Christmas

Christmas has been a welcome distraction from the never-ending wait to hear from the embassy, but actually when I was waiting for the postman to bring all my online Christmas shopping, he finally delivered news from London.

My interview date will be at 8.30am on 11th January. Hurrah! This fits in well with our rescheduled flight date of 14th February. We won't have too many weeks to sit around waiting to leave, but will have a reasonable amount of time to organise all the last minute packing and paperwork without having to even think about it over the Christmas and New Year holidays.

I just need to check, double check and maybe triple check all my paperwork, photocopy everything and work out the logistics of getting into Grosvenor Square for 8.30am on a Tuesday.

Reschedule

We have made an executive decision (in fact I insisted that Jeremy make the final call) to reschedule our departure until the green card is safely in hand and that means postponing our flights until probably January. Although we had toyed with the idea of going to the US for Christmas and then having me fly back to finish off the green card process, that just sounded too crazy. I have now sent in confirmation to the embassy that I have all my documents ready and have also went to London last week for the medical, but we still don't have an interview date.
Therefore we have just one more week until we have to change the flight dates and no idea what new date to go for! If we don't have an interview date soon and if I can't get any information from the embassy helpline, then we will have to err on the side of caution and pick a date in February, just to make sure we will be ready to leave.. we certainly don't want to have to pay another £400 fee to change the date twice! We are paying out so much money for every little thing (e.g. £70 for a police certificate, £40 to obtain a copy of Jeremy's long birth certificate, £200 for the medical plus getting to London and back endless times), that at this rate we won't be able to afford a down payment on a house when we get to the states.. so much for the American Dream!

So we continue to live in limbo and that just leaves far too much head space for second thoughts, so I've taken up knitting again to try and keep myself busy and stop my brain talking me out of the plan altogether! The longer we stay, the stronger my new friendships get an the more comfortable Dylan gets with his surroundings, poor boy.. it will all be very confusing for him when we finally move I'm sure, although he has heard us talking about going to America for so long, he probably wonders when we will actually go!

Perhaps I should knit some socks to stop me getting cold feet.

Too busy to blog

Between juggling two small children, selling furniture, packing suitcases and generally deconstructing our English existence, I haven't really found the time to blog. Then a week ago we discovered our plan of tackling the visa process on arrival in the US was doomed and stress levels are through the roof. Apparently it is very unwise to turn up on a visa waiver and adjust status from non-immigrant to immigrant, although technically possible and managed by some. It is all a question of your intention when you travel to the US, I can't go with the intention of staying long term without a green card. It would possibly be worth the risk if it was just me, but with a whole family to look after, we simply have to play it safe and play strictly by the rules. This means six weeks of total stress while we attempt to get my green card issued before our planned flight date of 6th December. We have been through the mill the last week or two trying to work out exactly what is possible and what needs to be done, apart from a zillion complicated forms, there is also a medical, taxes to be filed for Jeremy, police certificates to apply for and finally an interview at the US embassy. We have already been down to London this week to register Josie's birth and to get her US passport sorted out.. an extremely simple process in comparison to getting an immigrant visa. While we were in the city we also visited an immigration lawyer, who answered a couple of questions, but in my mind didn't earn her £300 in the 45 minute conversation we had.. she even steered me wrong on one thing and I've ended up paying for a police certificate from Germany that I don't need, since I was there for less than a year.

Anyway, we don't really know if we will get things sorted before 6th, so we could end up delaying our departure or we could go for Christmas and I could fly back in January to do my visa interview.. either way we are in limbo for a few more weeks. And since getting a visa has taken priority over everything else, so the house is still bulging with stuff to be sorted before we hand back the keys to our country cottage and move in with my mum again!

Mummy's Birthday

Today was my 37th birthday. We started the day with a landlord's inspection of our house and it seems we are getting off pretty lightly with the efforts required to get the place back up to scratch for new tenants. We shall have to paint at least the living room and pay for the usual carpet and window cleaning services, but thankfully we have been spared too much gardening! There will be an ongoing cleaning effort, which will actually get easier as our various possessions leave the house in one way or another. The Squash and a Squeeze theory will be complete when we are suddenly standing in a very spacious three bedroomed semi and wondering why the walls occasionally felt a little close. We shall no doubt still be tip-toeing over toys until the day we hand back the keys, but hopefully we are easing Dylan gently towards the last day. It is not as easy task to reason with a nearly 3-year-old about identifying which are his favourite toys and letting go some of the things he no longer wants to play with. Some small, long forgotten items are starting to disappear when he's not looking, but we want to provide some security in continuity for him and take plenty of his favourite toys along with us.

It was nice to spend my birthday just pottering around the house with the family. We had a lovely morning baking a cake and demolishing half of it for lunch before poor Jeremy succumbed to the man-flu and collapsed into the couch.

White Elephant

We finally completed the sale of our flat in Bracknell today. It could well be the longest it has ever taken to progress a property sale this simple. No upward or downward chain and yet it has taken more than three months. We would love to sue the solicitor, but its doubtful we could find a solicitor willing to sue another solicitor and really, how can we prove it took the woman a week to make each phone call? Still, its all done with finally and we can get on with the business of emigrating now, knowing we do at least have enough money to survive into the new year.

This has been a rather trying week, with Dylan being sick for a few days and so we couldn't really get out of the house until yesterday as he wasn't much up to walking far and I didn't want to share the virus with other kids at playgroups. So we've just been rattling around at home, trying to minimise TV hours (and failing miserably) whilst I attempted to get a few things sorted, list a few things on ebay and freecycle and generally continue the battle to empty the house without shipping boxes or hiring a skip (I still hope we can pack everything we want to take with us in 7 large suitcases).

We made up for cabin fever with a lovely afternoon in the city park with the natural parenting club mums and kids, always a pleasure. I will certainly miss their company when we move and will always be wondering what they are up to.. if we weren't leaving, I could see us all hanging out together for a lot more years and many of us home(un)schooling our little ones. But Sudbury Valley is ultimately a better option for us in my mind, since the kids will actually get to spend their days away from their parents and really figuring out for themselves what makes them tick. I'm still wondering if I will ever really figure that out for myself! I do though, have some inspiring ideas for hobbies I'd like to pursue when we finally get settled in the states.. if I can just procure myself a little sewing space, I would love to make a quilt.. it might take a long time and I might only ever make the one, but I'd like to try and make something big enough to fit across the family bed. And secondly to learn to play the mandolin I have literally carried around the world!

another Goddard

Our daughter, Josie Grace, joined our family on 16th April when she was born at home in the water. It's hard to believe that it is nearly six months since that day and the four of us are again booked on a plane to Boston, but this time we intend to stay! We have two months to pack up some huge suitcases - baggage allowance maxed out - and get out of dodge.

It is going to be a fascinating social experiment moving in with Jeremy's sister and family in their new home. You don't often get four adults and four kids under one roof in these nuclear family days, so I'm sure there will never be a dull moment. I can't wait for Christmas!

We can't yet picture 2011 in Massachusetts, but it will be fun carving out a new existence and we have so many friends to catch up with over there. With any luck one, or both of us will stumble across an awesome new line of work, the kids will eventually start hanging out at Sudbury Valley with their cousins and we'll be loving every change of the season.