R.I.P. baby bunny

Well, we had quite a productive weekend working on the house. We painted the exterior and took out some butt-ugly bushes - you can check it out under the House Progress section of the site. It looks soooooo much better. I still need to paint the door frame and clean all the windows, but it's made an amazing difference. We chose paint colors for the back of the house, finished base-coating the huge wall, Paul finished more of the floor, and we chose a wood floor finally! We're getting some kind of waterproof elm laminate stuff. It's quite nice - I'm excited!

On a sad, sad note, Paul found a baby bunny that had been hit by a car on Saturday. He brought the little guy home and made him a comfy bed in a box to see if he'd live. He was alive and didn't seem to have any broken bones, but he definitely wasn't ok - he was constantly lying on his left side and just wouldn't respond to anything. He was so tiny - he fit in one of Paul's hands. We decided if he was still alive Sunday morning, we'd take him to a vet or animal caretaker. Well, our sweet little baby bunny passed away during the night and was no longer with us Sunday morning. Sniff sniff. So sad.

Ok, back to happy things! Happy thing #1: Paul is now seriously a G. Love fan. He listened to them all weekend while working on the house. Ha! Happy thing #2: Paul all of a sudden has a new name, which is "Dad". Consistently. Elijah would call him Dad occasionally, but now kind of out of the blue, "Paul" has been removed from his mind and "Dad" is all he calls him. It's so sweet - I love to see them together. Paul is an exceptional Dad. The other day, Elijah was "helping" him in the garage, and it was just one of those days where Elijah was grating every last nerve. He was just be a pest, if you know what I mean. Paul got frustrated and told him to go do something else, so Elijah started chasing a fly. Paul looked up at him having a conversation with Mr. Fly, and said, "Sometimes you just gotta see him for what he is" and gave Elijah a huuuge hug and stopped working and went outside to play football with him. Awwww...how cute is that?

Not much else is going on here. It's been cold again for the past few days. It's sunny today, so hopefully it'll warm up. We're going to the evening wedding reception for one of Paul's cousins or something on Saturday. It's at the Hythe Imperial, where we're having ours, so it'll be nice to see it all set up for a wedding. Plus it'll just be nice to get out alone. Laura is coming over to babysit Elijah - he loves her, so it's fun for him too! That's all for now!

G. Love & Crontruck

Man, I've been slacking with the pictures and blogs. Sorry peeps. It's 7:30am and I'm about to make Elijah breakfast before we head to playschool. I'm quite tired, I haven't caught up on my sleep from the other night when Paul and I went up to London to see G. Love. Yes, yes, I still see G. Love every chance I get, and yes, I made Paul come with me. But ya know, it's alright cause G. Love is now his new hero - ha! Oh yeah, I made another true G. Love fan. Hells yes. The show was great - there were about 1500 people there, I think that's the biggest show of theirs I've been to. G. is playing 5 dates in the UK and every one of them is sold out. It definitely wasn't one of the best shows I've seen, but it was still a lovely time! We got incredibly lost on our way home too - it was great! We took the car up there, and my oh my, London is a nightmare for driving! It's worse than any other city I've been to - everything is one-way, there is no structure to the streets, so no parallel or perpendicular streets, so if you get lost, you're REALLY lost. In most cities, you'll end up hitting a highway or at least a main road where you can find your way back. Nope, not in London. We ended up going to Northwest London when we wanted Southeast. We spent a good hour finding our way back to the A20, and got home at about 3am. Elijah spent his first night with Grandma and Grandpa - I guess he was a perfect angel and slept all night. Woohoo!

So it's been a little while since I've bragged about my hubby. Last night he came home with a dozen roses for me, a sweet race track car thingy for Elijah, and made me an amazing dinner of steak, pesto potatoes, asparagus and baby corn. I love him! Seriously, what the heck - he's the cat's pajamas. Where in the world did that saying come from?

Hmm...what else is new? I got my wedding dress! It's amazing! It only cost £90 including shipping and it's exactly what I wanted! I need to get a few alterations done, but I'm honestly blown away by the dress, considering the cost. Not much else going on in the wedding planning area. Our invitations are designed and I sent them to print, but the proofs I got back were a crazy weird ugly color. I'm sure my monitor is still way off, so I tried calibrating again - hopefully it'll be right this time. Better figure it out, as my business depends on the right colors! Paul's dad swiped an old-ish monitor from work, so I'm gonna hook that up to my laptop to double check colors. Let me tell you - I've been in England for only about 4 1/2 months, and I already have trouble not writing "colours". I've been training myself to write "favour" and "organise". Haha. I was going through old purses the other day and came across a bunch of American change, and it's already strange holding it and counting it - I'm so used to pounds and pence already. It's amazing how your brain just gets used to the new and out with the old.

Check out these videos of Paul & Elijah's wrestlemania session:

Crontruck to the Rescue

Round 2

OK, gotta go take little man to playschool!

Knee surgery my arse

Today I received a lovely letter from my American insurance company, USAA. For those of you who don't know, I got in a minor car accident in Orlando right before moving to England. I was pulling out of my parent's street and a girl hit me coming from the left - she didn't have her headlights on, so I didn't see her 'til the last second. The front corner of my car hit the passenger side of her car, right behind the front wheel. There were some scratches and a dent on my car, and hers had a dent behind the wheel, but both were totally drivable, as we were going about 15 MPH when we hit. It was declared my fault, but I wasn't in any place in life or mood to take her to court about it.

Shortly after the claim was filed, I got a letter from my insurance company saying that she was trying to get dough for her "injuries". That p'd me right off, cause she was absolutely fine after the accident, that is, until the cops showed up and she all of a sudden started complaining about a terrible pain in her arm. Suck it up chick - you're ain't got no broken limbs n' whateva. Shoooot.

Anyways, I thought it was all settled and good cause I haven't heard anything in quite some time. Well, today I got a copy of a letter that USAA wrote to the girl's lawyer:

Dear Mr. Manglardi:
I am writing regarding the claim referenced below.
In response to your letter dated 4/13/07, since it appears we are so far apart in our potential settlement amount, I've referred your client's file to our medical management team for further review. There is a question regarding the knee injury and resulting surgery in my opinion and feel an additional review and opinion is warranted at this time.
Upon receipt of the information from this medical team, I'll be in contact with you to discuss your client's case further.

Sincerely,
Insurance Lady

W-H-A-T?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

KNEE INJURY & RESULTING SURGERY??!??!??!?!??????

My arse.

You'll get yours Ms. Leach (oh yes, that is her real name). What is wrong with people?

OK, enough of that. I shall now talk about warm fuzzy things, such as rainbows and leprechauns (not real sure if they're necessarily "fuzzy"). There was massive beautiful rainbow outside our house last night. Check it out.

After this photo was taken, the rainbow somehow moved slowly across the sky, and one end of the arch ended up directly on our house. Everything lit up in spectacular rainbow colors, it was incredible. In the midst of this magical red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple moment, we heard a knock at our front door. Our front door has textured glass on the top half of it, so we can see the outline of whoever is standing there. This time, I saw no silhouette. I opened the door, and saw no one there, so began to close it, only to hear, "Ayy wait thar a wee minute lassie!" I looked down and I saw the most amazing sight mine eyes have ever saw. 'Twas a teensy leprechaun, red beard and all, riding a hedgehog, holding his pet snail, and accompanied by a talking mouse! Paul drew a quick sketch of our guests, here it is -




Come to find out, Herb (the leprechaun) and his homies came to find the pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow, which happened to be our at our house. We told him that sadly, we do not have any gold, and we quickly came to the conclusion that the gold was on the OTHER end of the rainbow. After a quick Carlsberg and a wash-up, Herb and his posse were on their way - off to find their treasure.

Exciting evening in England, eh?

Humphrey the Hedgehog

Helloooo all ya'll. Sorry it's been a while since I wrote. I have no excuse.

Today is Mother's Day in Amer'ca - Happy Mother's Day! We're gonna go to the movies to see The Bridge to Tarabithia. Elijah has been itching to go. We were gonna go yesterday, but he got sick. He said his ear hurt, and he slept for probably 8 hours during the day. Weird. He woke up this morning and is back to his normal self, so we're gonna have a fun afternoon of Tarabithia, Pizza Hut, and ice cream. Lucky little boy!

Not too much is goin' on here. We went to London last weekend to the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum - that was fun. You can see pictures here. It was a bit of an adventure as we took the LONNNNGGG way everywhere. You know, walking for 2 hours in the wrong direction, getting on the wrong train home, blah blah blah. We finally got home at 10:30pm (well, sort of home - to the wrong train station) and took a cab the rest of the way. We left London at 6. That's insane! I think we're gonna look into parking garages and things for next time we go up there.

The house is really starting to come together. Right now Paul is back there plastering the wall that had the window he blocked up. I think we decided on a floor - it's like a streaky wood floor, with light and dark bits all through it. Really pretty. We've almost decided on paint colors too. There's still a lot to do before we get to that point, but it's still progress!

Check out this video of Elijah - it's hilarious:

Overtired Elijah

We had hedgehogs in our garden the other night! Oh my, they were so cute - I named them both Humphrey, because obviously, all hedgehogs should be named Humphrey. They were scared at first so they rolled up in balls. They remind me of big prickly roly-poly bugs. Anyways, we left them alone and they came back out of their rolls and we could see their awesome little faces. I love them and I want a large cage filled with them. And a lemur. You can see some pics of them here, along with some other stuff from the week!

Well, I must be off to take a shower before our fun filled family afternoon.

How many times do I have to tell you to clean your room?

I think I've asked Elijah to clean his room about 486 times this afternoon. I tidied up my kitchen and went to check on him, only to find a Power Ranger had taken over his body. This miniature Power Ranger (with a very similar build & stature to my son) told me he didn't have to clean up. I said to him, "Elijah, how many times do I have to tell you to clean your room?" He looked up at me through his red plastic mask and said, "I'm not Elijah, I'm a Power Ranger". So I reached down, took away his fun, and repeated my question. "Elijah, how many times do I have to tell you to clean your room?" He replied, "Uh, fiiiive?" Ha! So I said, "Clean your room clean your room clean your room clean your room clean your room." He turned around, dropped to the ground with a protruding bottom lip and started his usual meowing. He shortly got over it, and now, as I write this, he's wearing his backpack upside down on his chest, marching around the house singing about sunshine and something I can't understand. Definitely NOT cleaning his room. Ok, time to regulate.

Regulation complete. Good heavens. Oh, we got some good news this week - Elijah got into Capel Primary School and starts in September! I guess Capel Primary is like THE best school in the area and everyone wants to get their kids into that school. I was surprised he got in cause we applied late, but we're thinkin' kids actually living in Capel get priority. It's crazy to think that he'll be in school in 4 short months, sporting his awesome uniform and all. He'll be starting half days at first, and then gradually move up to full days. We'll find out all the info at the parent/teacher night coming up.

We knocked down another wall last night - in between the back lounge and the bathroom. There is so much dust around the house when we knock walls down, it instantly makes me sick. It feels like I have fuzzy little spores growing in my lungs. Siiiick. Anyways, the house is coming along on schedule. The right wall is about ready for paint, but we have to finish the floor first. Soon enough we will be enjoying a cuppa tea back there, watching the sun set behind the fields. Ahhhh.

Ok, I must go start dinner! Byeeeeee!