Happy Birthday Elliot Jack – 5 today

Wow, time flies – 5 years ago we were waiting patiently at Pinderfields Maternity unit for our first bundle of joy to make his way out into the world. Here we are 5 whole years later on packing our gear up ready to head back to the UK from an adventure in California.

We let Elliot choose what he wanted to do for his birthday and incredibly he chose to stay at home and play with this toys. Oliver can’t wait to tuck into Elly’s cake, since not only is it cake but mummy made is specially for Elly with some of their favourite sweets / candy on the outside – M&Ms 🙂

Here it is with his presents….

Two weeks to go…

So Simon has just TWO weeks to go at work, and then the mega relax can begin.  The RV trip is set in stone, Tim will be here in 1 week and all bar one item of furniture is sold…

The cars are sorted in the respect of returning to dealerships and paying them (the leases) off appropriately, a car has been rented for the week before the RV adventure so that we can get around (BMW has to go back earlier than we ideally wanted) – it is one of these bad boys…

Finally, we rented a car to get us from the RV place to the airport (1/4 the cost of a taxi all told).

Olly has taken to needing mid day sleeps again :-S He has just 20 minutes ago dropped off on the couch (yes we do still have one at the moment) and will prob sleep for another hour or so.

Grandma organised the tickets for the Santa Special at the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway today / yesterday, so that will be cool and something to look forward to.  It has become part of Elliot’s Christmas routine and soon will be Olly’s 🙂

We have heard that the gear has now all been loaded onto a container although not yet on board a ship, but we are close to that by all accounts 🙂 So, cross your fingers for us that we will see all our gear in Ossett a couple of weeks after we get back – that would be a winner 🙂

Let the adventure begin………

So we spent a significant amount of time planning our little rv adventure yesterday and have just got the final confirmation in.  So here is how we are going to end our Californian Adventure.

Day One  – Drive to big sur and stay at Riverside Campground just off HWY 1

http://www.riversidecampground.com/index.htm

Day Two – Check out Pfeiffer beach, then head out on the big leg of our Journey to Malibu Beach.

https://www.maliburv.com/index.asp

Day Three – Check out Malibu then drive to San Diego, to go to “Brick or Treat” at Lego Land.  Staying over night at paradise by the sea.

http://www.paradisebythesearvresort.com/

Day Four – Spend the day in Lego Land, then drive to Mission Bay Area in San Diego.

http://missionbayrvresort.com/

Day Five  – Spend the day in Sea World.  Stay a further night at Mission bay to re-charge our batteries

Day Six – Head back up the coast stopping at Huntington Beach to spend some time on the beach.  Then drive to Anaheim Rv Resort nr Disney to go to Mickeys Spooktacular Halloween party.

https://www.anaheimresortrvpark.com/

Day Seven – Drive to Paso Robles WIne Country finally something for the adults ;o)

http://www.winecountryrvresort.com/index.php

Day Eight – Time to head to the airport and get ready to drop the RV off

http://www.coyotevalleyresort.com/home.html

Day Nine – Drop the RV at Family RV San Jose and head to the airport ready to say good bye California, hello new adventure :o)

Family RV – great place in San Jose

So we went back to the RV idea and took a look at San Jose’s Family RV.

Wow, what a stark difference from the Cruise America company.  They had 70+ rental RV’s available to look at although we quickly homed in on our requirements – less than 35 feet but with bunk beds (the boys will love bunk beds 🙂 ).  Take a look at the image below:

Floorplan as follows:

There are more photographs available in the photo gallery in the Home album including internal shots – take a look.

So, we rented it… 🙂 Now we are on for figuring out our route down San Diego 🙂 We have much prep and planning to do now – excitement begins right about NOW 🙂

Stuff has gone…. :-S

Well, we just waved off our gear and now it is enroute for 3 Turner Close…  The shippers called Vicky earlier today with a request – “we have a truck in the area, any chance we can collect your stuff today?” So, we thought, yea, why not, it is just waiting here…

So, at 6pm the truck arrived and two guys meticulously went through the stuff, making a full inventory along the way.  We ended up with 363 cubic feet would you believe?  It is now fully paid for and on the way…  The insurance seems to be a pointless option in that owner packed goods are only entitled to a maximum of $250 per box in an event of a claim.  Well given we have a $4,500 bike in a box that we had professionally packed, we will only get $250 if the bike gets damaged.  Well, we have persuaded them that given it professionally packed that it should not be considered owner packed- they seemed to agree but I guess we will only find out IF anything happens….

Vicky has also been successful in selling the baby furniture this week, the sofa bed (which Simon damaged when putting it away the last time (we only found out during an impromptu demo to a prospective buyer…), the two bookcases from the lounge area, Elliot’s bed and the sit n stroll pushchair (airline seat / pushchair combo).  All in all a very successful week.

We have had Vicky’s car inspected in readiness for its return to BMW, and we got a clean bill of health with the inspector actually making the comment that he wished more clients looked after their lease cars like we have done 🙂  We will most likely be returning the car to the local dealership in the next 10 days or so and will rent a car for the week gap – we are thinking of a Cadlillac Escalade – what do you think?

The GTI is being inspected next week so hopefully we get a good deal on its return as well.

Finally, hopefully we will get to see a few RVs tomorrow and maybe even get a deposit down on our vacation 🙂