G'Day from LA

Those of you who have been reading our blog for awhile may have noticed that I've changed the name from "What's Up Down Under" to "G'Day from LA" - it only seems appropriate to have a new name that represented reality!

This is just a lot of words right now - I'll try and add some pictures later.

Well, we have made it to Los Angeles. We've only been her 5 days, but we already accomplished a great deal:
- We saw a house Wed, put an offer in Thu, got a counter-offer Fri and accepted it Sat - so we've got a house! We move in on July 1. It's in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood, halfway up a mountain. Once we're settled I put some photos online.
- We have two car dealers looking into car quotes for us (Rich is handling these negotiations) and we're hoping to have our cars ordered by the end of this week.
- Bank Accounts have been opened and our first chequebook (or make that "checkbook") has been ordered - though we're keeping our money in Australia right now because of the dollar value!
- I've got my mobile phone, wait, cell phone all sorted so we are once again contactable anywhere we go.
- Rich has spent two half-days at work, he starts fulltime tomorrow, and everyone he works with are really nice
- I've joined the gym and will do my first yoga class this week whilst the kids go to the Kid's Club. Sydney desperately needs some kiddy interaction, so hopefully this will start doing the trick
- We spent Saturday up in Thousand Oaks with my grandparents which was great, and we'll be visiting with them a lot.

Things that haven't been sorted:
- We're all still suffering a bit from jetlag - more that Sydney is suffering, which means Mommy and Daddy suffer with her. John is all sorted and even fed only one time last night.
- We are heading out soon to do a big grocery shop and start cooking our own meals at our apartment (we've been eating out since we got here).
- I still haven't met Jennifer Garner (okay, so I probably never will, but a girl can dream, right?)

Sydney has done remarkably well with the move so far. As long as her pacifiers, monkey and blanket are with her, she seems okay to sleep in just about any bed. In fact, one of the pacifiers (or nigh-nigh, as she calls it) went flat in Japan, so we clipped it off the Paci-Finder and she threw it away. Then the next one (the last one on that Paci-Finder) went flat the first day in LA, so we clipped it off and she threw it away. I then handed her the 'empty' cloth back and she walked over to the cupboard, opened it up and threw it in the trash saying "I don't need that one now". Hmm... So Mommy is going to "help" the remaining two nigh-nighs flatten over the next few weeks. Unfortunately, John is now re-addicted to his, so I've got to work on getting him off of it as well!

We are in temporary accommodation - a three bedroom apartment in the heart of Santa Monica just across from the building Rich works in (so he can currently walk to work). It's been furnished with rental furniture and our air freight is most likely going to be delivered at the end of this week. It's actually much more spacious, and clean, than we thought it was going to be. Unfortunately it's more than 4kms from 3rd Street Promonade, so I can't walk there to shop - though perhaps that's not such a bad thing!

Today we walked over to the park on 25th street so Sydney could have a play and we could get some fresh air and exercise. Of course she fell asleep in the pram on the way, so spent the first 30 minutes sleeping. We got salads for lunch - oh, so California - and enjoyed the sunshine. John played with the grass. I'm waiting right now for Rich and Sydney to come back from picking up some flowers at the florist that were sent to Rich (we don't know from whom, was it you?) and then we're going grocery shopping as well as printer & wireless modem shopping.

It was kind of funny, I was pushing the kids earlier to get going so we could leave, and then realised "wait - we don't need to get to the shops by 5pm, they are open later than that here. And it's Sunday and they are still open." Gotta love the consumer capital of the world!

Well, I better get the backpack repacked to go out again - it's just not like the old days where you grab your wallet, keys and go!