Friday, 15 August 2008

Sea World

Shamu.

Well we had to go do at least ONE park!! Seaworld is pretty neat & all the kids enjoyed it! We went with Rusty & his girls, whose pics I'm sure will appear at some stage! Sophie sat down in the splash zone with him & his younger daughter, Robin - they got soaked!! We stayed up for this one but did go down for the dolphins later (their water is warmer!)



Mount Dora

Sipping lemonades on the rocking chairs on the main hotel's (which was built in 1883) veranda. plus the view we got from that veranda over lake Dora.

Mount Dora is a very quaint old (by US standards) town with lots of lovely shops to browse. it's about 1.5 hours drive from our house in Florida & well worth the trip! We went with Allen & his partner, Lisa (the harley guys!)

Sunday, 10 August 2008

I want one too!


Alex had to try it for size as well, of course.
In fact we have all been out on the back - except Steve!!

Harley Chick!


Here's Sophie on the back of a friend's Harley, about to go out on US19!!
she's hooked & wants one when she's older!!

Friday, 8 August 2008

UK house completion

We are taking a quick break from chilling to say we have now competed on our UK house! YEAH!! We're watching the money markets avidly for when the money comes into the account. Right now would be good but it's not there yet!!!

Monday, 4 August 2008

Chilling


Here's a pic of us all by the pool as we start to unwind!! It's sunny & warm & the water is beautiful......... just what we need!!
Anyone jealous yet?? Don't worry when we're in -24 in Calgary this winter you'll be the ones laughing!!!
Now, excuse me I just need to go for a swim! :-)

Saturday, 2 August 2008

The Mad Getaway

Well we made it by the skin of our teeth! Our day for leaving the house was Wednesday 30th as we had booked a hotel by Gatwick using up some airmiles in the process (well we couldn't sleep in an empty house could we!) Come the morning the post still hadn't brought our work Permits &, despite emailing the Embassy every day since Monday (as they had suggested) neither had any fax!! Jean at CSUK found us a telephone number for the HIgh Commission so I called & the operator agreed it was an emergency & put us through to the emergency line. We left a message & waitied for that fax. 3.15 pm still nothing!! I called again & the operator took pity on my plight, told me to hold the line then came back to me saying they would be faxed to us within the hour, which they were..PHEW!!!

That was not the end of the stress though because by the time we finished packing up the house we totalled about 65 boxes for the shippers to collect. They eventually arrived (took another phone call & a realisation that they had had some mis-communication issues) with their high top Transit, which was half full, so it was very quickly apparent that they had seriously underestimated the number of boxes we had and we started to panic (even more than we were already). It was decided that they would come back the next morning and load the boxes we had to give them the garage remote & alarm code & keep our fingers crossed they would come because, as I said before, we were staying at a hotel by the airport that night and flying to our holiday in Florida the next day! We finally finished clearing the house at about 10:30pm and jumped into the taxi for the hotel. Our wonderful neighbour took our keys & was poised to keep a check.