A weekend to remember.

Anna and I had a busy weekend to say the least. It was busy, wonderful and unforgettable all wrapped up into one brief weekend.
It all began on Thursday night when Anna and I began to rummage through our closet in an attempt to pick out our clothes for the wedding that was scheduled to occur on the following day. While we were busy trying to find some clothes that would be suitable for the event, I received a call from Alan Dein informing me that he was in town and he wanted to come over and meet us in person.
Alan arrived at the house at around 8:30 with his producer Laurence Grissell and we had a brief introduction period before stating to record our first interview in person. We spent almost an hour with them and they left the house at around 9:30. This was just the beginning of an exhausting weekend filled with interviews for our future documentary.
The following day, Anna and I had to wake up early to get ready to go to Ivan's school to meet with his teachers at 8:45. The meeting went longer than expected and the meeting finally concluded at 10:30.
After the meeting with the teachers, Anna and I had to rush to the store to pick up a bouquet of roses for the ceremony and some doughnuts for breakfast.
We arrived home just before Alan and Laurence arrived with a Russian interpreter named Katya to help interpret for Anna during the interviews. She is a full time student at Boise State University who came from Russia a number of years ago and has only recently become a naturalized citizen. We had a very informal interview around the kitchen table as we drank tea and ate doughnuts.
Unfortunately we lost track of time and didn't even notice that it had already past noon. We had to hurry out of the house at 12:15. Worried that we could be late for our own wedding, Anna and I didn't even have time to get dressed in the clothing we had picked out the night before. We only had one hour to pick up her son at school and be at the Ada County Courthouse at 1:15 to get married.
Alan, Laurence and Katya followed us to the school and then to the courthouse. We arrived with only 5 minutes to spare. Just as we arrived to the courthouse Anna became visibly distressed as she noticed that she had forgotten her camera for pictures. Fortunately, Alan found a camera in his bag that he allowed us to use to take the pictures.
I can't even begin to describe the level of emotions that filled the courtroom as the honorable Judge Michael Reardon entered the courtroom. We were nervous, happy, excited and scared at the same time. I don't think the judge was expecting a radio crew there to record the event but he did not seem to mind and he also seemed relieved to know we had brought an interpreter with us.
The ceremony itself only lasted about 10 minutes and we were able to get a few pictures taken during the ceremony and we hope we can post some of the pictures soon. I must admit Alan was surprised that I had listed him and Laurence as our witnesses so they both had to sign our marriage certificate as witnesses to the event.
After the wedding, we all enjoyed a quick lunch at a small cafe at the courthouse before we had to be at Maria's school for a meeting with her teachers at 3:00.
Alan and Laurence followed us to the school and waited until we were done with the meeting with her teachers. After the meeting, they were able to spend half an hour interviewing one of her teachers before we left. Finally at 4:00 Anna and I were free to go home, exhausted after a long day.
Saturday started early for us as well. Anna and I had planned to go to an estate auction that started at 10:00. Alan and Laurence met us at the house for a brief interview before we all left to go to the auction where we met up with Katya. We spent about 4 hours recording and bidding on items. I was able to purchase a sofa and love seat for $15.00 and Alan wanted some vinyl records to add to his collection so I was able to purchase a box full for $20.00.
I must admit people looked at us strangely as we walked around the auction followed by a small crew with a microphone in our face. It was an interesting experience to say the least.
The rest of the weekend was filled with interviews and Alan and Laurence finally left at 4:00 on Sunday. It was an exhausting weekend and Anna and I were glad to finally be able to rest after about 20 hours of recording.
Now Alan and Laurence will spend the next month editing all the audio for the 30 minute documentary that will be broadcast in London, England on an episode of 'Don't Log Off' in November. Hopefully it will be available on podcast shortly afterward. I will definitely post it on our blog as soon as it is available.
Here are some pictures we took over the weekend.

Anna and I holding a cake Katya bought for us.

A picture of the cake

Alan Dein interviewing Anna and Ivan while Katya interprets

Anna and I sitting on the sofa I bought at the auction

Alan Dein and Laurence Grissell leaving to return back home to London.

Tomorrow is the big day!

Yesterday we received our rings from the jeweler after getting them re-sized. We purchased them this last weekend and we were a little concerned that we would not have them back in time for the wedding. Fortunately we received them yesterday and we will have them for the wedding. They may not be the fanciest rings or the most expensive but they were all we could afford and they will work fine for us.

Tomorrow Anna and I will have a very busy day. We need to be up bright and early for a meeting with her son's school teacher at 8:45 for parent/teacher conference at the school. After the meeting with the teacher, Anna and I will need to return home and get ready so we can be at the County Courthouse to get married before the honorable Michael Reardon at 1:15.
Hopefully it won't take too much time because after we get married, we need to rush to another school to meet with her daughter's teacher for another parent/teacher conference at 3:00.
Immediately following the parent/teacher conference with her daughter's teacher, we need to rush back home to meet Alan Dein with BBC4 Radio and his producer Laurence Grissell where they will be waiting for us. From there we will begin a full weekend filled with interviews for a documentary they are producing about us. Look for it soon on BBC Radio.
So much for a honeymoon after the wedding... We will be lucky if we can go out to a restaurant for a nice dinner to celebrate.
We hope we can have a more official ceremony and reception in the near future so we can have some friends and family celebrate with us. And of course it would be nice to have a honeymoon.

A slight change of plan...

Life has been a whirlwind for both Anna and I since Anna arrived in July and time has passed very quickly since her arrival.
It has been a significant adjustment for all of us and has been difficult at times to adjust to our new lives together.
Even though Anna is here on a legal visa, we only have 90 days to get married from the date of her entry into the country. Otherwise she will be required to return to Russia. Our plan has always been to get married so that she can remain in the country with me as my wife. We originally planned to have a nice wedding ceremony on September 21st in front of friends and family but it has been very difficult to plan an official wedding ceremony with a formal reception in such a short period of time and given the fact that we are operating on a very small budget.
It has created a lot of unnecessary stress for all of us. Not to mention Anna is still very uncomfortable around large groups of people and understandably so. I can only imagine how difficult it is for her to stand in a group of people who speak a foreign language while trying to understand what they are saying let alone taking part in the conversation.
So Anna and I decided it would be best to have a private ceremony in front of a judge. I contacted the judge and was able to schedule the wedding for Friday, September 20th in the early afternoon. We feel that this will alleviate a lot of the stress associated with planning a large wedding in such a short period of time. We do hope that we can plan a large reception sometime in the near future but for now we will do only what is necessary and give ourselves more time to plan a larger ceremony in the future. Who knows, maybe we can even get David Tutera to help us plan our reception for a future episode of his television show.

Three weeks until the big day...

With only three more weeks until our wedding Anna and I still have a lot to do and unfortunately with school just getting started we have not had much time to prepare for the wedding. But now that the children have started school we can dedicate more time to planning the wedding.
We have decided to have a simple wedding. We had originally considered having a large wedding and invite a lot of people but unfortunately we are operating on a very small budget and we won't be able to afford a large wedding with lots of guests. I even tried to contact David Tutera to see if he would be interested in helping us plan the wedding for a future episode of his television show "My Fair Wedding" but unfortunately his schedule would not allow for it. So we decided we will keep it very simple. Maybe one day we can afford to have a large ceremony with many invited guests and a nice reception to follow but for now it will be Anna, me, our officiator, maybe some of my family and Alan Dein with BBC 4 radio will be there with his producer from London.
We already have a location and we have someone to officiate the wedding. My friend Dave has offered to let us get married in his backyard and we will employ the services of the Honorable Judge Michael Reardon of Ada county.
We have an appointment to meet with Judge Reardon at the Ada County Courthouse on September 9th at 1:00 P.M. He will discuss with us the details of the ceremony with us and we will pay him $150.00 and he will plan on performing the ceremony for us at 1:00 PM on the 21st.
Anna has picked out a nice dress for the ceremony but I have yet to find some good formal attire for the big day. We also need to purchase the rings but it seems all the wedding sets are too expensive and don't fit within our budget. Hopefully we will find a set that we can afford soon because it would be nice to be able to exchange rings during the ceremony.
Time seems to be moving quickly and we only have 3 short weeks before Anna and I finally get married. We have signed up for a gift registry at Walmart so if anyone wishes to purchase gifts for our wedding you can find our registry in the Boise Walmart stores.

The First Day of School

Today was a very stressful day for our family. School started today in our district and we had to get up very early this morning to prepare all of the children for their first day of school.
There were mixed feelings throughout the household while we prepared to send the children off to school. Anna and I stuffed three backpacks full of school supplies while the children got dressed for school. Both of Anna's children seemed excited to start school but Anna was very worried about their first day at school.
We had to see her daughter off on the bus at 6:15 this morning and she had to spend over an hour on the bus just to get to her school that started at 8:05. Fortunately we were able to call the school and confirm she arrived to school safely and on time.
At 8:00 We had to take Anna's son to his new school to meet with his teacher and get him settled into his new learning environment. His teacher seemed nice but I think he may have been a little surprised to learn that he would be trying to teach a child from Russia who doesn't speak any English. I hope he is ready for a challenge. Fortunately there are other language teachers there to assist in teaching him English and we feel very fortunate that her daughter has a teacher who is fluent in both English and Russian. Hopefully they will start learning quickly now.
They managed to survive the first day of school and already came home with homework. Now I can only hope Anna and I will survive the homework. I can't say that typing assignments into Google translator so the children can read them is the most exciting thing to do on a weeknight. But unfortunately all of their assignments are in English and there is no Russian version of the assignments. Hopefully they will learn to read their assignments soon or I will get carpal tunnel typing their assignments so they can read them.

Preparing the children for school

With less than one week until school starts, Anna and I have spent a lot of time trying to get the children registered for school. 
We have had to take the children into the main district office to get them tested in their English skills so that they can be placed into an appropriate school that will best suit their needs.
Fortunately we have been able to get them both registered for school so they will begin school at the same time as other children in our district. It seems our school district is very accommodating for them. In fact they will both receive specialized instruction from multilingual teachers to help them develop skills in English.
I can't say the children are very excited to start school but I don't think many children are very eager to start school so this is normal. Whether they like it or not, they start school next Tuesday.
We are both happy to know that the children will not need to miss any school and We hope the children will adapt well in their new learning environments.

The "Longest Recorded Conversation" rejected by Guinness...

Today we received an email notification from Guinness regarding our attempt to set a world record for the worlds longest recorded conversation.

It seems they have decided to reject our application. You can read the message we received from them below.

** Please do not send a response to this unmonitored email address as it will not be read**
Claim ID: ********Membership Number: ********
Dear Mr Bryan ********,
Thank you for sending us the details of your proposed record attempt for 'Longest Recorded Conversation'. Here at Guinness World Records we are always thrilled to hear about new and exciting record breaking proposals.
Unfortunately, after thoroughly reviewing your application with members of our research team, we are afraid to say that we’re unable to accept your proposal as a Guinness World Records title.
Our team of expert Records Managers receive thousands of new record proposals every year from all over the world which are carefully assessed to establish if they meet our stringent criteria. Every record verified by Guinness World Records must be measurable by a single superlative, verifiable, standardisable, breakable and also present an element of skill. Check out www.guinnessworldrecords.com and explore the records featured on the website, you may be able to find something that inspires you.

Whilst we fully appreciate this is not the decision you were hoping for, we trust that you will understand our position. However, if you have any further record proposals please do make another application, we would be delighted to hear from you again.
Once again thank you for contacting Guinness World Records.
Kind regards
Annie Nguyen
Records Management Team


If you feel we have misinterpreted your application, please login onguinnessworldrecords.com and send us an enquiry clarifying your points, we will then review it and respond in less than 15 working days.
Please be aware that as your record application has not been accepted, Guinness World Records is not associated in any way with the activity relating to your record proposal and does not endorse this activity in any way. If you choose to proceed, then this is will be of your own volition and at your own risk. Guinness World Records will not monitor, measure or verify this activity. 

** Please do not reply to this message; it was sent from an unmonitored email address. This message is related to your application on guinnessworldrecords.com. To reply to this email, please log in on www.guinnessworldrecords.com, select your claim and click on “Make an enquiry”. - Alternatively you can call our office in London on +44 207 891 4500 from 9.30 AM to 6.00 PM GMT. **

Honestly, I don't know why they rejected it. The message does not give very specific information. Perhaps they are too busy counting the number of naked people at certain events to set records in their book. Or maybe they are busy measuring fingernails for the next attempt at that world record for the person with the longest fingernails. Maybe it is because our attempt did not "present a measurement of skill" whereas standing naked in a crowd of people or growing your fingernails without trimming them for a long period of time presents a lot of skill. And of course it takes a lot of skill to cover your body with tattoos and piercings to set a record that is "measurable by a single superlative, verifiable, standardisable, breakable" .I may decide to contact Guinness to ask them to provide more detailed information as to why our application was rejected but it is not going to be high on my priority list. I have a wedding to plan. Besides, whether or not Guinness chooses to publish it does not change the fact that we have nearly three thousand, five hundred pages of correspondence between us and I believe it is a world record. I challenge anyone to try to produce more written correspondence than that. In fact our correspondence continues to grow on a daily basis because we still rely a lot on Google translator to communicate.

 

An attempt at a world record.

After almost 2 years of conversation with Anna through Skype, We have almost 3500 pages of documented correspondence through Skype. In fact we have almost 2,000,000 words that are documented in Skype.
I decided I would check with Guinness to see if there is a record for the longest documented conversation. I don't know if there is a current record holder or if there is even a category for this. So I filled out an application with Guinness to see what they come up with.
Today, I received an email back from Guinness that states

** Please do not send a response to this unmonitored email address as it will not be read**

CLAIM ID: ********

MEMBERSHIP ID: ********

THIS IS ONLY FOR YOUR REFERENCE

Dear Mr Bryan ********,

We are pleased to inform you that your record application has been transferred to our internal system.

You do not need to do anything further at this stage.

At Guinness World Records, we take great care to evaluate every claim we receive. Before we accept or reject a new record proposal, we always carry out claim-specific research, which may require the expertise of external consultants.

We will process your claim within 6 weeks if you are applying to break and existing record, and within 12 weeks if your application is a new record suggestion.

For further details on the Guinness World Records application and record-breaking process, check out the attached document General Information on Record-Breaking. 

PLEASE DO NOT SEND ANYTHING FURTHER AT THIS POINT.

Once we have considered your record suggestion, we will contact you with our decision. In case of success, we will send to you the current world record, the guidelines you must follow and details of the evidence you must compile.

For urgent claims which require an immediate answer, you can use Fast Track which ensures that your record application is assessed by our expert team in just 3 working days. To upgrade to Fast Track please log on www.guinnessworldrecords.com, select the claim number ******** and click on 'Upgrade to Fast Track'.

If you’d like to start record-breaking right away, why not join our Amazing Feet challenge? Amazing Feet is a unique record-breaking experience for record fans of any age, anywhere in the world. We need 50,000 people to help us set a new Guinness World Records title for the Largest online photo album of feet. 

All you have to do is upload a picture of your feet to our website: http://www.officiallyamazing.tv/Amazing-Feet.aspx. You can share a picture of your own bare feet or print out a foot template to colour-in or decorate. Everyone who takes part has the chance to get into the next edition of the Guinness World Records book. 

Thank you for contacting Guinness World Records.

Best regards

Records Management Team

Guinness World Records

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL AS IT COMES FROM AN UNMONITORED EMAIL ADDRESS. 

If you wish to contact us, please log in on www.guinnessworldrecords.com, select the claim ID ********, and click on 'Make an Enquiry', we will reply within 12 days.

** Please do not reply to this message; it was sent from an unmonitored email address. This message is related to your application on guinnessworldrecords.com. To reply to this email, please log in on www.guinnessworldrecords.com, select your claim and click on “Make an enquiry”. - Alternatively you can call our office in London on +44 207 891 4500from 9.30 AM to 6.00 PM GMT. **

Apparently they have decided that it is a valid request and they have forwarded it on to the next level. It will take about 6 weeks to reach a decision as to whether we are eligible for their record book. But To be honest, I don't think anyone else in the world can produce 3500 pages of written correspondence that covers almost 2 years. So hopefully within 6 weeks we will be able to gain the title of record holder for the "Worlds longest documented conversation."
We will let everyone know when we learn the results.

The wedding date has been set.

Anna and I have finally decided on a date for our wedding. We decided to schedule our wedding for September 21st. We had originally planned to have a simple wedding in front a judge but our plans have changed since we became aware that our story has gained the interest of the BBC Network in London, England. 
Yesterday I spoke with Alan Dein with BBC 4 Radio in London and he informed me that he would like to schedule a time next month to fly here with his producer and possibly a camera crew to interview Anna and I in person. I have had numerous interviews via Skype with Alan over the past year and a half and we felt it was time to meet in person. He also indicated that he would be interested in the possibility of attending the wedding ceremony.
He decided that September 20th would be a good date to come for the interview and since we had not yet set a date for the wedding, Anna and I decided it would be a good time to schedule the wedding.
We are still trying to work out all the other details but at least we now have a time frame that we can work with. I wish I could say we had the financial resources for an extravagant wedding because I would love to give Anna the wedding of her dreams but we are working with a very small budget. We are currently looking for sponsors willing to work with us in exchange for advertising on the blog and/or at the ceremony. It would also be good to have a wedding planner that may be willing to help plan the ceremony.
If anyone knows someone who may be interested in working with us or if you have any suggestions please feel free to contact us at annabryan1955@gmail.com or you can submit a comment.

The Vacation is over...

Anna and I have been very busy the past 2 weeks making improvements around the house and getting her and the children situated in their new home. In fact I have replaced the flooring in more than half the house over the past few weeks.
We have been so busy that two weeks passed in what seemed to be only two days. Today was my last day of my two week vacation and I must return to work tomorrow. I only hope Anna is ready. I haven't spent more than two hours away from her since she arrived and tomorrow Anna and the children will be at home by themselves for almost ten hours. I am sure it won't be easy for her. It's not like she can take the children for a drive if they get bored. Fortunately there are several stores within walking distance that she can go to if she gets bored and need to get out of the house.
On my final day of vacation we decided it would be a good opportunity to go to the Ada County courthouse and apply for our marriage license because it may be difficult for me to get another day off soon to take her there. Now we have our license and all we need to do is set a date for the wedding. It will need to happen within ten weeks though or she will be required to return to Russia.
Neither Anna or I have any plans for her to return to Russia so I am sure we will schedule the wedding day soon. We are still not too sure as to what we will do for our wedding. Because we don't have a lot of money for a large wedding, we may just have a simple, private wedding in front of a judge and plan a large reception in the future when we get on our feet. But we aren't sure how soon that will be but we will certainly post it on our blog when it does happen and of course we hope to get plenty of pictures for all of our followers.