All moved...

I've not updated in a while, it's been a busy 2 months.

Made a lot of progress since early June: House was sold, 2 cars sold in the US, 1 car purchased in the UK and we've moved in. Marina and the kids (and the dog) arrived last weekend in London.

Given the way house sales are going in the US we were very fortunate with regard to selling. School finished on Thursday, we left on Friday and closed on the following Monday. Timing could not have been better.

Thankfully we downsized a fair bit prior to loading the container for it's 5 week trip over the pond, but looking at the size of the truck/lorry it's safe to say we still had a lot of stuff to move. Somehow we've managed to get everything into the house though the attic space is being used.

The UK quarantine issue for the dog was thankfully managed by Marina, we handled it all in the US as we had the proper amount of time. The amount of paperwork and proper sequencing of it all was important but that too is behind us and the dog now has it's own 'pet passport' for travel to/from the UK for the rest of her life.

Given various travel and family visits we will not settle into the new 'normal' until sometime in September after the kids have started school. It's good to be all together again, the distance bit was tough for everyone - except perhaps for American Airlines which I've racked up 72k miles on already this year (along with another 8k or so on a BA flight in there somehow).

Changing times

Left the house in New Canaan yesterday afternoon for the airport for the final time. The next time I return to the USA the house, and my 2003 silverado, will be sold. We bought the house 5 years ago this month, it was a great house and we will miss it. While we were in Stamford when the kids were born, this really was their house.

The movers are showing up this morning to start packing up the house, by Wednesday everything we own in that house will be in a 40' shipping container bound for the UK. I'm told it will be in the hold of a cargo ship mid next week on it's 7 day trip over the pond

No regrets with the move to London, have to do new things, but this has been difficult. Will miss all of our friends in New Canaan.

Status Update

Yes, I've been bad on posting - though to be fair - follow me on twitter as I use that.

It's been a very busy couple of weeks since starting at the BBC 5 weeks ago. While I do not pretend I've figured things out I am starting to understand how the place works. I'll leave the what we are doing to the official postings - coming soonish. What I need are more hours in the day as I usually run out of time.

On the housing from I've moved out of Holland Park (W11), to the Belsize Park (NW3) area of London over the weekend. We've rented a 5 bedroom house near where the kids will be going to school in the fall. I should be able to drop them off at school most mornings which will be nice after this year of not being with the kids. Hopefully they won't hold the last 9 months against me later on in life.

We've got an offer on our house in the US, hopefully closing 3 days after the school year ends in 4 weeks. Still a lot to get through so in the interest of not saying too much am going to let this run it's course.

Regardless, we will have the movers show up in mid-June to put everything into a 40' container to get it to London. Everything should arrive mid/end-July. Marina and the kids will be coming over around then as well as we've no furniture in the house. Bit of a pain actually, but I'm working insane hours, traveling to the US and am generally busy so I'll deal with an empty house.

Marina has sold just about everything that can not come over. Electrical equipment in particular is a pain, though anything without a motor can come over which is good. They either have 110/220 power supplies or a transformer will handle the conversion.

We've sold the mini-van and the truck and a4 are both on the market. The 2003 silverado can't come over, but if we do not sell the a4 guess we will be driving a left hand drive convertible as our only car here (ideally we sell it and pick up a used estate wagon).

Beyond that I'm back in the US every other weekend for the next month and then I'm all but done travelling for the rest of this year. Made platinum on american by June, hopefully I won't make executive platinum this year...

Anyone want to buy a house

We've taken the next step in our journey to the UK, this week we put our house on the market. While we do not want to move until the school year is over we needed to get the house on the market now for the spring selling period.

Will see how good the housing market in the general NYC/CT area is soon I guess. Hopefully we will not have a huge issue selling later this spring.