since our wedding in 2022. Vancouver is a picturesque city, hinting heavily at the rugged beauty of British Columbia, we'll definitely be back.  

Cont. April 2025
From Vancouver we flew back across to the east coast arriving in Toronto to visit more family in Ontario.  We stayed in Sheffield for ten days, saw the local sites, had a pickle ball tournament, went to see the Blue Jays play, played a family feud night at a local bar, had a few rounds of Canadian ten pin bowling, went to a roller disco and visited one of the seven wonders of the world in the form of Niagara Falls; where we travelled back in time and joined a gang of outlaws. We arrived back in Aberdeen to celebrate our friends Rory and Rachels newborn, Ivy.  We also had our god-daughter, Malayah up to stay for a week, which was lovely. We got to show her around Aberdeen and finished the visit with a charity shop tour and a night in Broughtie Ferry. 

Cont. April 2025 

We arrived back in Aberdeen to celebrate our friends Rory and Rachels newborn, Ivy.  We also had our god-daughter, Malayah up to stay for a week, which was lovely. We got to show her around Aberdeen and finished the visit with a charity shop tour and a night in Broughtie Ferry. 

May 2025
In May Siji went to a playful learning conference in Glasgow. <siji elaborates>

Tom started to learn how to braid Siji's hair, though this is still a work in progress. We we went  along to a colleague of Tom's  wedding in the venue in which we got engaged, which was a really fun night.  In the last weekend of the month we had the first of our summer barbeques on the beach in Aberdeen, gearing up for the summer months.

June 2025
We found two properties we were interested in buying, one in the centre of Aberdeen which had such great potential, unfortunately due to not having a functioning kitchen or bathroom it was unmortagageble, so we couldn't move forward with this one.  The second we came incredibly close to buying, it was located about half an hour from Aberdeen in Stonehaven, a lovely seaside town.  We had our offer informally accepted, but unfortunately were not offered enough for our flat to commit to the offer in time.  We both find renovating hugely rewarding and look forward to getting the opportunity in our forever home sometime in the future. We got to celebrate Aberdeen pride parade with our friends Emma and Tom, which was a really nice morning.  We also went to see a musical performance of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe at His Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen which was very nostalgic, if you can remember the BBC adaptation from the eighties. At the end of June we celebrated Granma's ninetieth birthday with her which was really special. 

July 2025
Saw us celebrate with friends for Tom and Emma's Hag do, Hen/Stag do.We had a few hours at the local idoor climbing centre, then a picnic in a local park, followed by a game of the Finnish game Molkky. In the evening we had a wine tasting held by the very knowledgeable Thomas.  Later in the month we returned to Ireland with our friend James to go to Earthsong a hippy festival just outside Cahir in Tippery.  We really love our time in Ireland and value the peacefulness of the camp.  We went over via the ferry this time which was a really nice way to arrive in Ireland. 

August 2025
In August we celebrated our third wedding anniversary, Siji turning 34, and Tom 39! 

We'd discovered Rummikub through our friends the orevious month, and Siji fancied a big tournament of Rummikub in a local bar to celebrate.  We popped down to Edinburgh for a long weekend to enjoy the Fringe. We saw a good selection of standups, with some really great acts the names of which now allude us, sorry!  We also saw a show at the Traverse theatre which was a time jumping scifi, that was part family drama part global warming forecast. It was better than that sounds . We also got the opportunity to see our friends Bobby and Wulan and meet young Alas who was born on the 9th of July 2024, they were visiting from Indonesia, though they may be moving to the UK, which is exciting. 

September 2025
Saw Siji upholster our sofa (Tom: Siji probably wouldn't add this, but he did a fantastic job of taking our drab brown sofa and making it look like a brand new suite).  We had a date night at a Traitors theme night, it was an immersive theatre experience, but was actually more of a murder mystery than traitors based. The drama teacher we had had whilst taking acting lessons was playing one of the central characters, which was a nice surprise. 

October 2025
Saw us take on the North Coast 500 again for the second year running. Its a five hundred mile route of the north coast of Scotland.  It was so good when we did it in 2024 that we decided to do it for a second time. The scenary is absoluting stunning, just breath taking.  We'll likely do it again in 2026, hopefully completing the sketchy Applecross section which has alluded these previous two times.  We hired a very swanky eight birth camper, which was probably a tad excessive for the three of us. It was  Siji, myself and Tom Cordiner (Siji's bestman).  I'll add that we did it during storm Amy, Siji drove through it like a champ! 

November 2025
In November Tom got initiated into the Buckie Christmas Kracker.  A big Christmas fair in Buckie, the town Siji lived in from the age of 16. Walking around the town during the festivities with Siji is like walking around with a celebrity, he knows every second person. We then had a birthday meal for Uncle Kens birthday at the grand age of... We also got shown around his Mens Shed group, where theyd taken an old workshop and transformed it into an impressive meeting hall and tooled up workshop.  

December 2025
Well its still going and Christmas will be here in no time. We've found ourselves watching alot of old episodes of grand designs, strategising and planning our dream home. Its a few years off yet, but you'll all be very welcome to come and spend time with us in it when its completed. Or even before if you're handy with a hammer.  That leaves us wishing all you beautiful people a wonderful Christmas and joyful new year. Much love from the Akinwicks. 

Much love, The Akinwicks xx