Recent Goings On

It dawned on me this morning that I haven't been updating you all about what we've been up to lately. A large part of that is due to a pre-occupation of sorts, which I'll get to later. The other part is, well, general forgetfulness. But on with the show...

Since Geneva, Chloe and I continued on our museums tour, visiting both the Natural History Museum (awesome!) and the National Gallery (awesome for me, I think so-so for Chloe.) We also checked out the Tower of London (home of the Beefeaters and Crown Jewels, among other things)... a very cool place and one I might like to revisit as we had to deal with large crowds and passing rain showers.

Yours truly also got to do some bike riding out in the English countryside with one of Peggy's coworkers. He rides as well and invited me out for a spin... it turned out to be a pretty long spin, 63 miles or so. But it was a beautiful ride, going down "single track" roads (wide enough for one car, basically), through tiny villages, and up and down hillsides (FYI: England isn't flat!)

This past week, we had Peg's sister Cathy visit us, and together we went to see "Legally Blond, The Musical." Review: good, not great, "Oliver!" was better in my opinion, Chloe thinks otherwise; and the song "Gay or European?" is hilarious, and we had the added benefit of enjoying amongst a bunch of Europeans. This past week also saw Chloe starting her 1st week of day camp. Review: she's coming home dead-dog tired, so GREAT camp!

The big recent "pre-occupation" news, though, is that we are staying on in London until July 2011 -- or as Peggy likes to refers to it, the Schrammel's Shock and Awe Tour continues. Peggy's company asked to her to extend her stay and head up European operations for a while to continue the "stabilizing" part of her work, as well as work on finding and grooming a long-term replacement. It wasn't an easy decision for Peggy professionally, or one for us as a family, but a big portion of the decision making was: when will be ever get another opportunity to spend a year in Europe?

So another activity of this past week was finding another place to live in for the next 12 months. The one we are in for the summer has been great, but it's kind of small for a year-long stay and we need a neighborhood that is more family-friendly. We put an offer in on one, and hope to hear about it soon. We'll be heading back to Colorado as planned on August 10th, staying there for about 10 days, then heading to Pennsylvania for a couple of days, before heading back to London. Our "return for good" date to Colorado is late-July 2011.

Things upcoming
- We're heading to Paris this weekend via Eurostar (the high speed train that goes through the "Chunnel") to see some of the sight and watch the last stage of the Tour de France.
- Next week will be spent contacting and/or visiting and/or applying to schools for Chloe. The school system is a little different than what we are used to, both in terms of how kids are admitted and how the school year operates. I think we're all in for a bit of an education.

(Pictures, top to bottom: Chloe and Diplodocus at the Natural History Museum; and with the Blue Whale model; and brainstorming with Chucky Darwin; listening to the audio tour at the Tower of London; an unlikely sight at the Tower of London. Click on pictures to enlarge them.)