In loving Memory

This is Jacob Dillow, a very dear friend of mine. He died this past Thursday October 18th. It was the craziest thing I have ever heard of. Jacob got his wisdom teeth out last Monday and developed an infection on Wednesday. They realized too late that it was Necrotizing Fasciitis-the flesh eating bacteria. He died in surgery. There is a void left in our little group of friends that will never be replaced. On October 18th each year we will toast him his favorite shot-the prarie fire. Beyond that.. we don't really know how to be without him.

It will be Christmas in England!

I may be getting into the spirit a little early but I can't help myself! I am so excited to go there and spend an entire month! I leave December 12th and return January 9th. While we still have no set plan for ending the long distance we do have a short term solution. We see each other next month in New York. Then I go for a month in December and he comes here (Lord willing...cross your fingers, say your prayers, send your thoughts..etc) in February to work for awhile! That buys us time to figure things out with BOTH of us working and NOT going more than just over a month without seeing each other. We are both encouraged by this and know that something WILL work out. We just need to be patient.

I will be spending Christmas and New Years in his hometown of Clitheroe.

Its a really cute place. Never do much driving there, its a small enough town you can walk everywhere. A few of the Underwood's closest friends actually live on the same street as Mark's parents. If there is one thing I loved most about this town and his family is that their family extends into their large group of friends. I have never experienced this before. Everyone has such a great time together. There is a local pub all of these people go to and when I was there they had a "do" (what we'd call a party) and EVERYONE was there! We danced all night! It was by far one of the most fun nights I have ever had. I was welcomed right in and thrown around the dance floor by many family friends! I felt at home. Actually, it was this night that I realized that I could move to England. I had a peace about it that is hard to explain but was really wonderful.

One set of grandparents live in a cute tiny town called Slaidburn (yet pronounced Slaben-they like to trick me with these).

See it out there? That tiny little town. It has a lot of character and holds many of Mark's childhood memories. His grandparents used to own a farm out there but now live in town. Its a really cute place.

I hope to see London at Christmas time as well. I found this picture of the Tower Bridge and what could be more romantic? It looks so beautiful!
I will keep you up to date if anything else changes. I will definetly post after I go to New York. I am sure we'll get some GREAT photos there. If anything else exciting happens between now and then I'll let you know :)

The Adventure Continues :)

The trip to New York is all planned :) We're taking a long weekend at the end of October, arriving on a Thursday and leaving early Monday morning. This way we can both get some work hours in Monday afternoon/evening.

Mark's aunt works for Louis Vuitton and lives in New York. She's being so generous and letting us stay at her place. From what Mark has said it's an amazing apartment. You walk out the door (that a doorman opens for you!) and there is Central Park. I am really looking forward to seeing New York in the fall, especially Central Park (pictured above).

As for our "new plan." Nothing is set in stone yet but we are tossing around a few ideas. His project that was to start in December over in Renton has been pushed to February :( It may also be only one month instead of three! So, our tentative plan is for me to work as much as I can between now and December, then I will go over to England as a visitor and stay until he comes here in February. I will be working a lot between now and then so that I can save money to live off of over there for a couple months. We'll see if this even works out. Quitting the job I have now will not be easy. Its a great job with wonderful benefits that I don't want to give up unless we have a really really great plan :) ESPECIALLY since I cannot work in England at this point.

I know something will work out, I just wish I knew when, what, where?? All those important questions :)

Update on the work permit

Looks like there won't be a work permit at this point. Vision Therapy is not a graduate level program and does not have a high enough salary to qualify! So at this point I am stuck in the US! I was pretty devastated at first. The doctor in England is giving it another go saying we have a special circumstance because there are no trained vision therapists in the UK so there is still a tiny chance I'll be able to go. However, if I am going for training purposes I imagine it will be a short stay. There is a chance Mark will be able to spend another 3 months working here but we are still unsure of this. Its only been 3 days since we found out the bad news so we're trying to find anything that gives us even an ounce of hope that soon we'll NOT be long distance!

There are a few little things that have been OK about being long distance. One is that we never take for granted the time we do have together and two would be that seeing each other is always a new adventure. We either go to each other's countries which for us is a new experience, had I not met Mark I would have never seen Spain or England. We are planning on meeting up in New York soon as well. It's like really expensive long dates that are few and far between! We look forward to just spending time together doing nothing. We just want to get together after a long day of work and watch TV or cook some dinner...its all been very extravagant but we're ready for simple :)