Burn1911

ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm well....... ummmmmmmmmmmmm ummmmmm hmmmmmm ummmmm sign her up to dogbook, then she can spend all day on the computer - that should keep her out of your hair!!

Burn1911

ohhhhh EXCITING!! it will be just like Christmas in your house soon!!

Hubcaps

Im horribly excited. The air-freight also has some of my handbags and shoes in it too. I've been using carrier bags as a handbag and my £5 sandals from Matalan that I've worn every day since the last week of May have about maybe a day's walking left in them.

Mummy in the foothills

AmerLisa

You have a pool? Well that's pretty cool!

AmerLisa

Yeah that might work except she's a people kind of person.....

Hubcaps

Well...there's a small square of heavily chlorinated water that you can almost touch the sides of if you stand in the middle. It's also shared between about 200 people

AmerLisa

Well any port in a storm.....

Hubcaps

I can't really knock it. There's sun loungers, tables, chairs...and the obligatory hot tub. the kids nagged and nagged to leave the pool to go in the hot tub (which I think was set to "scald" that day), they went in for 2 minutes then jumped back into the non-heated pool. Oh they screamed...

AmerLisa

Well anything to pass the long summer days.....

keaki80

Good luck Sam.
Dealing with all the bureaucracy is a nightmare. Drives my husband insane - and he's a native here! But get through all that and it is worth it. Getting here in September isn't so bad; where we are in WA, it's sometimes the warmest month of them all - and so pretty.
Have fun, enjoy the packing, the rounds of goodbye's, the last-minute-jobs!
Don't envy you that.

USIOMUS

Just my 2 cents worth...

But if you are pretty sure of what school district the kids will be in, you might want to try to have them in school on the first day. I've no idea how old your kids are, but mine were 10 and 5 when we moved and the move was hard on them in a lot of ways. (especially the older one) My son (10) made a new best friend on the first of school, because they were both new to the school that year. If he had started later, that friend might have already befriended others. We then moved them to another state and another new school in January that year and it was a LOT harder for them to settle, having arrived "mid-year". Obviously you are not talking about months, but weeks, but it is still worth giving some serious thought!

The first few weeks of the school year are "figure out" times, for the kids and the teachers...they learn their new routines and where their classes are and who teaches what (even for little ones, as there are "specials" like music and art with special teachers in different classrooms) and if the school district shuffles the classes every year (ours does) it is a chance to make new friends with other kids who haven't had necessarily been in class together before, so they wouldn't feel as "new" as they would coming in a few weeks later.

Even for stupid little things, like at our kid's elementary they produce a video of pictures from the whole school year every year at the end of the year and there are always TONS from the first few days of school as the kids find their classrooms and have lunch and etc. My little one was very sad to not be in any of the pictures because we moved in too late! And also, you really don't want to miss school picture day if you can help it! (often surprisingly early in the year) The elementary school gets a strip of pictures of every child and uses them throughout the year for a ton of projects (again, my little one was sad because she was the only child that didn't have a picture on her projects). And the middle school uses the photo for their student ID.

I think it is even more important if they are older, say middle school or high school as the first weeks teachers are much more forgiving if kids are late to class because they are lost or their locker won't open or whatever, but after a few weeks, they get tougher and it is more obvious if someone is late. Tweens and teens also like to feel like they fit in and it is hard to do that when everyone else has had time to settle and you are new and ALSO have a "strange" accent! My twelve year old still gets a bit of grief about his accent and he is losing it fast. (The 7 year old turned into an American on the plane when she was 5! )

Just my thoughts having been through the whole thing twice in the last two years...settling the kids was the most important part of the move to me and it was a lot more difficult than I had expected! We actually moved in June and it was a long boring summer, where they didn't know anyone to play with and where they got tired of hanging around the house while hubby and I did all the boring grown up stuff. It would have been easier (in retrospect) if we had moved in August and got them into school and into their routine straight away. It would have felt more "normal" to them, I think!

Also, if you don't put them in straight away, expect total strangers to ask why the kids aren't in school everywhere you go! We live in New York now and my kids go back in September, but my family is in PA and they go back in August. We try to plan a few days in PA every year in the week that PA school are back in session but NY schools aren't as we can do things without fighting crowds of school kids on summer holiday, BUT we always get asked by the counter staff at Chuck E Cheese or the ticket takers at the amusement park or the clerk at the grocery store "Oh, why aren't the kids in school, then?" I even got asked one day at the grocery store here, when I had my son with me because his school had a half day where none of the others did...I don't know if it is nosiness or just people making conversation, but we seem to get asked a lot! (Maybe they are all working moms terrified that their kids didn't have school either and they have accidently left them home alone?)

Sorry to have gotten so long winded!

Anyway....just my thoughts, take them or leave them, it is your life after all! Hope you have a safe and uneventful journey and a wonderful new life in WA!