We have now been in contact with a realtor in the bay area who now has as many bits of information as Simon could jot down.  We are now simply awaiting them to get back to us with what they propose that we do and what it will cost us.  They seem to charge anywhere between $500 and $1000 per day for their “services” and hopefully they will be advising us of what those services are.  The alternative is to go through good ld Craig’s list a few days before setting off and arranging our own viewings etc.  Incidentally we will probably do that as well.

Simon’s car is in being repaired following the little scuff it was treated to on New Year’s Eve 🙁  Should be back in our custody by tomorrow afternoon.

Simon and Oliver’s passports came through a couple of days ago and Grandma has kindly offered to sort out the ESTA online for us all.  We have also got through a date for the interview at the US embassy – Vicky and Simon need to attend – the boys are not needed since they are under 14.  SO, with luck, we will be mostly sorted before the end of January and then hopefully we will just need to get the paperwork in the passports and we will be all set.  Just got the house here in the UK to figure out – rent or leave empty.

We all wish you a wonderful 42nd birthday – even though it is 3 days late 🙂

We managed to get the US Visa application photographs taken successfully today, so we are just awaiting Daddy’s and Olly’s passports to arrive and then we will be ready to rock and roll.

The snow is still here just in case you were wondering – we think a little has now melted but the drive and road out to the main road is still white and very slippery.  The car is actually struggling more today than it did when the snow fell initially.

The last few nights has seen the temperature drop to under -5 degrees Celsius here in Ossett, and has been as low as -13 degrees over near Manchester.  Frighteningly cold that 🙁

Elliot looks so grown up in his school uniform – we will take a picture and post it for all to see what we mean.

Olly’s first tooth has cut through today – it is on his lower jaw, on his right and is the first tooth from the middle 🙂 Sharp little bugger mind 🙁

Dimplewell School was open today so Elliot’s first day at big school took place today instead of yesterday.  Daddy is a little disappointed since he was available to go to day 1 yesterday but had to be in the office today 🙁

Uncle Tiggy is going to look after Pepsi and Max when we go house hunting at the end of next month as a trial run for long term residential care 🙂

The main roads all seem clear now, and the motorways are certainly all sorted – it actually feels as though Ossett has had significantly more snow than any of the neighbouring towns / villages.

Apparently there is more snow scheduled for landing tomorrow afternoon and evening.  Hopefully it will begin to fall just as Simon gets home from work….

It stopped snowing for almost 24 hours but began again about 2 hours ago – just slowed up a little now – a further 1/2 inch dropped.  We have probably had close on 9 inches of snow in total now.

This is definitely the most snow that Simon has seen since he was a little boy in Halifax.  When the dogs go into their compound, the snow is way over their “knees” – is v funny seeing them hop around until they get used to the coldness.

Simon managed to get the car stuck at the bottom of the drive today when trying to reverse up the drive!!! He had dug two good tracks down to the end of Turner Close last night (and salted it) but these had covered over and had been slightly abused by the vehicles that had been entering and exiting the close.  So he ended up clearing most of the snow on the circle at the bottom of the drive – after driving onto a neighbours drive and taking a reversed run up 🙂

The 7 series is pretty OK going forwards in the snow but has proven to be not great on slightly compressed snow in reverse.

The 5 series has stayed indoors – it is no use in either direction 🙁

We spoke to Tim last night – he has suggested that he would like to take on two houseguests when we head out to California in a couple of months.  This is a pretty major undertaking for him since there are two of them, and Pepsi is not in the best condition with his poorly legs.  We are thinking that it might be a smart idea to take them up to Tim while we are house hunting in CA in a few weeks time – that way he can “test drive” the pair of them 🙂

We took the 7 series to a local garage (that was recommended to us by the Dent guy that fixed up the 5 series dents last year) and he reckons is 3 days work – Simon took a deep breath thinking that this was for some reason going to be expensive 🙁 Turns out it will cost £110 all in – job’s a good ‘un. It goes in next Weds for the rest of the week.

We had a small amount of snow fall on New Years Day here in Ossett, which stayed put for 4 days since the temperature did not really get above 0 degrees Celsius.  In fact, on Monday morning, Simon set out to work and it was -4.5 degrees at home and when passing by Manchester he noted that it was actually -8 degrees near Bury !!!

Today, Simon set off for work at 6:20 am (ish) and got to the Yorkshire side of Manchester effortlessly, then found that the snow levels rose from almost none at all to 6 inches in the right hand lane of the motorway and 4 inches on the other two lanes…  There were just three sets of tracks in the snow, and when Simon heard a news bulletin from Leeds suggesting people had begun abandoning cars, he decided to turn back.  So, it took 2 hours and 40 minutes to go precisely NOWHERE.

To top it off, the bin lorry had got stuck on our street so Simon had to leave the car 100 yards form the house.

It is now lunchtime and the snow has not stopped and there is almost 6 inches on the walls / fences / gazebos and people’s driveways.

Vicky had to go food shopping armed with a warm coat and a sledge.  The sledge was to bring the provisions home, not to go hooning around on the slopes… 🙂

It looks like this will be set in for some time – so Elliot’s first day at school may actually NOT be tomorrow after all – the local schools are all closed 🙁