Monday and Tuesday

So, Monday and Tuesday. Let's see, what did we do? Well, we started out taking a "Top of the Bus" Tour. That was a lot of fun. We ended up at the Tower of London, and had a really fun tour, then took a boat ride back up the Thames to Westminster, finished up on the Top of the Bus at Marble Arch, and took some regular busses back to Mom's flat. Or that's how I remember it. I think we might have stopped in for some dinner at one of Mom's favorite restaurants. We were the only people in there. Here's some pics from the day...
Me and Mom on the top of the bus

Can you see us in the reflection? Cool pic, huh?

Trafalgar square during the day.

Tower Bridge, from London Bridge.

Me and Mom, in the Tower of London, with Tower Bridge in the background.


Mom an Peggy with the Eye behind


The Eye and Big Ben, at night.


Tuesday-Leicester Square, Covent Garden (a big Market), British Museum, and the Lion King!!!!
How fun is that? Here are a few pics...
Mom and me in front of Charley Chaplin's statue


Covent Garden, where the first Punch and Judy puppet shows took place.

Me, Mom, and Peggy at the British Museum

Me and Mom, before Lion King.


Ok, I really have to go to school now, so I'll continue this later.

:)

Pam

England was Brilliant!

Ok, so that's how they say it over there. I think "brilliant" is their favorite adjective. One thing that I'm not going to miss is the keyboards; when we used the computers at Mom's work, some of the keys are all mixed up. Ask Peggy. It was crazy.

Anyways, I guess I want to give just a little synopsis of our trip.
Saturday: Arrival-me at 6 am, Peggy around 10am. Both Peggy and I entered the country without Mom's phone number or address. I guess we were both lucky that she came to get us, huh? Well, after we got Peggy, and rode the train back to Mom's, we dropped our suitcases off and headed out for lunch. We got lunch at a Pret A Manger, which is a great "take away" place. We got sandwiches and ate them on a bench outside the Victoria and Albert Museum. Then we went quickly to Mom's work, checked in with home on email, and headed out for a walk. We walked down the block, got on the bus at Hyde Park, and rode to Notting Hill Gate, where we walked down to Portobello Road. You might remember this from Mary Poppins (if you don't, don't feel bad. I didn't remember the song either, but Peggy did!)
Here's us on Portobello Road- where you can get whatever you want!

We also saw this cute shop, and Mom and I HAD to get our picture taken by it:

Get it? Mimi and Fifi! (Although, Mom prefers 'Fe' and not Fifi, but hey, it was close!)
So, anyways, after we walked down Portobello Road, we took the bus back and walked a little bit through Hyde Park, past Kensington Palace-where Lady Diana lived after the divorce.

And then past the Prince Albert Memorial.

It was a nice walk, but we were all glad to get back to where we could eat some food..we were hungry!
Let's see...That was just Saturday.
Sunday, we went to church, checked email, and went back to the flat (apartment) for lunch/dinner. We wanted to go to St. Paul's for evensong, but it was storming, with lightning and everything, so we decided to hold off on that. We waited around, and then when the sun came back out-as it inevitably does-we headed out for a walk. This time, we walked past Harrod's and Harvey Nichol's, then down the road toward the Wellington Memorial and Buckingham Palace. We ended up walking all the way down to Big Ben, then around to Trafalgar Square, and then took the tube back. Here are some of our pics from that walk...
Mom and Peggy at one of the memorials at Wellington's Monument (there were lots of monuments to Wellington...)

Mom, walking up to take pictures of flowers in St. James' Park.

Me, in a London phone booth. :)

And Peggy!

And Mom!

Big Ben!

Mom and Peggy, standing at the geographic center of London, from which all distances are measured. This is right by Trafalgar Square.

Ok, then we took the tube (subway) back to South Kensington Station and to Mom's Flat. We had a small dinner of egg salmon sandwiches, which was delicious after all that walking, and headed to bed. It was a great day. Oh, I think we might have played a little round of Boggle. Of course, I let Peggy beat me (actually she kicked my butt. She had one ridiculously great round and I never could catch up!)

All in all, the first two days were outstanding. But that's all there's room for in this post, I'll write more later.

Love,
Pam

Kill a 9 year old pay $1000

Ever since Pam and I have gotten in to cycling I have been much more aware of our safety and bicyclists rights. I can not stand the fact that if you kill a bicyclist with your automobile you barely get punished:

http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20090304/NEWS01/90303026&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

Grrrrrrr!!!! how can you kill another human and get away with a 3 digit fine?

-Matt

About my wife

Well so for those of you that don't know Pam is in England for the week visiting her mom, which is of course totally fair since I visited England about 4 months ago. But now here I am stuck at home alone, and I have been having a tough time lately... The Navy and the Enterprise are beating me down, it really sucks having a job where people can be rude, fowl, and just horrible human beings and not only not get punished but get rewarded... but that is not what this post is about.

This is about Pam, my best friend. She takes care of me, and keeps me headed in the right direction. I tell her just about every day how much she means to me and how much better my life is because of her, but I without her here to tell, I realized that I should let the world know =)

Today for example, she is thousands of miles away, but she called me and we talked briefly. during the short conversation I helped convince her to work out which she really wanted to do, and in return she challenged me to work out. I needed her challenge... I needed it bad, I was so not going to even though I know I should. But her little nudge kicked me in the butt and made me do what I should. Of course now that I have worked out I feel great and am so glad I did. But most of all I am so glad to have Pam in my life... Thank you dear, I am thrilled to be growing up with you!

-Matt-
PS: Sorry for the sappy love not on the blog, but it is our blog! =)

Graduation

Ok, so I don't know how many of you knew, but I wasn't sure that I was going to actually graduate in December. I was waiting for 4 credits from the community college to transfer in, and I was getting the total runaround from everyone. First TCC (the community college) said they were going to transfer the credits as soon as the grade posted in December. Well, I contacted them after Christmas when they reopened to make sure they had transferred them, and lo and behold, they hadn't sent the transcript yet. What? Are you serious? They told me they were extremely sorry, and that they would send the transcript first thing in the morning. So this is something like January 10th. Well, I checked with ODU on about the 15th, and they hadn't received any transcript yet. So I called TCC again, and said, WTH? Why haven't you transferred my credits? They said they had, so I called ODU again. They hadn't received it yet. Can you see why I was frustrated? I got a little busy with school, but at this point I had actually received an email from the graduation guy saying that I didn't actually graduate in December and I would need to request graduation for the spring. No big deal, I can do that. Well, so it is February, and I decide to contact ODU and see if they have my transcript. It was about the middle of Feb, and I emailed the director of transfer admitting. She emailed me back and said they had received the transcript on January 27th. January 27th! When TCC was supposed to send it "The Next Day" on January 10th? Arghh...At this point I'm extremely frustrated, b/c it is going to take 4 to 6 weeks for the grade to post. Then I had a meeting with Arminda. Who's Arminda, you ask? Well, she's the program adviser for MSED PK-6 program at ODU. She knows the ins and outs of the program like no one else. Anyways, we got to the end of our meeting, where I was putting in my application for student teaching for the fall semester, and I remembered that I should bring up the fact that I hadn't technically graduated yet. She was like, "What? Oh, no. That's not good. Let's see what we can do about it." She emailed the transfer transcript woman, told her the situation-all of this right in front of me. I left for the day, not getting my hopes up. Well, yesterday I got an email from Arminda, and this is what she sent me:



So there you have it. I don't know why I didn't have Arminda take care of it earlier, but in 1 week she was able to do what I had been trying to do for over two months. Some people don't like Arminda; they aren't happy when she tells them that if they are not doing the Master's program and instead pursuing some other path, they will not get preference. The preference goes to those of us pursuing our Master's. I think its fair. I mean, we're spending more money with the university. We're going through their program the way it was designed.
And did you see that GPA? 3.91! That means that in the end I graduated Summa Cum Laude. In case you were wondering, which I'm sure you were, I made the Dean's List every semester of my undergrad degree at ODU.That was actually something I was doing in honor of Dad. I know that he would be really proud of me, as I'm sure you all are, too. The last thing we talked about together was my first midterm test I took, which was for my Music Appreciation class. I got 100% on it. He was so proud. I wish he could see me now, college grad and all. If only I knew how to tie my shoes... (inside joke.)

I'm so excited. I think I'm more excited now about my December Bachelor's Degree than I would have been if I would have automatically gotten it. Talking to others in my program who have to immediately go on to the Master's Program, I can understand why most of them aren't too thrilled about their diploma. At the moment, it is just a piece of paper. Three more semesters, and we'll have something we can actually get a job with.

Anyways, I should really study for a midterm test I have today. I am going to the Elementary school this morning, which I'm excited about. I didn't go on Monday b/c of the snow, I didn't go yesterday, b/c they were SOL testing, and I'm not going tomorrow b/c of testing, so today's my day. I have this midterm test tonight, which shouldn't be too bad. Then I have a group presentation tomorrow. Along with a literature circle that we're going to do in class to. Shoot! I forgot about that. Oh, well, I have all day tomorrow to get that done. And then........It is off to ENGLAND!!! (Did I mention I'm a little excited about that?) I'm getting more and more excited the closer it gets.

Ok, off to the shower for me :)

Pam

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We woke up this morning to..... THIS!!!





No school closures for us, but just a 2 hour delay. So I'm enjoying lazing around the house this morning.


On Saturday evening, I went over to Matt Thompson's apartment and scrapbooked with his girlfriend. I did 3 pages, which are my first three pages in a long time. Can you tell the theme I was going for?

Haircut

Ok, I'm going to ask Matt to take a picture of my haircut right now. Since I'm supposed to be studying and getting homework done, he may not be willing, but let's see...

OK, yep, I just told him it was for a class project. So here it is, my new haircut...

TADA!!!




What's that you say? It looks just like my old haircut? Well,I suppose you're right. Oh, and no, I did not actually style it this morning. I took a shower, and just combed it and let it dry. I think it is really cute. And yes, I'm still in my PJ's at 1:30 in the afternoon. But in my defense, I've been doing homework all morning, and Matt and I haven't worked out yet, so what's the point in getting all dressed up just to change into workout clothes?

Speaking of working out, I think it is almost time to get started. We have Yoga today, which is a grueling 1 hour and 30 minute exercise. I actually love doing it on Sunday-I think it is the perfect weekend activity :)

Ok, back to work. I can hear Matt cracking the whip...

Pam