A big week for Ian

This week has seen two major milestones for Ian. First and foremost there was his start at the Fire Training Academy. He has been waiting over six months for this to happen so you can only imagine the excitement he felt when he finally got to join his fellow probies. He turned up on Thursday night to be presented with his text book, which is over 1,500 pages thick and also to receive the rest of his official paperwork. So there was no proper training involved. On his way back from the Academy, he received a shout so went to get some more practical experience to help his game. The swot has already done four more chapters of "homework" than he is required to do before Tuesday

Also this week, Ian had started his new job with the top limo firm in the Hartford area. He did one day's training and was paired with the trainer, Randy, and another driver who has been there a while but who was being taught the new procedures at Boston Airport. So as well as doing some local driving around the Hartford area, Ian had a trip out to Boston. He didn't get home until nearly 7pm (which was a shock to his work-starved system ) and after a quick bite to eat, he headed back out to Boston Airport to do one of his "hubby for hire" chauffeur jobs, picking Suzy's dad up. He earned more in those four and a half hours picking Alan up than he did in nearly 10 hours at Premier Limo!

We stayed home again this weekend rather than heading up to Killington as Ian's best buddy from the firehouse was having a housewarming party (nothing literal about warming the house and them being firemen!). Ian had a good time bonding with the guys while Annalie mostly enjoyed bonding with Matt's dogs, Daisy and Duke (do you think Matt is a Hazzard fan??!). Daisy is a Beagle, although quite an old one, but very cute. Duke is a young, over-excitable mongrel, possibly lab x pit bull, but he's lovely all the same. Annalie soon had him under control Ian is off to Killington today to get some boarding in tomorrow as he's got to make up some of the time he's had off lately. But he has to be back on Tuesday morning to have a crown put on his tooth before going back to the Academy on Tuesday night.

Annalie has been working hard on her Masters doing lots of reading this week, but she finally started writing this weekend. She's been in contact with the airline again and she's going to visit them in New York in a couple of weeks and then she's hoping to get on one of their employee orientation sessions soon after. These sessions take place in Orlando so she's not yet figured out whether she'll get flights from the airline themselves, get work to pay, or fork out for it herself. She's going to wait until she's got the date from the airline before tackling that one - one step at a time. It's a shame that her deadline is in May (initially it was supposed to be the end of June) because she could have used the trip to meet up with her sister and family in Orlando at Easter, but that's just a little bit too late for Annalie's comfort. So she might have to make a second trip instead

She gave herself a night off though on Friday to go to the Rolls-Royce monthly Girls' Night Out. She's only managed to get to two others since she's been here so it was a nice opportunity to catch up with them. We went to the South Tavern at the bottom of the road, so it was nice and easy. Calamari and a shrimp special were on the menu - plus a few Tenpenny Ales

We've finally got some new pictures up for you to see what we've been up to. There's a new album for Hawaii, plus some new pictures in House and Stuff and Killington and the Ski House. We hope you enjoy them because it took around two and a half hours to upload them as the resolution is so big and this site can't handle too much at one time. In the House pics there are some great images of Mr Squirrel trying his hardest to reach the bird feeder We've also been getting a lot of bird action on the deck with lots of Blue Jays and the Cardinals back again. The Dark-eyed Juncos are also frequenting our feeder quite a lot (there's a pic of one uploaded). The Jays and Cardinals are a bit too skittish to catch most of the time, but we'll try and get some photos. We also managed to catch a woodpecker in the trees this morning but we haven't downloaded that one yet.