Given the opportunity to live and work in California for a few years – would YOU take it?

We are in a conundrum where Simon has been asked to consider moving out to California for a few years – obviously to take the family with him.  We have a BIG decision in our hands here – the boys are arguably the perfect age to do it, the location out there could be argued as the most interesting place to live in the world…..

We have much to think about here – like which V8 do we need to drive…. seriously, we have a few weeks to figure out what it will cost to live, what standard of living we need to expect, and what the schooling will be like for Elliot – since he will likely start school out there :-).  We of course need to figure out how we deal with the dogs and the house while we are not here….

Please feel free to share your thoughts with us via email or the Feedback pages.

Hope you have a fab day uncle Frank

On Thursday, Mia, Vicky and Jon came to stay over for a couple of nights – so we took them to Thomasland in Tamworth.  It was pretty cold, but because it was a Friday, the place was empty – so we could use all facilities multiple times over 🙂  As can be seen above, Elliot rather enjoyed the Troublesome Trucks ride – we had to go on it over and over….

Typically, we had said how well behaved both Elliot and Oliver were being recently, and to prove the opposite, Oliver cried the whole way home from Thomaslnad – Jon particularly enjoyed that experience, and Elliot treated us to some whinging on etc over the entire time 🙂

In fairness to Elly, he did share his toys reasonably well given that Mia was there for 2 full days and three nights.  The only thing he was not up for sharing was his latest Mack (Cars toy).

It has now been two days since the Wallaces’ left, and Elliot is still nipping back into the spare room to see if Mia is there… 🙂

We all enjoyed a nice meal on Sunday with our little family group, Simon’s mum (and entourage) and the great grandparents, oh yes and Uncle Timmy.

Then  SImon’s cousins James and Rebecca Laing came around to say hello and catch-up.  It is a frightening reminder of how we are all growing up and aging – we definitely still see James and Rebecca as little kids, yet clearly they are grown adults in their mid twenties, who have settled in the Yorkshire / Lancashire areas, bought houses and all those grown up things.  Really great to see you guys, hope to keep in better touch over the months and years 🙂

We are considering getting a nice professional photo of the Rust generations – to see if we can line up in the next week or so…

Saturday again – they seem to come around so quickly 🙂

We picked up daddy’s new Suit from Harvey Nichols this morning (nice Paul Smith one that we ordered last week) and nipped to Maplin to get an aerial connector for the car, and then came home to meet a stranger on the driveway – Uncle Tim was waiting for us.

We have also had the wall between our house and next door re-built this week, since Leanne had a little accident in reversing out of the drive earlier in the week, and knocked it down :-(.  Fortunately there was little damage all round in honesty.

We are heading to Halifax tomorrow for a family meal with the boys Great Grandparents as well and Grandma, Uncles Tim, Dan and Justin and Auntie Jenny.