A short update....

Well, there isn't much to update you on. Our petition has now been with the California Service Centre in Laguna Niguel,CA for 103 days and we are still no closer or further from getting an approval on our petition. Its starting to annoy me. Especially as we had planned to have moved permanently by now. Unfortunately, as we have no idea as to how long this part of the process is going to take, we have no idea when we are going to be in California. So, if anyone knows anyone who works in CSC, put in a good word for us!

The next parts of the process are fairly straightforward, and involve more things instead of just waiting. We have to start sending them money ($450!!!), information about taxes, information about my police record (i don't have one, so that should be easy enough!), etc. And then there is a medical for me, chest xray, that sort of thing, and then an interview in London, which by the time we get to that point should be a pretty short and almost a sure thing, but you never can tell since 9/11 apparently. This part should take approx 6-7 months, but we plan to use some shortcuts to make it a little faster.....

So, because that means we have no more progress, and we both feel like life is basically on hold until we get approval for our petition, we decided that we would visit for Christmas.
Today, we booked fairly cheap tickets with American Airlines to fly in on Sunday 18th December and out again almost 3 weeks later on Friday 6th January. Brittany's friend Calia is getting married in Seattle on 30th December, so we plan to go up there for that too!

At the moment, both of us like our jobs okay, and have made more of an effort recently to have a social life, which seems to be paying off. Im hoping in the next few weeks that we will hear about our petition, but i won't hold my breath. It seems a crazy amount of time, especially since Brittany got her visa to live here in 4 hours! Most of the people who are doing this same visa route are in seperate countries, and when i consider how much i hated computers when Brittany and I were seperated, i could just imagine how much i would hate Immigration services were we seperated whilst this process is going on!

PS Oh, im excited too, because ex NHL legend Theo Fleury has just signed for my local ice hockey team, the Belfast Giants!

The 49er's won

...and we were there to see it. Tim got 6 free tickets to the 49er's game tonight and so 3 of Tim's cousins, mom, Tim and I all went to the game. It was the first football game that I have ever been to and it was fun. It was also really cold since it was in SF. Our seats were at the top of the upper reserved seating and it was super windy and cold since the game started at 7pm. Then mom and I were watching and we found some other seats that were down closer to the field that were open. Since it was a pre-season game there was a lot of open seats. So mom went down to check out the seats and make sure they weren't checking tickets. Then I went down and called the boys and the 4 of them came down. We were on like the 30 yard line and had really good seats. The game ened in a tie 13-13 so it went into overtime. With only 3 or so minutes left in overtime the 9er's scored a field goal and won. It is always more fun to go to a game when the people you want to win actually do win.


UPDATE: Pictures are now up on timches

New Car

I bought Caleb a new car bed today at a rummage sale (and brought it home with Katelyn's help) and will be putting up pics on the website in a few days when it is in his room but I thought I would give you guys a sneak peek at some pictures.

Click Here to see the pictures.

Also I added some hidden tags that you will see if you post a new message. I think they will help the look of the site and they will also help if you want to add a link or an image to your post hopefully I was clear enough in the expanations that they will make sense. (When you do a new post you will know what I mean.)

Philosopher or Sorcerer

So I just found out that the original name for the first Harry Potter book is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The US changed it to Sorcerer's Stone. I don't know why they did it though. I never knew that before. Anyway, I just thought that I would pass that information on.

I wrote a little more about it on my justbecuz.timches.com blog.

Gmail

I got a gmail (google mail) account a couple of weeks ago, and now i have 50 invitations to give out. If anyone wants a gmail account, let me know. If anyone wants to know the benefits of gmail, click here

I did it

Andrew this is mostly for you, but I finally got out of the green room tonight. If you remember back on June 27th Andrew posted about the Crimson room. Well like I said there I got out of that one in like 15 minutes. Then I was on to the green room after it, and that one is really hard but tonight I got out of the Green Room. I am staying with Sarah, Kevin and Katie this weekend and Sarah and I worked on it together while the kids were taking a nap but we couldn't figure it out, then we kept working on it when they went to bed and we figured it out and we got out of the house. So according to Andrew ("There are less than 4000 people in the world who can escape this house") I am one of the 4000 smartest people in the world that could get out of the house.

It is a fun challenge and hopefully you all can be one of the smartest people too.

Here is the link again if you want to try it.

Click Here to enter the Crimson room then you can go onto the Viridian Room (what I call the green room).

Out with the old...and in with the new!

Well, since my car has now reached 200,000 miles and is over 21, I have decided to buy a car. I have been looking for a couple of weeks and finally found one tonight. I love it! It is a 1995 VW Passat. It is interesting that the first car I really wanted that I found a couple of weeks ago was a Passat and I ended up getting one. It is a major upgrade from the Volvo. It has served me well all of these years, but it was definitely time to let it go. I will post pictures of the Passat as soon as I take some. It is amazing and I got a great deal! I couldn't be happier! There's even a sunroof! I could talk about it forever. The only drawback is that it is an automatic, so you guys can all drive it (if you're lucky!:) ). I will miss driving a stick, but this car is well worth it!