valerieandjohn

So I'm a bit tardy, but Marilyn had a great first day of school. She was all decked out and ecstatic to go.

The one who had the hardest time was Byron. Marilyn has a group of friends she hangs out with in the neighborhood, and the twins that she knows also started school so Byron was upset to see them all get on the bus without him. Here he is with his own backpack, wishing he was going with Marilyn.

It's been a blogging break but there are new pictures on the side from my trip to London. To sum up I thought I would be seeing tons of stuff like this, which is the castle we went to in Warwick, located about two hours from London.



Instead, I saw a lot of this:



These are the documents I was there to photograph, which is all I did for the ten days I was there. I took over 3,000 pictures. My job was to go through these fourteenth century rolls (so named because the scribes would write on the parchment, on both sides, and then sew the bunch at the top -- they would then roll up the whole thing and tie it shut) and find the widows' activities. It is in Latin, albeit the medieval bastardized form that is abbreviated, etc. Here is me puzzling over them.



We got Sunday off to tour and while we got to tour Warwick that day, the only day for a break was Monday, when I left early to go to the Museum of London. It was more of a working trip as I took pictures of things like this, which were the chests where they would store their copies of the deeds not included in the rolls. These pictures will work for teaching in the future.



We also went to the Tower of London, my absolute favorite site in London, and since I've been there now three times, it must be. We were there right before closing and had it pretty much to ourselves, which was great. I wandered through the entire site, soaking up the (remarkably!)quiet atmosphere.

White Tower.


Again, because it's me, I took a bunch of pictures of the privies, or toilets. They placed their toilets on the outside of the structure so that the refuse would fall far below.



So the London trip was great -- lots of work accomplished and my appreciation of the city grew even more. As I said, I posted more pics of our flat in the flickr account on the left.

John and I and the kids headed out early on Friday morning to begin our much awaited vacation. We headed south through Ohio and promptly got lost. We had planned to stop in Point Pleasant,West Virgina. As you can see from the link, it was the site of a battle just prior to the Revolutionary War and then is known for its Mothman sightings, which led to this movie.

Instead we headed south towards Kentucky, which we only discovered after it was no longer possible to simply turn around. We wound up in Portsmouth, Ohio, where the local triple AAA agent bragged about their outstanding murals and claimed that they had the best hot dogs in the nation (nation, mind you) -- the footers. The murals were beautiful but are placed on flood walls, so there is just a rather shady street next to them. The footers were okay, but the place was a dump. They look like this, but with tons of additional stuff loaded on top. We waited in the car while John walked up to the roadside stand to get them.

We got back on track and by late afternoon we were checked into a lovely hotel at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains that sported a heated pool. Click on the Flickr box to see more pictures.

Although last year we had a largish pool that we set up in the back yard (thanks to a housewarming gift from Cheryl!), this year we are sticking with a much smaller version due to Byron. He doesn't seem to mind.

Marilyn's been busy lately. First, she had her dance recital. As a fairy, she tapped around the stage with her wings. Here she is before her big appearance on the stage.


But her stage appearances were not over. The following week she graduated from her Montessori preschool. It looked quite official with her mortar board.

Marilyn had a field trip with her school at the Franklin Park Conservatory, where they were having a special butterfly exhibit. John was on a golf trip so I acted as chaperone. The exhibit was nice, although there were not as many butterflies as I had expected.

But the Conservatory was featuring the art of Patrick Dougherty. He does amazing work with tree branches -- really amazing stuff. When I worked at the Art and Culture Center I met him while he was doing an installation there. You can see it here. I handed him sticks and chatted about finishing my masters at Clemson. He had been there before for an installation, which I knew well.

So I was pleased to see his work again in Columbus. I asked Marilyn to pose (which you can imagine she was more than willing to do) under the installation outside the Conservatory.

John celebrated his four year anniversary on St. Patrick's Day. Cheryl and Loren came to visit, which is so nice because it's a lot colder here than it is in Florida. We love celebrating with them because they were here on that day four years ago. I had just returned to the hospital after dropping them off at the airport when we got the news that John was to be transplanted. We had Michael and Amie over and had a great time -- check out Flickr for more pictures. But here are the boys...

We've all been sick for the past week or so. Byron had some horrid virus that left him puking and doing assorted other things. Not much longer Marilyn followed. And to top it all off I've had laryngitis. The only cure has been voice rest and you can imagine how much I've enjoyed that. Here's a picture of the kids resting on the couch -- or rather, Marilyn resting and Byron crawling all over her.

Irini visited Marilyn tonight. Marilyn took her right upstairs (to a verrry messy room) and dolled her up in one of her many princess outfits. Rini had a ball and didn't want to leave; here they are right before the mean mommies separated them...

Irini left shortly after, but she wasn't very happy. I would post pictures of Byron with them, but he was in naked time! But the girls had a ton of fun, and that's the most important thing.