We're back from vacation at the beach over a long 4th of July weekend (celebrating independence from the British!), meaning we've seen our fair share of fireworks, sunshine, bars, stars & stripes. Jen photographed me on the drive home (note how happy I am about it being the end of the vacation) wearing my fetching holiday hat. It's nice to be back, but I think I would rather still be in Seacrets sipping a Rum Runner... I am however still wearing my hat, despite being back at work, which is nice.

For those of you waiting to see if I post pictures of the Lazylaces Christmas Tree this year you're still a bit early, but in the meantime here's a picture of the Lazylaces Halloween Pumpkins from yesterday. Jen carved the one on the left, I carved the one on the right. Since we only had two lots of trick or treaters to share our carving handy craft with (artistically arranged on the doorstep) we're sharing them with all of you instead :) Look out this month for pictures of us carving turkey (perhaps not quite as artistically) for Thanksgiving :)

I have a mountain of photos I should be posting from me visiting Jen in the US, Jen visiting me in the UK, not to mention our official engagement pics from Baltimore, and at some point I will have enough time to sort thru, annotate, and post them, but for now I had to quickly post this ridiculous picture of me from Scott & Serena's wedding earlier this year that makes me chuckle every time I look at it. I have sub-titled it (for additional comedic value) "Point'n'Click Needs You", but feel free to have your own caption competition in the comments :) Click on the pic above for a more horrific larger version.

The forth and final set of photos from August that Jennifer and I have are from when we went over to Wiltshire, supposedly to see Stonehenge, which we did manage to spend time at on the way home, but only after we had done a mini driving holiday for two days, visited Bath, and stayed over night in Bradford-upon-Avon.

The other week I posted some of the pictures from when Jennifer visited me here in the UK back in August... well I've finally had time to sort the remainder of the pictures out (it's been a busy couple of weeks). This set is from when we were up in Staffordshire visiting my parents and we went out to visit a castle over in Cheshire. As before click on an individual picture to see a larger version.

The second set of photos from when Jennifer was here with me in August, and we went up to see my parents in Staffordshire. The hotel we stayed in was also where I proposed :) As before click on the individual pics to see a larger view. I still have some more pics to post, but I'll upload them next weekend when I have a bit more time.

Back in August Jennifer visited me here in the UK and we took a load of pictures. Being my usual organised self though I'm only just getting around to posting them now. This first set is from when I took her on a whirlwind tour of central London in the lazylaces-mobile. Click on the individual pictures to open up the full size pics.

A while back you may remember I went to DC and when I got back I said I'd post some pictures from my visit. Well here are those photos, there aren't that many I'm afraid as my mind was on more important things, as you'll probably see from the pictures. Hmmm... it would probably help if I went into the story of how I found myself to be in DC....

The full story of my trip to DC actually starts way back in April (Thursday April 20th to be exact), when out of the blue I got an e-mail from regular Lazylaces visitor and commentor Kaya (or Jennifer irl as I found out). Jennifer wished me a belated happy birthday, told me how much she liked Lazylaces, and, perhaps most surprisingly, how she thought I was "too cute". Well you have to understand that that sort of thing doesn't happen to me everyday so I had to respond, especially as she seemed too cute herself. Well one e-mail lead to another, and then instant messaging (God bless Google Chat), and soon enough we were talking on the phone. We just sort of clicked. Before we knew it the weekend had gone and on the Tuesday I booked my flights to DC!

There then followed a whole frustrating month of phone calls as we waited for the date of my flight out to arrive, but as we talked more and more, we fell more and more in love. There was nothing we couldn't talk about, and by the time I was due to fly to Washington we knew all would go well. However it was still a relief for both of us when I finally got through immigration at Dulles airport and we jumped on each other and we both just knew it was right.

Being in Washington was fun, I had never been to The Sates before, but of course the best thing for both of us was just being together. We had the best time seeing her friends and family, and travelling around to Baltimore, DC and Annapolis, but the main thing was to spend as much time together as possible. We found that we were, and even though I'm back in the UK now we still are, insanely happy. Getting on that flight home was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life.

We're now back to a world of phone calls since we are apart, but we're already looking forward to Jennifer visiting here in August (only the flights left to book), and we already have my trip back out to DC organised for Christmas.

So that's pretty much the story of my trip to DC. It most definitely will not be my last, and in the meantime Jennifer and I are hogging the international phone lines between the UK and the US. Apologies if you've been trying to make an international call yourself and all the lines have been busy, but I can reassure you that our call was more important.

I'll keep you updated with Jennifer and I's news in the diary section of Lazylaces, but in the meantime, back to some games...

The other day I set a mini-quiz to see if anyone could guess the London monument I could see directly out of my office window in the location I was working in last week. Well the answer actually was "The Monument" (built in memorial of those who died in the Great Fire of London) - it's pretty much all I could see out of the window as you 'll see in my photographic proof (See Photo 1 and Photo 2). Well done to Anna for guessing correctly.

The reason for me being located here all week? Well I was running a training course for developing with the product we sell, which meant telling everyone all about how to use IIS and SQL server, not to mention teaching some basic Javascript. Fun fun fun. The worst thing for me was that it meant talking constantly for almost the whole week, now I'm looking forward to returning to the comforting silence of my PC to get some coding done.

Ok - I'm doing a little bit of end of year house-keeping to try and tidy up all the links and photos I've gathered over December and done nothing with. The idea is that come the new year when you guys are kind enough to mail stuff in I'll actually get round to posting it straight away. Well that's the idea anyway.

First up are a group of photos gathered over the course of my company's events during December which I only remembered I had lurking on my USB drive when Jules came round the other night.

They're from our quarterly monthly meeting (in which we discuss the progress of the various different parts of the company and then retire to a bar - this time we went to Mar I Terra a great Tapas bar around the corner from the office), from the IM Awards ceremony, which I've already posted about, and our office party at Jongleurs (comedy club and home of the worst food in London).

Right, enjoy the pics, and I'll move on to the links - apologies if I post something you sent in without a credit, but quite predictably I've lost pretty much all of the original e-mails.