I thought you might like to see where I'm working at the moment. This place is called Keele Hall and is about 10 minutes from our house. it was built in around 1850 but in the old gothic style and is a cool looking place with hundreds of acres around it along with the whole of keele university.
we're just remodeling some of the inside to make a bigger place for weddings and events but it's nice to have something different along side of just remodeling the student blocks all the time.
The other picture is of the new "potter's wheel" nearby at Trentham Gardens. it's a half size version of the "london eye" at 60 metre's (yes thats how they spell metre?!)
It's freakin COLD here now! the weather reports for the first two weeks of 2009 say we will have wind chills of minus 7'C!! my mother visit's us at the end of Jan into feb and I told her it wont be thats cold....oop's.

we feel lately that we are really settling in here. It was a year on december 27th already. we do wish we had more room or at least a garage to put all our crap in but we have more than most do so it's ok. The boys are doing good though Devon will be the death of us both. He still hardly sleeps. He usually goes to bed around 10:30 to 11 and is up most mornings before 8 - sometimes by 6:30 when I leave for work. so in hopes of making him be good and start to listen to us, I apoligise to all those I was bad and evil to when I was little and I hope this will be a short lesson in paybacks for me as stace is having to suffer for my wrongs as well!

Mason on the other hand is fine. He is doing very well with his school work and is still WAY ahead of where he should be. He has a spanish teacher come to the house once a week and is doing good with that too. He does say he misses some of his friends from Florida but of course we all do.

sorry for the spelling....i've been on the whiskey...

randomness........

I have been to france before and thought it was very nice.
though stace has been before, we just got back from mine, and the boys, first trip to Paris. I wont say that I didnt like Paris, I did, it's just that it was full of French people! I will say that they drive fantastic! I love the rules or the fact that there are none for parking and bumping into other cars and that there is no order to the madness in the huge roundabouts there! I does amaze me that the french are known for their food and wine. the food is great as long as you only want hard crusty bread for every meal and the wine just tastes like vinegar.
Paris is a very nice and pretty city and I would go again. maybe when I hit the lottery since it's SO expensive!
we're going to Belgium in the spring with some friends and after a few days there will drive down to either the south of France or maybe to Italy instead.


Everything is going ok here. it's starting to get pretty cold. At least I have a new site at work where I am inside most of the time. I got a new company car too so I dont have to drive around a stinkin billboard all the time!
The boys are ok and just getting over the colds they brought back with them from Florida. Mason is doing great with his school work and Devon is doing great at his driving us crazy!
What we need I think is for people to come and visit. it's funny how many people always say they might one day but never do. It would be great to have old friends come over and travel around with us site-seeing. it it SO easy to travel here and there are some awesome places to see around England and its so cheap to travel even all over europe (except paris maybe!)
We thought my parents were comming to visit but they decided to buy a couple of new cars, one being the same dodge truck that I had sold and miss alot! and I have not heard of them making any more plans to fly over....(hint. hint.)

We had some new pics done of Mason and Devon. If you would like one I can Email you if you send me an email. we would love to hear from everyone.

the boys in florida

New pics of the boys having fun in Florida while I am back in England! sorry everyone that I dont update this as much as I would like but I do update my facebook profile all the time. if you havent used it yet, its not a bad way to keep in touch at all! i was a sceptic but have found it a great way to keep in touch and so has stacey. you would be suprised how many people you'll find on Facebook.

more...

Hello all, We had a great time in wales! I will add more later but PLEASE someone send the one pic to bob barton! we couldnt pass that one up!

Sut Mae, croeso i Gymru

Hi, welcome to Wales!

wow i'm bad at this....

i cant believe how busy we've been and how hard it's been to keep up with this blog! so much has gone on and happened since i last posted. i dont know where to start so it may sound a bit mixed up.
we just took the kids this past wed to a place called Alton Towers. its a theme park built on and around an old castle and grounds. the ground have been all don up into these HUGE gardens with all the old ruins and buildings you can explore and the rides are as good as any bush gardens or kings dominion. we went with some friends and thier kids and all had a great time. A few weeks ago we had a Pirate party for the kids with
a bunch of peoples kids from the hall. I was the "pirate master" in charge of keeping them all in line and giving out black spots to the bad kids which meant they were'nt allowed on the bouncy castle if they got black spots. I made a treasure chest cake that they all loved and made some cannon ball treats and gave out chocolate coins all day.
We also have been down to a place called Trentham Lakes right by our house, it has a big shopping center, places to eat, all sorts of stuff to do and we went down to go out on the row boats with the boys. they loved it but still need to work on rowing. we did alot of circle when devon had a turn.
will have to post more when I have pics of our house we have now.

спэкиал ассэмбли даи

We woke up for our special assembly day to this! I know it isnt much snow at all but you should see how the people here suddenly forget how to drive when even this much falls! It was a very nice day and the program was very good. It is held down near Birmingham in a old theater built in 1937. its just across from the Dudley Zoo and the old Dudley castle. It still has the balcony to sit in as you can see and its nice to watch the baptism's in the pool built into the stage. if you look close you can see the removable panels in the floor. Everyone stays in their seats until they all are done before we break for lunch. its much different than at home. anyway, it was nice and the talk by the speaker from the London Bethel was fantastic!
Hope everyone is doing well, thanks for keeping in touch and for your emails.

Ed

вэ вокэ уп фор оур спэкиал ассэмбли даи то тъис! и кнов ит иснт муч снов ат алл бут ёу шоулд сээ хов тъэ пэоплэ хэрэ суддэнли форгэт хов то дривэ вхэн эвэн тъис муч фаллс! ит вас а вэри никэ даи анд тъэ програм вас вэри гуд. ит ис хэлд довн нэар бирмингхам ин а олд тъэатэр буилт ин 1937. и'ц джуст акросс фром тъэ дудлэи зу анд тъэ олд дудлэи кастлэ. ит стилл хас тъэ балкони то сит ин ас ёу кан сээ анд и'ц никэ то ватч тъэ баптисмс ин тъэ пул буилт инто тъэ стагэ. иф ёу лук клосэ ёу кан сээ тъэ рэмоваблэ панэлс ин тъэ флур. эвэрёнэ стаис ин тъэир сэа'ц унтил тъэи алл арэ донэ бэфорэ вэ брэак фор лунч. и'ц муч диффэрэнт тъан ат хомэ. аниваи, ит вас никэ анд тъэ талк би тъэ спэакэр фром тъэ лондон бэтъэл вас фантастик!
вэ виш ёу коулд висит сомэдаи, вэ рэалли мисс ёу!



The above is for Rustam and Asiya, We miss you guys!

вэлкомэ то лондон

hi again, umm....the first pic is overwhelming me with bad jokes so i'll move on.....
The next is the London Museum. We were not able to get tickets to the terracotta army exibit, but made up for it by seeing the "kids version" instead. at least stace is in the picture otherwise this would be dumb.
I will have to make a Flikr page or something since there is so much cool stuff to see in this place! the mummy exibit was cool to see.
The last picture is of that suit of armor that stace thought we should get to ahh....no i'm not gonna say it.....

Here is London....here is london.....is it home of the free or what?......

hi.
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Sorry about the Smiths lyrics....Some of you will appreciate it.
We went down to London for the weekend with our friends Ruth and Steve. It was nice to be with others like us who dont mind not planning things and like just roaming the city and see where we end up. after we checked into the hotel we got ourselves passes on the London underground that allow us to take any train or bus around the city. We found one of the classic double decker buses from thr 1930's and played spot the starbucks while we drove around to see the sights. The bus took us to the Tower of London where the crown jewels are kept and to the Tower Bridge. after some shops where stace found a interesting suit or armor I'll have to put in the next set of pics, we went to china town and had an awesome dinner! and after we went to the british museum. most of it was closed but it looks really cool at night and we all decided to come back the next day to see more. The terracotta army was on display and we wanted to come back and try to get tickets to it. After going to Picadilly Circus and a few other places we went back for drinks at the hotel.
I'll have to put the next day in another post since I have more pics to put up.

carry on....

stace, playing the piano.
the video might not work, somebody let me know... Sorry I havent kept up the blog too much lately but I still havent been feeling too great. I dont go in to the docs for a few more weeks and even then I think I may have to stay on this stupid low fat diet for awhile. Its not too bad but mostly I miss the steaks. I still eat some foods with fat but nothing fried and no red meat. we decided not to go to spain since it would be better to go for longer and maybe just take the boys, so we are ditching them to go to london for the weekend. even though its our 11th anniversary, we are going with our friends Ruth and Steve. Its really nice to have them close by and thier 2 girls come and play with the boys all the time. We are getting on with life and really getting settled in. My job is going well and stace is doing good teaching the boys at home for now. we may put Mason in school but will probably wait for him to be going into a higher school. We miss all of you. I feel bad about not getting to call much of anyone and I know I'll hear about it soon enough, mostly from Jon (yon) and Cassandra. Its funny how you go to a new place and compare people you meet to the ones that your used to being around.I have a couple of people that walk by in the hall and smack me in the head like Celest used to do in Palm Bay! and I seem to meet at least one Dawn Peck in every hall we go to but of course none are as good as the original! If anyone in Maryland can...could you give this site to Jeff norfolk and Ki'air Queen so we could keep in touch? I lost most of our email address's. also if someone in palm bay could forward to Spencer and Andrea Thanks. I will try to put up some good pictures again soon, There has been alot going on and with being ill its been hard. I may even have some pics of OUR house soon as well. we have been looking around and would like to get out into our own place soon but as our credit history doesnt carry over from the US, we have to start from scratch. We may end up renting for awhile until we can get something going and I have seen alot of nice places. BTW- stace still plays pretty well for not having sat at a piano for about 5 or 6 years not to mention this one is out of tune, and Devon seems to have to "help out" every time she tries to play. Anyone want to adopt a little boy??!?

the rest.............

We were done with the shops and had eaten and seen the city sites but were not ready to go back to the hotel. so I asked a cabby about different places to go and see. He said most go to the town of Kinsale with the tourist sites and then go to Blarney Castle. but he said he knew of a place near the sea called Crosshaven it is a very old village buildings from year 1100) and has very nice scenery, he also said it is the place that the round-the-world sailing yacht races go into. Well as Annapolis lovers we said lets go!
What a place!! very much off the beaten path but it just gave us a chance to see that much more. theres one pic up of the local village center that I had forgotten to take a picture of untill we were leaving, thats why its taken from inside the car. the others are of a lookout point where the guy that drove us goes to hike down and go fishing. The boys were begging us to take them down to the caves but we didnt want to give Devon the chance at drowning us so we moved on. Lesson learned, This is the way to see Ireland! not the usual tourist traps but just wing it! There is question as to whether people have been kissing the wrong stone for hundreds of years at Blarney Castle anyways. And I dont think I could have resisted the chance to do something to the stone that Stace would yell at me for anyway.
Very much looking forward to going back someday but I hear of some coastal villages in England and Whales that have caves and are nice for the kids so maybe we'll do that first.

BTW if this doesnt make a whole lot of sense...you missed the last post!

Cork, Ireland

we're back. what a great place! we all had a good time and now that we've had a little taste of Ireland we are looking forward to going back for a longer trip someday. These first few pics are of us in the city of Cork in the south of Ireland.
Its a very nice town with loads of nice shops and great places to eat. we went to a small cafe type of place just because it looked like it was a "local" kind of place. there were people going in and out like crazy and most other places looked empty. Boy were we right to go there! it was great! now we know where to take people over to when they get around to visiting (cass!)
anyways we loved the town but wanted to see the Ireland that you picture in your mind or see in movies (or in a ENYA song).................