YAY !! Our big boy passed the exam from last weekend and has secured himself a place at the Junior Kindergarten @ the Mulberry School.

Now all we have to do is find a place for Olly to go to and we are onto a winner.

Celebratory meal at the Outback last night then 🙂

We have been out shopping at the Stanford Shopping Mall in Palo Alto today – Simon checked out the Parrot AR Drone Quadricopter in Brookstone.  This is a remote controlled 4 rotor helicopter that is controlled by the iPhone or iPad:-) To top it all, we were in the park with the kids later and Simon managed to break his new RC Helicopter (provided by a work colleague Mike Mills last weekend) on its first outdoor trip.

Simon has ordered his Apple iPad 2 and the delivery date is set as April 6th 2011 – we leave for the UK on the 7th – hmmm – what’s the betting it is going to sit on the doorstep for two weeks then ?

We are in the midst of trying to figure out if we should buy a couple of rental properties in the UK OR if we should buy a house out here in Silicon Valley – the house in SV will cost us circa $1.3m and the houses in the UK 160k UKP each.  The challenge is that to transfer our funds to the UK will end up in our losing a little cash :-(.  Amy out here suggested that as and when we decide to return to the UK we could always rent out the SV house – a smart point that we had not actually considered before – on $1.3m we will be able to relatively easily score $4,000 per calendar month so it would be a pretty good earner.  Clearly we would need a *significant* mortgage for the US option.

Simon is heading out to New York tomorrow night for 4 days and Vicky’s diamonds will be ready for collection at some point during the week.  The question is will she be able to wait until Simon is back before running to get them………

Yesterday was a BIG day for Elliot – he had to go to school (yes, that’s right, on a SATURDAY) to go through a sort of entrance examination to see if he is ready to progress to Junior Kindergarten at the school he presently goes to four afternoons a week.

Pretty stressful time for mummy and daddy – we certainly weren’t expecting Elliot to be going through exams at four years old !!!

He came out at 3pm quite happy and chirpy and so we think he did OK – he certainly knows all of the things that they need him to know – Vicky has spent a lot of time educating him over the last few months, since the school actually (believe it or not) does not give them the skills that they need to pass this exam…. 🙁

We will find out next Friday as to what the score is.  We already found that Olly is 2 months too young to join the infant class two mornings a week so that is a big of a bind – he is DESPERATE to go to school – he wants to stay every time we take Elly in.

Simon took the plunge yesterday and ordered the IWC watch he has had his eye on for a little while.  Couple of issues;

1. They did not have one in stock and could not tell how long it would take to deliver so we have agreed that if not delivered to the store within a month, they will give a full refund
2. The banks in the US do not allow switch transactions over $5k so we had to wait on hold with the bank while they agreed to allow the funds to be released on the transaction – took 45 mins….. PAINFUL

We wait patiently for both situations to unfold.  We may need to lookfor new schools for both boys in August 🙂

We went out cycling tonight – the first time in a few weeks – it was nice to get back out there but really hard – amazing how quickly your body gets used to being lazy 🙁

We are back to 19 degrees Celcius during the daytime at present – which is nice – and the rain seems to be holding off now.

We got the news yesterday that Olly has been declined a lace at the school that Elly has been going to this year – he is 2 months two young basically – this is clearly painful and we had hoped to get them both into school as the classes were roughly the same times (Olly only 2 mornings, Elly 4)

Elly is going in for his test on Saturday afternoon to see if he will be accepted for Pre Kindergarten.  Fingers crossed.

Simon went to the watch shop on Sunday afternoon to see if he was going to buy the IWC watch he has had his eye on.  The store just did not come up with the goods on working a deal out so he left empty handed – felt totally let down with the whole experience typically.

Wowee – it has been real British spring weather here in the bay this last week – torrential rain and high winds.  Thankfully this morning all faith is restored – blue sky and sunshine – doesn’t feel too warm yet mind you.

We heading out for a nice meal tonight with the Folks in Los Gatos, so that will be nice – nice steakhouse – yay!  We have found a baby sitter so hoping that works out well for us also – perhaps we will get out a little more frequently from now on…..

We have given the tenants of the house in Ossett notice but allowed them 3 additional months to find alternative lodgings, so the house will be back with us in the summer.  Tim is planning to come south and move in with Pepsi and Max for a while so it will be nice to have the house back in Rust ownership through and through – although I think we need to put a new kitchen in since the majority of the doors are cracked and therefore need replacing – guess it is handy we have a few dollars of funding behind us now… 🙁

We are also thinking of buying something here in Los Gatos – I guess time will tell….

We went diamond shopping this afternoon, and while Elly and Olly (well Olly really) were less keen on the task, mummy was only too pleased to visit the shop 🙂

We have uplifted the diamonds in the ring that we bought in Florida so that there is a nice 1 carat diamond in the middle setting along with two slightly smaller items to sit either side.  Mummy has also procured a new ring that has white and then black diamonds in it – it will look really nice alongside the existing two rings and will pull together with the watch that Vicky got at our 10th wedding anniversary.  On top of this we have managed to get two new earrings in the deal as well 🙂 All in all, a good shopping session I think….. Got to wait 3 or so weeks until we get the rings back – think it might just be the longest  weeks in life so far…. 🙂

We have extended our lease on the current house in CA today for a further 6 months – the thinking being that we have looked around for the last 6 weeks finding not a lot.  The whole task of actually moving being too great to bear.  We will consider looking to buy somewhere over the summer time.

Planning a Maui holiday in August…. Niiiice !!!!! 🙂