Easter America

More weird things about California - 1)you can buy maple syrup flavoured sausages, easy to buy by mistake and as rank as they sound!
2)California state law requires that all children in preschool up to the age of 6 should nap from the hours of 1-3 in the afternoon - therefore Phia will never go to preschool in the afternoon as we will be paying for her to stare at the wall for 2 hours whilst someone tries to force her to go to sleep, something she has not done in the afternoon since 18 months of age!

Its been another weird week.  Easter sunday started pretty crappily this morning as we had a few skype conversations with you all and everyone looked happy in the sunshine with their chocolate easter eggs.  Here it was raining and not a chocolate easter egg in sight (they don't do them over here, just as well really as the chocolate is horrid!).  All we had to look forward to was dragging the kids round car shops to try and find ourselves a car.  (Easter sunday is not observed around here at all and all the shops are open until around 8, usual practice for all sundays)  However, after a trip to a pizza place (where everyone else's kids were so badly behaved it made me yearn for Whale of a Time!) the car thing was sorted out quite quickly.  We've decided to lease a new car and much to Phia's delight it's red!  Then the sunshine came out in full force and we all went to a funfair for little kids, little gullivers world, and we've all had a lovely day.
The past week itself has been ok.  Steve started work and is enjoying it so far (which is a bloody good job really!).  He's already busy with plenty of stuff to do and is excited about the prospect of getting his teeth into it.  The kids and I also had a busy week.  We went egg painting with a group of American women, all of who are not from this part of America, so everyone was new in a way.  We also met another English person, yay!, and were invited to hers to play (she has 2 boys, 4 and 3).  We also did the library, Spanish class, park visits, Walmart!  So we have found our feet a little bit, hopefully as the weeks go by it will get easier.
This Saturday we went on the traditional American easter egg hunt which involved hundreds of children spilling into a field scooping up little plastic eggs full of candy, easter really is all about the candy out here!, and piling as many as possible into their baskets.  Phia was great, she got her elbows out and went for it!  I was quite scared as couldn't see her in the sea of children and parents weren't allowed in with the 4 year olds so I found it quite uncomfortable.  T didn't really get it, Ste was at least allowed in with him, but he was happy with just the one egg!  Not surprisingly neither of them liked the candy inside!
On Saturday night we were invited to a bbq at the house of one of Steve's new colleagues.  Of course we had to take the kids and they don't have any so we were a bit worried about how it would all turn out.  They live up in the hills overlooking the bay (we really do live in such a beautiful area, will be great when we actually have the time to get out and explore) and their house is enormous!  Even with the kids in tow and the fact they had 2 enormous dogs (that scared Phia a lot) we had a really lovely evening.  It helped that they are British, although have been here for 14 years, our children were very well behaved until 9.30pm and they gave us a bag of tetley teabags to take home (albeit the America version!)
Next week its preschool finding week as really need to get Phia sorted with something to do.  She's been a bit all over the place and has been finding it difficult to sleep.  Might be something to do with its so hot at night here (god only knows what august will be like, the a/c will so be needed!) but I think its lack of routine and normality so we desperately need to find her some!
Missing home lots especially due to things we're missing, Easter, birthday parties, babies being born! etc etc but determined we will have a good time in the Bay for the time we are here.  Lets see what this week brings.....

Week one - tick!

3 different things about California (well there are loads but the main ones we've noted this week!) - although its a wine region they don't have screw top wine bottles, you can't buy bath sponges and you also can't buy baby changing mats.

It all started well a week last Thursday.  The kids were absolute stars on the plane.  Sophia sat quietly and made clothes peg dolls, drew pictures and watched the same episode of Little Einsteins about 100 times!  Tommy found it a bit harder to sit still and didn't like wearing the headphones for the tele but was in general very well behaved too.

However its been a hard first week.  Ste and I have visited IKEA about a million times but we still have a very empty house with only beds, a dining room table and chairs and a sofa bed in it.  We have fortunately received our air freight so at least have some of the kids toys, some clothes and a few pans (we lived for about 4 days with just one pan, 3 cups and some plates!).  We've all been quite jetlagged but Tommy has definitely been the worst and we've only had one night so far were he hasn't joined us in bed in the early hours!  Hopefully though the worst is over and we're all settling down to our new time zone.

Mum came over with us for the first bit and was great as she looked after the kids whilst we tried to get things organised.  The park at the end of the road is fab and the kids have already spent many happy hours with granny playing in the sandpit.  Ste and I meanwhile have seen the inside of IKEA, supermarkets, Walmart, the bank, the internet shop etc etc.  Still hoping its all about done now.

The real disappointment so far has been the Rivermark area where we are renting our house.  Far from be like Cambourne it is a pretty much non English speaking community where I really cant see us fitting in all that well.  However I suppose we only have to live here and can go elsewhere for things we do.  Still its a disappointment non the less.

Ste starts work on Monday (happy birthday to me!) and is feeling pretty nervous about it as am I but I feel the quicker we get into real life the better.  I have the grand plan of the park and then Santa Clara library to pass the day, providing I can find my way in the car!  We went to San Francisco zoo yesterday and I drove back which was fine but I did have Ste sitting next to me telling we where to go - def need a sat nav!

Food has been a real nightmare since we got here in that the kids will eat practically nothing.  They hate the bread and since they both live on cheese sandwiches this is going to be a bit of a problem!  The highlight of my week was finding baked beans and robinsons orange squash is a tiny dusty corner of Safeways.  They may have been hideously expensive (the squash was $6, over 4 quid!) but I could have cried and happily bought them and skipped out the shop - small things!

We're all feeling a bit home sick, probably me the most, followed by Sophia.  She keeps saying things like 'I can't go to my best friend's houses can 1?' very matter of factly but it makes me feel sad!  She really needs to make some new friends so we've got to get out there and start doing stuff.  Have lined her up a ballet class for next week as a start.

The weather is lovely although deceiving, we've all managed to burn ourselves a bit as even when it doesn't feel burning hot it obviously is.  Need to make suncream part of the daily routine.  Tommy in particular is not keen on this.  When you approach him with a suncream bottle he runs away screaming 'no burn me, no burn me!'

Anyway best go and sort the kids tea out (they are out exploring with daddy!)

Bye for now xx