Dressing Up Again for Greg

Last Thursday as Greg and I were headed to the High School Awards Ceremony, Greg commented that this was the 3rd time in 3 weeks he had to get all dressed up for a school function. First was the tennis awards dinner, then National Honor Society induction, and now the awards night. We made him dress up and I have to say that I wish more parents would have done the same. About half of the award recipients were dressed in jeans or shorts and sandals. I don't get it. Your child is being honored for something and they look like they just rolled out of bed. Honestly I don't think Greg was too upset about getting cleaned up.


Last year, he got the President's Award for being on honor roll and not having any disciplinary infractions. He didn't received any other awards even though he had the top grades in most of his classes. This year he received the President's Award and the Spanish award for the top male 10th grade Spanish student. He was happy about that.


The basement waterproofing project is complete, but now we have the mess to clean up in the basement. It is a slow job but definitely worth it to have a dry clean basement. I'm still having coughing problems due to a cold and the inhalation of concrete dust.


Got to love this picture of Crosby watching the French Open. She got right up to the tv and was watching the news ticker on MSNBC. When we switched the channels she started watching the tennis ball. Today was Sydney and Crosby's vet visit to have their stitches removed. Yea!!

Casey is home next weekend. Can't wait to see her even if it is only for a short visit before she goes back to school.

National Honor Society Inductee

Last night was the National Honor Society induction. They only took 10 students out of 81 eligible. Greg looked so nice all dressed up. Hey, no baseball hat either.


We were able to convince Greg, Ivan and Collin to pose for a picture with Mrs. Gougas and Ms. Weirbowski.

Picture Recap

A couple of weekends we went up to see Casey and took a little day trip to the Ben & Jerry's factory in Burlington VT. Considering it was a weekend and the factory was working, we still got to see the plant and have a little sample of ice cream. The thing that amazed me the most is that every day each employee goes home with 3 containers of ice cream. Pretty cool. The tour guide said that they use the ice cream to barter for services from other businesses (i.e. the plumber). Nice picture of Casey and Kevin.


Last weekend Tom and Alicia were up from North Carolina. We stopped by to say hello and Tom asked if we were interested in their desk unit. It's a nice one so we said yes. It ended up in Casey's room and looks really nice. So Casey, don't worry, we didn't go through any of your stuff. We just moved a few things around, did some serious vacuuming and dusting and left you a big box of things to go through.

The kittens loved the open side window. Casey, your computer was on because after I set up your computer on your new desk I wanted to make sure it was running. Everything's cool.


Finally, today we started our basement waterproofing. The basement is carefully wrapped in plastic to prevent the concrete dust from getting all over everything. Unfortunately, we probably should have wrapped the entire house as there is concrete dust on the first floor as well. After this is complete on Friday I will spend the entire weekend dusting and vacuuming. Hopefully we will end up with a very dry basement.


Behind the plastic curtain is all of the furniture and stuff from our basement. Hopefully this will spur us into getting rid of some of the excess.

Animusic

It's called Animusic. Both the music and the animations are created digitally. Here's a Wikipedia link that explains the process.

Day 4 - Last day in London

Our last day in London and we decided to explore. Larry was up and out early and we met up in the lobby only to find out that he had purchased front row seats for Wicked that evening. Wicked was at a theatre just around the corner from our hotel so we were passing the marquee everyday. We were thrilled.

We headed to Victoria Station and took the train to Piccadilly Circus. There we split up and Casey and I wandered through a bunch of used bookstores and an outdoor market. We made our way to Covent Garden which was a very busy area of London. Larry and Greg headed another direction looking for sporting goods stores.

We decided to meet up at Harrods for an afternoon of shopping (expensive shopping I might add). Everything at Harrods was so expensive. In the bedding department, a small throw pillow was $100. Sheets ran about $500. We went to the famous pet department which was closed (wasn't too impressed with what we saw through the windows either). They are supposed to have exotic animals but we didn't see them. I was going to buy Kitty a new collar but $40 was way too expensive.

After browsing through a lot of departments, we headed across the street to a Lebanese restaurant. We all decided to have something different. Casey had Falafal and lamb and okra, Greg had spicy chicken wings and lamb kabobs, Larry had a mixed greens salad and chicken and mushroom in mustard sauce, and I had hummus and chicken curry with almonds and coconut. Overall the food was very good but Greg didn't care for lamb.


After lunch we walked to Hyde Park where we split up once again. Casey and I walked down to the Prince Albert statue and then went to the Princess Diana memorial fountain. The fountain didn't look like much from afar but up close it was striking. The circular fountain took twists and slight turns and the water rushed and was calm. It was very lovely.
Next we met back together at Harrods and had sweets at the Chocolate Bar that we had discovered earlier.

Casey has a chocolate beverage that was basically an expresso size cup of melted chocolate. Greg had the Venezuela hot chocolate. Larry had pistachio ice cream and I had a white chocolate strawberry milkshake. It was all very yummy.
After indulging in such rich sweets we decided that instead of taking the train back to the hotel, we would walk off all of the calories. It was a very long walk and it took us by many of the foreign embassies.
Back at the hotel we packed our suitcases as we had an early wake up the next morning to catch the ferry to Calais. Then we were off to see Wicked.
The show was fantastic and such a treat. I highly recommend that you go see it if you haven't. After the theatre let out, Casey and I walked across the street to Victoria Station to stock up on Cadbury bars before leaving London. Casey also got a Cadbury Egg McFlurry at the McDonalds in the train station. It was actually pretty good.

Day 3 Tower of London and Spamalot

Continuing on with Day 3 brought us to the Tower of London. We had driven by this during our Sunday morning tour and we were really looking forward to this tour. The weather was cold, but not rainy.
Tickets in hand we entered the Tower and right away got on a Yeoman's tour (aka Beefeater). The yeoman was fantastic. He was so personable and had a loud booming voice. Did you know that in order to apply to be a yeoman, you must have at least 22 years of military service, have reached the rank of warrant officer, and have been awarded the long service and good conduct medal? It takes months of mentoring before a yeoman candidate is allowed to conduct tours on their own. Like I said, ours was fantastic.

Our first stop on the tour were the gates that led to the Thames River. The gates in the picture shown are at the top of about 8 steps that led into the water. Prisoners for the tower were brought up the Thames to this gate (Traitor's Gate), led up the steps, and led to the tower. Anne Boleyn came up these steps.

From here we were led across the tower grounds to the public beheading place. There is a memorial to those who were beheaded here. The Memorial read "Gentle visitor pause awhile where you stand death cut away the light of many days - here jewelled names were broken from the vivid thread of life - may they rest in peace while we walk the generations around their strife and courage - under these restless skies." All of the executions took place within a few yards of each other and included Jane Boleyn, Catherine Howard, and more. Following the stop here we headed to The Chapel Royal.


Sitting in this beautiful chapel, we were quite surprised to learn that buried beneath our feet were many of those who were executed. The reasoning for this was that the king did not want these people to be made into martyrs so after they were beheaded, they were carried into the chapel and buried so that the public couldn't get to the bodies.


In the center of the chapel was a very large sarcophagus. We were all expecting to hear that someone important was buried there. That was not the case. It turns out that during the middle ages when looting was rampant, the huge gold fountain that currently is in the back of the chapel was "buried" in the sarcophagus. Unfortunately, the keepers of that secret all died and it wasn't until the chapel was being renovated in modern times that they learned there wasn't a body in there at all but rather gold.


This was the end of the yeoman's tour, but there was still quite a bit to see. One thing that really amazed me was the suit of armor made for Henry VIII. Let's just say that he went out of his way to protect something he obviously felt was his "biggest" asset. It was almost pornographic in appearance.

We also saw the Crown Jewels and many more signs of opulence and wealth. We walked along the walls and took pictures of the Tower Bridge (quite an awesome sight). We also toured the room where in 1483 Edward IV's sons 12 year old Edward V and 9 year old Richard were taken by their uncle. The boys disappeared and their uncle was crowned King Richard III. It wasn't until 1674 that the remains of the princes were found. To this day, mystery still surrounds their disappearance.

We finished up the Tower visit with a snack of hot fish and chips and sat outside the tower overlooking the grounds.
After awhile we made our way back to the hotel and rested before a quick dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant and a train ride to the theatre to see Spamalot. Awesome show - loved it, loved it, loved it.

Day 3 - Packed full of fun

Day 3 we were up fairly early and headed to the restaurant for the continental breakfast (same food as Days 1 and 2 but filling). We walked around the corner to Victoria Station and took the train to Monument Square. From there we walked across the bridge to the Globe Theatre replica. There was a nice museum about Shakespeare and the history of the Globe Theatre. When our tour was finally called, we toured the theatre. A group of school children were there performing a Shakespeare play. We learned a lot about the theatre and how fire destroyed the original one - a cannon shot during a performance met up with thatch roofing and destroyed the building.

While it was nice to see this, I think it would have had more of an impact to see an actual performance onstage. Unfortunately we were there during the off season and no performances (other than school children rehearsing) were taking place.

After the tour we walked across the Millenium Bridge and caught the train to Tower Hill where we would visit the famous Tower of London.