A toast to 2011

I can't believe all that has happened in 2011, not least the last few weeks since moving to California. It feels like a bit of a dream really. In fact, the beginning of a dream, is what I called my first post on my new blog about our US adventures.

Here is is reproduced for you (originally posted 17 November):

It was October last year when we made the decision to try to move to the USA. We’d both long harboured the dream to live abroad and the time felt right to go for it. And the time also felt completely right to start our family. I should probably mention the setting for these life-changing decisions: the restaurant in Glasswells (a furniture store in Ipswich). What a place to set in motion a complete change in our lives!

So we started telling people our decision – the moving to the US one that is, we kept the baby-making to ourselves – and we were met with pretty positive reactions but I guess they felt like us. It wouldn’t seem real until it actually happened. Well in August we were thrilled to discover that both of our hopes had come true. On an ordinary summer Friday, Ben found out that, after 11 interviews, he’d been successful in securing a job based in San Jose near San Francisco in California. So we went out for a fabulous celebratory meal at our favourite restaurant – accompanied by a glass of bubbly of course. And that was my last alcoholic drink as three days later, having gone home from work early feeling sick, I got those magic two pink lines on a home pregnancy test.

We had a couple of weeks for things to sink in before flying to San Jose to meet Ben’s new boss and have a good look around the area. We also had to tell his boss that I was 6 weeks pregnant and that we’d have to move fairly swiftly so we could be out in California by December! He was the first person we’d told about the baby. Things were slowly beginning to feel real.

And now here we are. As I write these words, out of the corner of my eye, I can see the photo from today’s 20 week scan. At the top of my screen I have a tab open where I’d been looking at Virgin flights. I’m arranging shipping, we have a tenant for our house and I have piles of clothes on the bedroom floor after sorting through my very cluttered wardrobe. And if I think too much about the fact that in just three weeks we’ll be saying goodbye to all our friends and families the tears start to form. I don’t know about back in August but I tell you something, it’s feeling pretty damn real now.

You can keep up with our ups and downs, fun and frustrations over on Letters Home and I'll try to post stuff here too.


In the meantime, let's raise a toast to 2011 and welcome 2012 with open arms. It's going to be an adventure!