Hearthwood Dome

All - Moving Hearthwooddome.com website to another hosting provider, so it may be inaccessible until later this week...sorry for the inconvenience.

Sorry all. The new host didn't work out...couldn't install my Movable Type Blog perl-backend stuff. Anyhow...moving on.

Jean and I are having a girl! We found out last week that we are most likely (sonograms are only so reliable) that we're having a girl and are due January 25th 2006, just one day before my birthday. Long live Aquarius!

Wouldn't you know it, we're here for less than a few hours and I've already got my hands on the keyboard of an Apple laptop. Jean's friend, Iola, has an iBook that needs looking at, so I took a minute to pop this entry in.

Our plane ride was decent, but we didn't get much sleep, especially Lucas. We'll be tromping 'round London today, having breakfast with Iola, lunch with Tingi, and spending the night with Tamsen...see you 'round...

By Thursday afternoon, we'd found ourselves having lunch with Iola and Tingi, in on business, at the Med Cafe near the Archway tube station in London. Lucas was fast asleep in his stroller. We needed to remove ourselves post-haste to Tamsen's flat in Mudchute, so we decided to stash our belongings in the trunk of a cab rather than lug the stroller and rolling suitcase through the tube system (sans lifts or escalators)...

This morning we woke at the buzzer and cruised out of London on the 10:25 to Windsor, where Kim & Paul graciously picked us up to show us around town.

Paul works at Pharmion, right beside the station, which Jean creatively called "P-Harmion before realizing the "ph" sound involved in the name.

We walked to a playground, for the requisite kid-stop, where Lucas was able to run around and play on the slides and swings while Keira hung out in the stroller...

On Monday we toured Lego Land and had a grand time of it. Not 15 minutes from Kim & Paul's house, the park was quite empty on a weekday, so we toured around the park multiple times.

Lucas especially loved the train ride, which did a sort of lego-safari around the park where we saw lego zebras and other wildlife...

Undeterred by our tardiness, Busby managed to find himself a spot of coffee and then return to the station to rendezvous with us. We cabbed it back to his place where Lucas again found his territory expanded. He now not only had a flat in which to explore and wreak havoc, but also a back yard to explore...

We've made it back to the 'states just fine. The next day in Birmingham was an absolute blast. We began the day parking at a "pay 'n display" lot and walking over to the Birmingham Sea Life Center, where it became obvious what a large influence a small clown fish can have on revenue targets in an acquarium...