Vicky’s X5 is to be taken back to the dealership in the morning and left there…. So we have rented a Cadillac Escalade for the next 9 days to take us through until we collect the RV next Thursday.  Elliot’s comment following Daddy igniting the cheeky 8 cylinders was a classic – “Mummy, listen to daddy’s engine” 🙂 followed by “Mummy, make your car go fast like daddy’s” :-s

Mummy has been out in the Escalade tonight to the supermarket, and she definitely came back with a smile on her face – even she had wound the window down to listen to the growl of the large V8.  By large, I mean more than 6 litres 🙂  It is definitely a car that would facilitate the loss of ones license if driven for long enough.

We are probably looking at a serious fuel bill for the next week or so, and then the RV is actually a V10 petrol engine (for some reason not a diesel) so another week of crazy fuel consumption.  At least it will all be a pile of fun…..

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 🙂

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 🙂

We have most of the house packed up and ready to ship and have had three quotes for the shipping of the gear. The last quote is from a local San Jose company who actually came out to check all the gear out and hence to get a more accurate quotation.

We have now got three of our bikes boxed up and the Santa Cruz bikes are at Summit cycles being boxed as I type. Hopefully, the gear will all be on a ship either having departed for the UK or about to depart.

So given the above, we decided to go and check out an RV to ensure that we would know what we were getting ourselves into etc. We called a company called Cruise America (US wide company with a few depots in our area) and they advised us to pop around to the San Jose depot at around 11:30 this morning. When we got there they nly had one RV to see and it was one of the larger ones (30ft) but this was good since it was the one that we were most interested in.

When we opened the door, there was a rather putrid smell that wafted out, but we foolishly went in nonetheless. There was a load of trash just dumped in the sink and on the floor in the main area of the RV – it had clearly been there for a week or two and hence was decomposing badly. This and the fact that we have experienced a couple of weeks of high temperatures meant decomposition clearly was occurring MUCH quicker.

Then Amy opened the fridge door (why, we still do not know) to show us all the stuff that was decomposing in there also. The smell that attacked our nostrils was almost enough to instantly induce vomit 🙁

On our way out we noted that the thing was just in a general crap state and so we spent the next couple of hours in the belief that the RV adventure may not be such a good idea…

Having performed further research this afternoon, we decided that we should go and look at another RV from a different company so we will head out on Thursday afternoon / evening to do just that. It feels like it would be a mistake to not take he RV adventure as our time here in California comes to a close.

More on Thursday…..

The big pack has begun….  and this weekend has been a mega weekend 🙂

We cleared out the storage area in the garage on Saturday and have today sorted all the kids toys, their clothes and Vicky has sorted the kitchen stuff.  So, we just have to sort our own clothes and arrange for a shipping company to come and collect our gear 🙂

OK, so there is more to it than this – i.e. we still have to get the 7 bikes boxed up and we have a significant pile of things to try to sell via either Craigslist or garage sale (Vicky’s friend Muriel has kindly offered to help us with a garage sale at her house).

We have also pretty much decided that we will rent an RV and do a little tour of Southern California for our last week in California. Check this bad boy out 🙂 Be prepared uncle Tim, Disneyland, Lego land and Sea World is a callin’

The boys have so far taken it extremely well that their toys have been boxed up.  Elliot caught us and simply said “hey, what’s going on over here?” 🙂 We explained that some of the toys needed to go to England on a boat and that he needed to help us decide which cars etc he could keep here in the white house until we got on the plane back to England. This seemed to be the best course of action given we were caught somewhat red handed 🙂

We are hoping to arrange a collection for the gear by next Tuesday so that it can be sailing before we leave on the plane…