Matt, Sara and the girls came over on Saturday and stayed overnight.  We polished off a couple of bottles of very nice Red Cabernet Sauvignon, half a bottle of Sambuca – clearly we had an ace time. 🙂

Elliot came back into his mummy and daddy’s bedroom with Jessica in tow, explaining to his parents that he had found his best friend and that they were going to watch Lightning McQueen and play with stickers 🙂

The 7 series is now officially up for sale 🙁 – it has (or shortly will) make an appearance on Autotrader for the next 3 weeks – hopefully this will be enough. please cross your fingers for us on a quick, efficient sale.

The small cosmetic damage to the 7 was put right by Grant from GHL Bodyworks in Ossett.  He did a terrific job and charged a VERY reasonable price.  Took two days and he earned himself a 18% bonus in beer tokens – really pleased with the work.

Olly has begun to move around a little finally – he kind of shuffles on his bum when he is sat upright.  He is also feeling better again although has returned to requiring feeding in the night etc.

Elliot and mummy seem to be coming down with a cold – and daddy has whinged on about a throat complication – painful swallowing which makes eating and drinking painful.

Simon and Oliver’s passports arrived at the end of last week so we are all set for the home search trip to CA.  We have also got an interview date for the US embassy for the Visa for Vicky and Simon – so we are heading nicely in the right direction.

Finally, it rained heavily on Friday night and we woke up on Saturday with pretty much NO snow left – the original snowman is still there although looks more like a large football at the minute.  The back garden is extremely waterlogged however – I guess this is to be expected given the amount of snow and the rapid nature of thawing

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.