Heartbeat

Whatever happened to Nick Berry? He had a fantastic voice, and could act the pants of a statue. But I digress. Yesterday we went to the Dr’s and got to hear the heart beat of our next child. It was amazing even though we had gone through it with Ellie it is still one of the greatest sounds I have ever heard. Everything seems to be progressing nicely, we do have a load more tests to go as they want to make sure that this baby doesn’t have the same problems as Ellie did, but we are so happy that everything is going ok at the moment.

What with the new house I haven’t been able to write much, and also Facebook seems to be taking over my life. There is a game on their called Attack which is basically Risk – and I have a problem with it – I’m bloody addicted. I always liked Risk as a kid (oh and as an adult) it was always a good few hours of banter and mind games, and as I grew up alcohol got in the mix. The one down side is that it can take hours to play. Luckily I have an understanding wife who lets me play ONE game a night, but I think I may have to go cold turkey.

Apart from that all is well. We are slowly unpacking boxes and should have everything emptied by 2008. Hopefully. We took the girls trick or treating in Fairytale Town – pictures to follow, but Emma was a pirate, Ellie was the Sugar Plum Fairy, and I was grump man/ I was by far the most convincing.

Cycle of Life

We announced our pregnancy to our families this weekend. We are now 12 weeks gone. Jen's sister becky is also expecting her 2nd child and is about 6 weeks gone. Our friends Jason & Amy are also expecting and are around 14 weeks along. So all very exciting.

However, our happiness was short libved as Jen's grandfather died on Sunday. He was in a lot of pain towards the end so we were thankful it was quick. It just makes you think about life and all that.....

Sorry there are no jokes in this. Next time eh?

Daddy Cool

Went to the Doc's today. Jen is 12 weeks pregnant - we are both very excited. Even more exciting is that my parents are in town so we get to tell them tonight face to face. I am sure they will be happy. We are!

I may have to have an op after this baby as Jen and I seem to be very fertile.

Futurama

Shows how much I know. England beating Australia, and France beating New Zealand, I don't think anyone would have predicted that! Well my Mother claims she did (although noone heard her) but then again she predicted that I would never get married or have kids - so she isn't exactly Nostradamus.

Nothing much going on in my life. We managed to move into our new house this weekend withough anything untoward happening to me. I am now a proud homeowner. Pictures to be posted here once everything is put away - so about 12 years time.

Ozfest

Work is going well. Nothing much to report there. I am busy in my new role but it is similar to the one I was doing at PwC so find it as easy as falling off a log (which is a strange expression to me). I went to a careers fair last week, and although I have done hundreds in the UK it is different here. In the UK I was one of a team and we had a fantastic booth all set up for us along with some nifty give-aways. Here because we are a non-profit organisation, we don’t have much to give away (I ended up taking some sweets – the irony a HealthCare company giving out sugary treats) and no backdrop but a tablecloth with our company’s name stenciled in.

Not surprisingly there wasn’t much interest. Any interest was focused on my accent and again I was asked if I was Australian on more than one occasion. No one ever guessed English (although someone did ask if I was French and I told them Oui). I don’t understand how my accent can be confused with Australian’s but I suppose most of these people only know Aussie accents from films, and probably haven’t met an Australian.

Which leads nicely into the rugby. I have a couple of friends over in Australia at the moment, and they are all looking forward to Saturday’s game but with a bit or trepidation. It seems that the 2003 finalists have both declined and it will be a battle of who has declined the least with Australia seemingly having the edge. The one good thing about living in California is that no-one has a clue that the rugby is going on, so come next Monday if Scotland & England have both been humbled I will be ok.

Our house is a very very very nice house

On to the house. On Labor (sic) Day we went to look at some new homes that were being built near us. Jen had been the week before and really liked them, and as it was a bank holiday we decided to while away our free time by doing grown up things (how I miss the days when I could lie in bed all day but fatherhood does not allow for that).

We went to look at Beazer’s show homes and noticed that they had $40,000 knocked off the asking price of a couple of homes. We asked the guy about it and it turned out that their financial year ends at the end of September. We got talking and one thing led to another – suddenly they were giving us other incentives with the one that swung us being that they would pay us out of our lease where we are renting at the moment.

As I am a first time buyer there were other incentives for me – so after seeing the houses on 3rd September I was speaking to the mortgage guy on 14th September. They then started the process. I was approved very quickly and I had submitted all the documents that were needed to them but 20th September. All we had to do was wait, and this is where things went a bit mad. We were due to complete the house on Thursday 27th September. I got a call on Wednesday 26th to ask for some more documentation. I supplied this. Then the next day at 11am the mortgage company decided they needed to have some evidence that I worked for PwC in London – well with the time difference and everything that was not an easy ask. But I managed to find some old documents that were satisfactory. Now they knew from the beginning that I hadn’t been in the US for very long, and they knew that I had worked at PwC in the UK from the very beginning – so why wait until the day we are supposed to complete to ask for all this info?

We completed last Friday and I now am the proud owner of a huge amount of debt. Oh and a 3 bedroom house.