He's touched down across the pond!

John landed safely in Heathrow - yay! No flight delay or anything, which was great. Right now he's battling the people at the luggage carousel and then he's off to catch the bus to Chepstow!

Happy Birthday Ian!

It's your day, Ian. The bells chime twelve. And because you're getting to that age where a boy likes a bit of creepy, here's a little vid for you to wish you a... a... happy?... birthday.

Whowhowhohaahahahahaaaa

(Turn out the lights and turn up the sound.)

Our new house...

So we finally took the plunge and bought a house! It only took us 2 years or so to find one we like. Being first time home buyers the whole process is new and slightly stressful, but we're excited too. We close on January 15th if all goes well.


The house is in Simsbury CT. It came in as #57 in Money magazine's Top 100 best small towns to live in in America.


One of things that we fell in love with is this fireplace. The stairs to the second floor go up behind it, which is pretty cool.


The living room has a vaulted ceiling, which neither of us particular cared about before, but we have them in our current apartment and we really miss that feeling of space in houses that don't have them.


Here's the dining and kitchen area, right off the living room, which I like. I wanted a bit of openness to our house. It's not huge, but we've got plans to fix that! Okay, I have plans...


The kitchen has white cabinets and appliances (yay!). You have no idea how hard it is to find a kitchen that doesn't have granite counter tops, dark wood cabinets, and stainless steel appliances. It seems that everyone puts those in and then wants $20,000 more for the house. We both like the classic white. We may not have picked blue countertops, but I think they're kinda cute.


Here's the den. It's good to have a little extra living space.


1st floor full bathroom. We're not big fans of brown walls in the bathroom, those will definitely need to change. Although, we're also fairly lazy, so check back with us in a year or two. Chances are they'll still be brown.


First floor bedroom. This room has it's own private deck. This will probably be the office/guest bedroom.


Now we're up to the 2nd floor. Here's the master bedroom. It's actually much bigger than we need, but that's nothing to complain about I suppose. And it's got a walk in closet. That's another thing that we never really cared about before but have grown to like after having one in our current apartment.




And the full bathroom on the second floor. I like this color blue. No painting needed here.


This is the other bedroom on the second floor. It's very bright and it's got a happy feel.


And now we're outside. I think the hammock actually comes with the house.


This is the view from the deck off of the 1st floor bedroom. There's a deck off of the dining room as well. I've got some ideas for that big patch of garden area in the distance. I think they have wood chips there now, that's why it looks kind of blah. I'll change that though. I'm excited to have a place to plant flowers!


And here's our two car garage. No more cleaning snow off the car for us!! Just shoveling. Lots and lots of shoveling.


This is the little path from the driveway area to the back of the house.


And here's our lovely yard. The house has .75 acres of land, which is enough for privacy, but not a lot to mow. Perfect!