A new coat of paint

Good Morning everyone. It's been a while since I got around to putting anything up here, but it's not as bad as the old website was yet, I hope.

We have been very busy with the house renovations recently. Most of the major work is done, and we are now getting the outside of the house painted. Here's a few pics of how it's been coming along over the last week.



An this (below) is how it looks this morning. We've stalled a bit, as we have run out of green paint and the paint-mixer at the place we got it from is broken. We hope to get more paint this week coming at some point, so the painter can finish it off.

New Windows

Well, the newwindows went in today, about two weeks later than we were expecting. Here's a picture of the one in David's room.

We're back

Well, we're home, and mostly over the jet lag.
More to come soon, with photos.

Passport day

Well, for my first day in America, we had an early start, and ruched off down to DC to get Ruth a new passport. If you haven't already heard, when Chrissy got to the airport on the outbound flight, she found that Ruth's passport had expired. We'd simply forgotten than children only get 5-year passports. Chrissy managed to get Ruth onto the flight to America anyway, propably helped by the fact that Ruth was travelling on an American passport, but Ruth would not be able to leave America until she had a valid passport.

I had arranged for the documents needed to be couriered out to Chrissy, so that she could make the appointment with the State Department. It turned out that the best appointment available was the day after I arrived, so off we went.

Peter volunteered to drive us down to DC, and Patrice watched David for us. We were a bit late setting off, as we had to get new photos for Ruth, but we had all the forms filled in the night before, with a pre-paid mailer to get the passport sent back to us. Peter got us there well in time by taking a local road rather than following the Interstate all the way. We found a parking garage right next to the Passport Office, so Peter dropped us off at the door then went to park.

Once through security (show photo-ID, x-ray bags, metal detector arch, etc) we were in and out so quick that we were ready to leave by the time Peter got back from parking the car, about 15 mins at the most.

After that, we went down to the Mall to see the Lincoln Memorial, and had a walk by the refelcting pool, before heading home.

We stopped for lunch at Fuddruckers, the fancy end of burger bars, then drove home. By this point, every one was so tired that I drove the last 20 miles, and everyone else was asleep.

We will get Ruth's new passport delivered on Monday.

America....

13th August 2008

Well, I got here OK. My flight out of Glasfow left about an hour and a half late after a minor mechanical problem on the plane, but I still had just enough time to make my connection in Philadelphia. The flight was OK, but the airlines are still cutting costs - food portions were smaller, no complimentary alcohol, headphones were $5 a pair, etc

Drip.....Drip......Drip.....

Well, the plumbers arrived this morning to put the new bolier in, and joined me in cursing who ever installed the old heating system. They've been here about an hour now, and are still trying to work out what all the pipes do, and why there are two more than there should be.

There's a hole in my roof!

(but it's ok really - the roofers are taking the old slates off)

That's right, work on the new roof started today. I nipped home at lunch to collect a couple of things I had forgotten, to find that the entire back of the roof was stripped, and the roofers were just getting the last nails out before putting the felt on.

I'll put some photos up later if I can find the charger for the old camera.