Today, had a massive lay in, until noon ish. Then had breakfast, watched some TV, then went into town with James. James had to drop his brother off in town so he could go to Tennis.....then alice and Tony hitched a ride as well because Alice needed to return something in town. So....once again we had a full car, full of noisy Vidlers.
We didn't stay very long, but we stayed so that James could go buy a new toothbrush and that way we'd kill time waiting for his mum.
Um...after we got home we watched the movie 'Milk' which we recorded off Tv previously this week, had some lunch, and watched more Tv.
Later, I had a bath and used this new kit(that Alice gave me) to pamper my nails. It had all the tools I like...the tool to push back my cuticles, the tool to cut and trim my cuticles, as well as nail clippers and a nail file. It's a great kit and it worked really well; my nails look neater when they're been trimmed and today is no exception.
Yeah....i know, as reading goes it seems like it's been a boring day, but it's alright. I don't mind taking it easy after a day of going out to far off places like Warwick.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Warwick Castle
James took me to Warwick Castle today. I'd been to Warwick Castle 2 summers ago and it's one of my top places to visit, so we decided to go again. There were a few things that were different about Warwick this time....it's in the winter first of all, then secoondly, last time i went I didn't get to go into the Dungeon because you had to pay extra, but today...since it's wintertime and it's quite, they let people go into the castle dungeon for free. So......James and I did that. We got there 2 hours before the Castle closed though, so we wandered about for about an hour, then did the dungeon tour which lasted 40 mins at the end.
Just before the Dungeon. The wording = hilarious.
The photo before going into the dungeon. I'm eviiiiiiiiil.
Another thing that wasn't at Warwick Castle when I went last summer was something called "Secrets and Scandals". It's basically the same part of the castle I went through last time, with all the wax figures, but this time they 'did up' the place as if there was a party at the castle and all these guests(the tourists wandering around) are staying in the castle. There were also real people(actors) who were dressed in victorian clothing throughout the castle rooms to move people along and keep in the 'party atmosphere'. Someone 'announced us when we came in (we were "The Duchess of California and guest from 'just down the road'."), and we were greeted by the man of the house and asked to make ourselves comfortable and to freely wander about the house.
James acting like King Henry
Me swooning over King Henry.
mirror shot
A view of the river from the inside the castle
Scenes from the castle rooms.... A girl at the piano, then Winston Churchill(one of the castle guests).
James playing poker with the boys. XP
A bear holding a money/donation box...wtf?
A lady descending the staircase.
James in the courtyard.
The Castle at Sunset.
Just before the Dungeon. The wording = hilarious.
The photo before going into the dungeon. I'm eviiiiiiiiil.
Another thing that wasn't at Warwick Castle when I went last summer was something called "Secrets and Scandals". It's basically the same part of the castle I went through last time, with all the wax figures, but this time they 'did up' the place as if there was a party at the castle and all these guests(the tourists wandering around) are staying in the castle. There were also real people(actors) who were dressed in victorian clothing throughout the castle rooms to move people along and keep in the 'party atmosphere'. Someone 'announced us when we came in (we were "The Duchess of California and guest from 'just down the road'."), and we were greeted by the man of the house and asked to make ourselves comfortable and to freely wander about the house.
James acting like King Henry
Me swooning over King Henry.
mirror shot
A view of the river from the inside the castle
Scenes from the castle rooms.... A girl at the piano, then Winston Churchill(one of the castle guests).
James playing poker with the boys. XP
A bear holding a money/donation box...wtf?
A lady descending the staircase.
James in the courtyard.
The Castle at Sunset.
After the castle, we wandered about the shops then went to go find food in the town centre. We had to drive out of the Warwick Castle carpark and go park in another parking structure in the centre....but we went too far, We ended up going to the next town over to get food. We found an Italian place called Zizzi, and had dinner there, which was actually quite good for how cheap the prices were, considering it's an italian place.
After that, we drove home....trying to keep busy we started geeking out about pokemon and quizzing each other on names and stuff--it help us keep awake on the drive back though, which was excellent.
When we got home, we relaxed and that's about it. Hope you guys enjoyed the pictures....it's been a while since I've taken pictures; sorry, I've been too distracted thinking about being the future Mrs. Vidler. ;P
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Effing internet, man
Sorry again about not posting. Before I was about to finish my blog yesterday, the internet crapped out on me again. sooooooo..... it's another 2 in one day.
Yesterday:
James took me to Wye Leisure, to go swimming mostly. There's 3 massive pools, some hot tubs, 2 steam rooms, 2 saunas, and a room where there are the tiled block chairs that heat up. Mmmmm so nice. I didn't exactly pack a swin suit for winter, so I borrowed a pair of swimming shorts from James, and just wore a tanktop and wireless bra underneath, which worked okay for the day. We spent a few hours in the Leisure center looking at the facilities and swimming.
I didn't swim as well as James because, well I haven't properly gone swimming since I was like 8 or something; everytime I've gone to a swimming pool, I'd maybe tread water or swim about, but mostly I've just stuck by the edge of the pool did pilates moves in water or tread water while holding on to the edge of the pool, just concentrating on my feet. I looked spastic trying to keep up with James swimming for edge to edge of this pool, and it was olympic size i'm guessing cause it was bigger than any normal rectagular pool.
After the pool, we rinced off, got changed then did a shop around Morrisons before heading home. I like shopping with James. It's fun to get all the possibilities of what we want now, before we can't afford it anymore as a new married couple. Plus it's fun wadering around making fun of things, or discovering the differences between UK and US grocery stores.
Yesterday:
James took me to Wye Leisure, to go swimming mostly. There's 3 massive pools, some hot tubs, 2 steam rooms, 2 saunas, and a room where there are the tiled block chairs that heat up. Mmmmm so nice. I didn't exactly pack a swin suit for winter, so I borrowed a pair of swimming shorts from James, and just wore a tanktop and wireless bra underneath, which worked okay for the day. We spent a few hours in the Leisure center looking at the facilities and swimming.
I didn't swim as well as James because, well I haven't properly gone swimming since I was like 8 or something; everytime I've gone to a swimming pool, I'd maybe tread water or swim about, but mostly I've just stuck by the edge of the pool did pilates moves in water or tread water while holding on to the edge of the pool, just concentrating on my feet. I looked spastic trying to keep up with James swimming for edge to edge of this pool, and it was olympic size i'm guessing cause it was bigger than any normal rectagular pool.
After the pool, we rinced off, got changed then did a shop around Morrisons before heading home. I like shopping with James. It's fun to get all the possibilities of what we want now, before we can't afford it anymore as a new married couple. Plus it's fun wadering around making fun of things, or discovering the differences between UK and US grocery stores.
Today:
James and I, woke up, had a nice fry-up for breakfast and watched most of 'He's just not that into you", before going out for a walk. James and I took Tilly for a walk around Symond's Yat(which is the Village just off a part of the Forest of Dean, that runs along the River Wye). We took tilly for a walk down by the river, then went for a pint at The Sarcens' Head (a pub down by the river). I like the Sarcens' Head because they have a pool table, so James and I played a few games before going home to have dinner.
Here are pictures of the river:
James was teling me that the pathway we walked down used to be an old railway line. And that the railway was right next to the river. Now, all you can see are the trees bending towards the river while the ground errodes from the rapids. In the last picture, you can see an old railway post stuck inbetween the trees. I thought it was interesting.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Cardiff.....I 'effing hate Cardiff
Today was the start of 'super planning' (meaning actually going out and doing wedding stuff) day.
James and I ventured into Cardiff to go to this big department store called 'John Lewis'. Apparently John Lewis is the go-to place in England for wedding registries, and the one in Cardiff was the closest one in a major city to us.
Drive to cardif was horrible, as per usual. People in Wales are crazy drivers; people in Cardiff are shit drivers. Literally some van almost crashed into us on a round about; (given, part of it was James' fault for not following his SatNav's directions, but still...)if i hadn't screamed at James to watch out, we'd probably be dead.
Luckily we found sanctuary in John Lewis. This department store has 4 stores of shopping and has basically everything you'd ever need in a home. And it was really easy to set up a registery. We went to customer services, had an introduction about how the registery system works(basically, at absolutely no cost to us, with some great benifits; for example, we can choose to have all of the gifts bought for us stored in a warehouse, then delivered all at once to us free of charge after the wedding), then we were set loose in the store with....THE SCANNER.
I love the scanner. It's been probably my dream to go into the store and scan all the possibilities of what I could get for free from Friends and family. :P Plus it makes things so much easier having a scanner, rather than writting everything down and making a list.
After scanning JUST the kitchenware things(in which I let James take full charge of what he would need in his kitchen), we took a tea/coffee break in their cafe/lounge on the 2nd floor. Oh! the other cool thing about gift registry at John Lewis is that the customer service lady gave us a voucher for their cafe, good for 1 tea or coffee and 1 pastry each ,for the bride and groom, so that we could 'have the break we need' in the middle of all the scanning. I'm glad we had that. We spent about 4 hours in that store.
After our scanning adventure, we headed back home to have dinner (James cooked duck fillets with a muchroom/garlic sauce and loads of veg).
After dinner, I was trying to look online to see our 'registry list', to see all the things we came up with....and Alice kept talking to me about Flights and such that she's research. This was stressful and problamatic for me because, as James and I discovered after my melt down yesterday, I'm the type of person who wants to control ALL aspects of this wedding--including the accomedations, flight reservations, etc for his entire extended family, because I know I can plan cheaper and smarter than any of his family(irish...too wishy washy)--and I can't do that. I can't control things that I shouldn't have control over, such as worrying about every little detail of his family's accomedations because it gets me more stressed and I don't need to worry about that in the first place. But, when Alice is still seeing me as the most knowledgable person on planning and runs all planning stages by me.....it stresses me out.
So......I left the room and went upstairs to finish up what I was doing on my computer. Unfortunately, in transit, I must have such off my computer...which made me loose the internet sites and everything I was on....which made me most upset. Then when I restarted my computer, the mouse was being weird(you know when you move your mouse a tad, but the cursor on the screen just bounces all over the place and goes bizurk)...so that made me even more upset to the point where I'm rubbing my hand across the keyboard to...idunno, confuse it into working i guess. AND....in the midst of rubbing my keys, I slashed my finger open off one of the keys'.
I put a plaster on it, it's fine now. And so am I. I've calmed down, finished wedding things, had some berries and creme and now I'm off to bed.
James and I ventured into Cardiff to go to this big department store called 'John Lewis'. Apparently John Lewis is the go-to place in England for wedding registries, and the one in Cardiff was the closest one in a major city to us.
Drive to cardif was horrible, as per usual. People in Wales are crazy drivers; people in Cardiff are shit drivers. Literally some van almost crashed into us on a round about; (given, part of it was James' fault for not following his SatNav's directions, but still...)if i hadn't screamed at James to watch out, we'd probably be dead.
Luckily we found sanctuary in John Lewis. This department store has 4 stores of shopping and has basically everything you'd ever need in a home. And it was really easy to set up a registery. We went to customer services, had an introduction about how the registery system works(basically, at absolutely no cost to us, with some great benifits; for example, we can choose to have all of the gifts bought for us stored in a warehouse, then delivered all at once to us free of charge after the wedding), then we were set loose in the store with....THE SCANNER.
I love the scanner. It's been probably my dream to go into the store and scan all the possibilities of what I could get for free from Friends and family. :P Plus it makes things so much easier having a scanner, rather than writting everything down and making a list.
After scanning JUST the kitchenware things(in which I let James take full charge of what he would need in his kitchen), we took a tea/coffee break in their cafe/lounge on the 2nd floor. Oh! the other cool thing about gift registry at John Lewis is that the customer service lady gave us a voucher for their cafe, good for 1 tea or coffee and 1 pastry each ,for the bride and groom, so that we could 'have the break we need' in the middle of all the scanning. I'm glad we had that. We spent about 4 hours in that store.
After our scanning adventure, we headed back home to have dinner (James cooked duck fillets with a muchroom/garlic sauce and loads of veg).
After dinner, I was trying to look online to see our 'registry list', to see all the things we came up with....and Alice kept talking to me about Flights and such that she's research. This was stressful and problamatic for me because, as James and I discovered after my melt down yesterday, I'm the type of person who wants to control ALL aspects of this wedding--including the accomedations, flight reservations, etc for his entire extended family, because I know I can plan cheaper and smarter than any of his family(irish...too wishy washy)--and I can't do that. I can't control things that I shouldn't have control over, such as worrying about every little detail of his family's accomedations because it gets me more stressed and I don't need to worry about that in the first place. But, when Alice is still seeing me as the most knowledgable person on planning and runs all planning stages by me.....it stresses me out.
So......I left the room and went upstairs to finish up what I was doing on my computer. Unfortunately, in transit, I must have such off my computer...which made me loose the internet sites and everything I was on....which made me most upset. Then when I restarted my computer, the mouse was being weird(you know when you move your mouse a tad, but the cursor on the screen just bounces all over the place and goes bizurk)...so that made me even more upset to the point where I'm rubbing my hand across the keyboard to...idunno, confuse it into working i guess. AND....in the midst of rubbing my keys, I slashed my finger open off one of the keys'.
I put a plaster on it, it's fine now. And so am I. I've calmed down, finished wedding things, had some berries and creme and now I'm off to bed.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Blogging fail
Sorry for not posting yesterday….the internet here has been really dodgy lately; I could barely get online to skype my parents.
So, yesterday was a big day. Basically, James and I planned a bunch of wedding things and then we went out to dinner with his whole family to 'formally' announce and discuss the news that we're getting married.
Overall the dinner went well, I think. James and I had a difficult time keeping his mum out of it at times(just cause she runs her mouth and basically nothing comes out, so it's useless when we're trying to explain things ourselves), but we were able to shut her up and give his dad the figures of how much it'll cost him to have the family fly out to California for the wedding. Anyway, we discussed the figures and he's on board so it's all good. And James Sr. seems okay with the fact that his son is getting married to me; James Sr. was asking me all sorts of questions about the wedding, and the future, and he even offered to help find a place where James and I can live when we come back, while we're still in California waiting for my visa to go through. AND, the amazing thing is, we took the whole family out and were going to pay for this expensive meal to celebrate, but James Sr. kept grabbing the bill away from us and he ended up paying.
After we got home, James and I talked to my mum and dad on skype, which was good. James and I like talking to my mum and dad, it's fun for an hour or 2, once a week. :)
….Today, not much happened. We WERE going to go to Cardiff and start putting together a wedding registry, but we ended up worrying about other wedding plans and staying home.
We were checking up on the Holiday home that the Vidlers, Belchers, and Anglims were planning on staying in the week before the wedding(through to the day after the wedding) and found out that it's booked when they wanted to book it. SO……change of plans, we had to ring up the Belchers and Anglims and work out something new. It finally worked itself out. (Even if we have to move it around,) We booked the holiday home for the Wednesday before the wedding, til the Wednesday after. Hopefully it'll all work out. We'll see. After that, I was collecting addresses people had e-mail me…and the internet went out. So on top of rushing around, changing dates trying to get the holiday home….the internet craping out stressed me out even more. So, James and I decided to just stay home, relax and watch a movie instead of going out.
After watching TV for a bit, and having lunch, (which was around 4pm) we went and picked up Tony from school. Then went back home, relaxed, watched more TV and went back on the internet to plan more wedding things(when the internet was back up). We watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World again on James' Playstation 3, ate dinner…and that's pretty much it.
So, yesterday was a big day. Basically, James and I planned a bunch of wedding things and then we went out to dinner with his whole family to 'formally' announce and discuss the news that we're getting married.
Overall the dinner went well, I think. James and I had a difficult time keeping his mum out of it at times(just cause she runs her mouth and basically nothing comes out, so it's useless when we're trying to explain things ourselves), but we were able to shut her up and give his dad the figures of how much it'll cost him to have the family fly out to California for the wedding. Anyway, we discussed the figures and he's on board so it's all good. And James Sr. seems okay with the fact that his son is getting married to me; James Sr. was asking me all sorts of questions about the wedding, and the future, and he even offered to help find a place where James and I can live when we come back, while we're still in California waiting for my visa to go through. AND, the amazing thing is, we took the whole family out and were going to pay for this expensive meal to celebrate, but James Sr. kept grabbing the bill away from us and he ended up paying.
After we got home, James and I talked to my mum and dad on skype, which was good. James and I like talking to my mum and dad, it's fun for an hour or 2, once a week. :)
….Today, not much happened. We WERE going to go to Cardiff and start putting together a wedding registry, but we ended up worrying about other wedding plans and staying home.
We were checking up on the Holiday home that the Vidlers, Belchers, and Anglims were planning on staying in the week before the wedding(through to the day after the wedding) and found out that it's booked when they wanted to book it. SO……change of plans, we had to ring up the Belchers and Anglims and work out something new. It finally worked itself out. (Even if we have to move it around,) We booked the holiday home for the Wednesday before the wedding, til the Wednesday after. Hopefully it'll all work out. We'll see. After that, I was collecting addresses people had e-mail me…and the internet went out. So on top of rushing around, changing dates trying to get the holiday home….the internet craping out stressed me out even more. So, James and I decided to just stay home, relax and watch a movie instead of going out.
After watching TV for a bit, and having lunch, (which was around 4pm) we went and picked up Tony from school. Then went back home, relaxed, watched more TV and went back on the internet to plan more wedding things(when the internet was back up). We watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World again on James' Playstation 3, ate dinner…and that's pretty much it.
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