A Visit from the Ricky Riveras

Joe’s brother, Ricky along with his wife, April, and little girl, Ella, came to visit us this weekend. They are always so much fun to see and we had a great time with them. I think the best part of the trip was our visit to the Missouri Botanical Gardens, one of my all-time favorite St. Louis spots. It was great weather and we got to enjoy some of the main garden areas as well as the fun Children’s Garden.

Ella made a sweet ladybug and danced around the flowers:

Hard work climbing to the top!

Victory!
Ella made a friend playing in the fountain.
A dragonfly
One of my favorite sculptures in the gardens

A Visit from Ronda (Joe's Mom)

This weekend, Joe’s mom came to visit us in St. Louis. She was such a great sport as our apartment was pretty well out of commission, with the exception of sleeping, due to some pretty major water damage from the recent storms (and a major roofing mishap!). Anyway, we kept pretty busy with the Muny (The Music Man), Grant’s Farm, Historic St. Charles, and Augusta wine country. For some reason, I didn't get that many pictures, but here are a few from our Grant's Farm excursion:

Rippetoes

Shortly after we returned from Chicago, our good friends, Mark and Sarah, came to visit us. Mark and Sarah (sadly) moved away from St. Louis last summer and we have missed them terribly! So, it was great to spend some time with them while they were in St. Louis (our first visit in a year with them). We spent the day hiking in Augusta and then enjoyed a fantastic dinner at one of our favorite St. Louis restaurants, McGurk’s—they have the best outdoor patio ever! Mark and Sarah, we are looking forward to seeing you in Edinburgh soon!

They're here!

Today, at exactly 6:48pm, we had a special delivery--our VISAs! The British Consulate apparently saw fit to grant us permission to live, study, and work in their country from September 1, 2009 through December 31, 2013. This is great news as we have been a little worried about the visa application process.

Now that this big hurdle has been cleared, we are going to start working on moving arrangements, travel plans, job search, and apartment (flat) hunting. Right now our plan is to work in St. Louis through the end of August with plans to move our things from St. Louis on August 31. My parents have generously agreed to let us store our things in their house while we are gone, so we will spend a few days with them before flying from DC to Edinburgh on September 7. I have two job interviews set up for that first week we are there and we are probably going to wait to look for a flat until we can get there and see things ourselves. We'll keep you posted as the plans unfold.

With only 53 days left in the US we are also looking forward to spending time with our family and friends. We had a great week last week with my family at Lake Michigan, have some great friends coming to see us this weekend, and are looking forward to spending time with Joe's family over the next few weekends.

I think it is going to be a busy 6 or so weeks!

Chicago

Following our trip to Lake Michigan, Joe and I spent a long weekend in Chicago. I’ve only been to Chicago once, a long time ago, and Joe spent 4 years there in college at Northwestern. We’ve been planning, since we started dating, to visit Chicago so Joe could show me all of his favorite parts of the city. It was a great trip and I can totally see why Joe loves it.

We walked a LOT during the trip and were exhausted every night. But, we got to see some great parts of the city (captions are above the pictures):

my favorite statue

Joe's favorite place (he was very happy about the score)

Joe's Freshman Dorm

The painted rocks at Northwestern (on Lake Michigan)

Joe's FAVORITE pizza

Section from an actual Egyptian tomb (Field Museum)

Sue, the largest, mos complete, most well-preserved T-Rex in the world (Field Museum)

Millennium Park

Hamlin Lake

For July 4^th, and the week after, we joined Amanda’s family near Lake Michigan for a fun-filled family vacation.

Never having been to the Lake Michigan area, we were so surprised to find that Lake Michigan more closely resembles the ocean than any lake we’ve ever seen. It was beautiful! The water was so clear and the beaches were gorgeous. We enjoyed a lot of fun activities, including a great hike to a lighthouse:

LOTS of beach wiffle ball

Go, Claire!

The winners

The second place team!

A bike ride

Playing on the beach

Late night campfires, smores, and fireworks, the sand dunes at Silver Lake, and games galore.

It was a great trip and we had a great time with the extended Schmitt family!

Much Ado About Nothing

Today was a big milestone for us in our journey to Scotland--we submitted the final documents for our visa applications. Now....we wait. If was pretty anti-climatic today at the post office mailing off the cursed thing. After all the hoops and hurdles, it is finally done with no fanfare, no fireworks, no hooplah. I don't know what I was expecting--opera to suddenly blare through the heavens? Choreographed song and dance? The postal clerk showering me with confetti? Whatever I expected, it ended up being a little underwhelming. But, to help you have an idea of all the "ado," here are some numbers to help you have an idea of the visa application process:

• 1: Number of times I hope to have to apply for a visa
• 4: Number of months since the new UK Visa regulations went into effect
• 1: Number of months since they published the new UK Visa regulations for students (hmm....)
  
• 2: Number of times we had to get the photographs taken (because it wasn't done correctly the first time)
  
• 2: Number of weeks it took to get the bank to give me the correct document
• 3: Number of trips to the bank I had to make to get the correct document
  
• 8: Number of phone calls made to the bank to get the correct document
• 3: Number of hours I didn't sleep last night because I was stressing about how I was going to get the correct bank document
  
• 35: Number of dollars of fees we incurred, inappropriately, from the bank in the process of getting the correct bank document
  
• 106: Number of total pages of supplemental documentation provided to the Consulate General (not including the 4 passports that were sent in)

So, now we are waiting....we're not sure how long the process with take. They should receive the information tomorrow by noon, then it's really anybody's guess about how long it will take. We'll keep you posted.