Eric's home!

Eric has been home for the past week, and we've made it a point to be very, very busy.

He ventured home for his birthday. Eric, my dad, and both of my brother-in-laws have birthdays within two weeks of each other, so my mom decided to have a few people over to her house to celebrate. In the process, she remembered a few other birthdays that occur within those two weeks. By the time we gathered, we were celebrating eight different birthdays.

The plan was for Eric to fly home for a long weekend for the party. He was supposed to leave England bright and early Thursday morning, so he spent the night at Heathrow. I called him a few hours before his flight was supposed to leave, and he proceeded to inform me that his passport had been lost/stolen at some point between Stratford-upon-Avon and London. I, being the ever-calm zen human being that I am, did not overreact in any way, shape, or form. The kind folks from the US Embassy cleared him to get on the flight home, so he arrived exactly as scheduled on Thursday afternoon.

He was supposed to leave on Tuesday afternoon.

He's still here.

Getting his replacement passport is proving rather difficult. His name is apparently flagged for super-duper identification verification because a company that he worked for TWELVE YEARS AGO is apparently under investigation for security breaches involving Sept. 11th. Add that to the fact that Eric's only acceptable photo identification (his driver's license) was just issued this past January, and you've got a big, sticky mess that keeps Eric in the US. Good for us, bad for his employer. Everyone seems to be taking it in stride, though, so as frustrating as the folks at the passport office might be, we're going to enjoy Eric's extended stay for as long as we can.

Since he's been home, we've been working to turn our kitchen from The World's Ugliest Place Of Food Preparation into Something That Might Have Come Straight Out Of An Ikea Catalogue.

Before:



During:



After (almost):





Doesn't it look much better? We're not finished yet, but we're making progress. And if the troubles with the passport office continue, we might just get it finished before he leaves. Maybe.