House Preview

For those of you dying to see what our house looks like, I finally uploaded some pictures of 5 Montgomery. It is shown with the lovely Canadian couple's furniture, not our own. Anywho, you get the idea.

We had a nice surprise last week when we found out that Tim's visit back to MN lasted another 6 days! Everyone was so excited to see him. The second week of his stay he was needed at a full schedule of meetings at Best Buy HQ in Richfield instead of home playing with us - but we still were glad to have him around. There are only two things that are good about him leaving today: less clothes and gear in the overstuffed house and we are that much closer to being done with this transition period.
I booked our flights to London two days ago. Because Tim was here an extra week he will no longer be able to come back to get us. That means beloved Noni is going to assist me on the plane with the two crazy monkeys. Thank goodness! I have always dreaded the day we brought our sweet girls on a plane, but and 8 1/2 flight is no way to break them in - especially if it was only with me!!
So we will be leaving MSP on the evening of the 27th, arriving the morning of the 28th and head straight to a hotel in Chiswick - just near our house. The lease on our house doesn't begin until the 1st (Sunday) - but our shipment of furniture won't be able to arrive until Monday. I am hoping to be moved in enough to spend the night in our house on Tuesday, March 2nd! Cross your finger!
In the meantime, the girls have settled down. They are generally sleeping better and behaving more like normal. We definitely had a crazy first couple of weeks with the flu, ear infections, and other exciting kid issues like pull-ups leaking every night, etc. Most of these things have thankfully been remedied. Hopefully we are done with the trama and drama until the actual move.
One other bright spot is that we are able to transfer our local US phone number to the UK - so all our rellies and friends can just make a local call (though remember the +6 hour time change!). We will also have an "imaginary" UK phone number so our new friends and neighbors can also call us locally! We will hope this will make it much easier for us to stay in touch.
Tim is lonely when he is in London all alone - pop him an email if you get a chance! bbytimothy@yahoo.com

Waiting

It feels like we are in a bit of a holding pattern at the moment. Tim is in London and we (the girls, the cat and me) are here, squatting at my parent's house in Maplewood. Nothing is quite right, although my parents couldn't be more helpful, generous or kind to us four homeless creatures that have taken over their house for the next few weeks. The girls are sensing the change and not sleeping or behaving very well and I am not quite myself either. It would be nice if we could just get on with it already - but all our possessions are somewhere en route to the UK. For now we will stay in familiar surroundings and look forward to that visit from Tim on Friday.
Speaking of Tim, when he comes back to see us later this week, I should have him blog about what he has been up too. A lot of people ask me what he is doing and all I really say is setting up Best Buy Europe. I am guessing he might be able to add detail to that...

Here We Go

The day after Thanksgiving Tim accepted the job and so its official! Tim and I will be making one more trip to London before we actually move to choose a house. We'll be going the first week in January and then I'll come home to get the house packed up. Tim will have to get to work before we can actually move, so he'll be "commuting" for about a month. I have to admit, now that it is decided that we are going, I'd like to just get there and skip all the preparation stuff. I'd like to jump from Sophie's birthday to March or April when we will finally be getting settled in a real house... no more corporate housing and rental furniture :).

Decision Time

It looks like we will be going to London sometime after the start of 2009. Tim and I are excited and also nervous. Nothing is set in stone yet as the negotiations are still going on and we are also still finding out important information - though very little is what we would consider a "deal-breaker". Now comes the real work for me:
figuring out how to rent the house (having it clean at all times for rental agents and potential renters)
what to bring
get all the paperwork done (passports, everything needed for passports)
thinking of things we haven't thought of
new budgeting
organizing the house to get it packed
get rid of untold amount of stuff

Initial Trip

Tim and I are leaving in about a week and half for London. The girls are staying with Noni and Papa. We are excited to learn more about the job, company and city. Tim has never been to London and I haven't been there in about 20 years (yikes - that makes me sound OLD!). I will have some freetime, Tim will spend much of the time at the CPW headquarters and we will both spend some time with a relocation company looking at schools and houses. We are getting more excited about the possibility, so hopefully BBE has some good news for us once we arrive.