Living In America ..You say Goodbye, I say Hello, ...

[kickassangel]

New Thread.

Hi everyone!! I have lived in Baltimore (East Coast) for ten years now. Would love to get to know you all. I have two daughters 6 and 8. Anyone else in the DC area?

EmmaK
www.mommyhasaheadache.blogspot.com

HELLO!!!!!!!

I've been on mumsnet for a number of years and just moved to Seattle on Tuesday! We're in a hotel at the moment get into our new home today all being well. Look forward to getting to know you all!!!

hi

this is a fairly quiet & sedate corner of mn, where we mainly talk about food.

amazed that you are moving into a house so quickly, elsa. we spent 6 weeks in a one bed hotel apartment before getting into our house. we've been here just over a year, & it's starting to feel a bit like home - partly cos we're getting round to decorating the house & it feels more like 'us' now.

isn't seattle really cold? when you watch US TV you just don't realise how COLD it can be when they show those shots of snow etc.
-12oC here today.

Finally, something on this thread I can comment on! We have a mini labradoodle. She is 24lbs and non-shedding and came from Wisconsin. She is totally adorable and loves everyone - just like a big doodle but smaller! I can definitely recommend the breed and we are thinking of buying another.....in a different colour!

is a doodle a poodle?

So there are minis? That sounds good! Ours would be mainly an indoor dog.

I am not sure of the proper definition of doodle but I think it is any dog bred with a poodle. In our neighbourhood we have a sheepadoodle, labradoodle, golden doodle and a maltipoo. I think there are many more variations but the general idea is a low/no shedding dog with a good temperament.
Here is our breeder Burr Oaks - if you scroll down you will see what they look like.

Gorgeous!

they do look cute, but i just couldn't cope with the constant cleaning - we're all mildly allergic, so i'd have to vacuum every day!

may get dd a furby instead

I'm with you kickass - nice idea but too much cleaning for me.

I need advice please wise MNers. We have found out we are here in the Midwest for another 2 years. We are happy about that (especially the kids who LOVE it here) but we have just also found out we need to move out of our house as the owner wants it back.

We have a realtor looking for a rental for us as they are pretty much non-existant here so we are relying on someone with a house which won't sell renting to us for a couple of years.

The shortage of houses means it pretty much inevitable that DD will have to move schools as there is nothing even for sale really in this school area. If we move say Feb would you move her to a new school right away (so she could get the bus, meet neighbour kids etc) or stick at the old school until the end of the year??

I feel terrible for her as she's at her 3rd achool already (by age 5) so it is a bummer.

She makes friends pretty quick but we are bracing ourselves for some upset and I wonder if we should just get it all over with in one go. I don't want her spending months getting anxious about a school move if it would be better to just bite the bullet. WWYD?

Thanks!

Hmm, several things come to mind. Moving her in February would help make friends for the summer. We moved after school was finished in May and ds1 had a rather lonely summer until school started.

Another idea for housing - move into an apartment and build a house in the area you want? In two years the market should be much better and you could probably get a good deal with a contractor atm.

Thanks jabberwocky thats a good point about the summer.

There are lots of places for sale but we are only here for 2 years and if the job went for any reason we'd be shipped back to the UK straightaway. We just can't risk owning a house in a country we have no right to live in! A real shame though as there are some amazing houses for sale for relatively little.

We have found a huge place but it is over budget. If there's nothing else we'll have to convince the company to rent it for us! They are contractually obliged to house us so we may end up in a mansion!

We have bought a house here without having a green card yet. I appreciate how risky it is, but we thought it's the kind of country that appreciates that sort of thing. If you're only here for a couple more years it's probably not worth it though. If you're considering staying permanently though... Would you have to move to a completely different area, or close enough so that dd can still meet her friends outside of school?

We have a place to look at tomorrow! It is not in the same school area but it is close to a new school which opens next year. We figure that if EVERYONE is new that will help!

We were seriously tempted to buy tadjenny but we still have our house in UK (along with big fat mortgage). Let's hope this place is nice since it seems to be the only one!

We are thinking about a green card but decided not to for now.

Good luck with that Bunkups! We had to sell our house in the UK as it needed too much work to be able to rent it out. Buying with the proceeds seemed a better investment than saving over here!

Bunkups, what a difficult decision.

Hi Superbunny! Looks like the decision will be made for us as there is only 1 house available that we like! I can keep DD at the same school for the rest of this year and then a brand new school opens down the road next year.

How are you and DS doing? Has it been hard to settle back in to life in the UK?

bunkups - what has influenced your decision re the green card? i ask cos we're considering this atm.

it can take a few years to get the green card, but if you have an application in, then the visa can be extended (if it's the right kind), so we're really not sure - dh hates his job, but loves every other part of living here.

life here is fantastic, but i get horribly homesick & can't imagine staying here forever, so we are really torn.

Kickass we are just the same! Dh at least likes the job though! Where we live is pretty sleepy and deviod of culture so that is a factor. 2 years feels fine but any longer is not very attractive.

The change in status would also make us much worse off as Dh would no longer be an all-expenses-paid secondee but just an employee.

At the moment the company pays for housing, utilities, 2 flights home a year plus all our repatriation costs at the end of the secondment. If we had a green card we would be paying all that.

I also miss family like mad and although I can easily get my head aaround 2 more years, being here premanently is a completely different proposition!

In a year we may completely rethink and get the green card then. It should take about a year or so on the visa we are on I think but a colleague of DH's just got his after 4 months!! Our circumstances are similar so that makes me think it should be relatively straightforward if we did decide to go for it.

Tis not an easy decision. The kids get upset at the thought of going back but I'm sure they would cope.

We have applied for the green card just to get more security really, especially as the company is paying for it. We have not even had a discussion about whether we want to stay here permanently yet and I too miss my family and friends like mad. There is still an awful lot we want to see and do over here, so I would say at least 3 more summers. By then dd would have started school so the decision to move back would be much harder. You are right Bunkups and Kickassangel, the decision is really hard!

bunkups - it may be worth having a phone chat with a solicitor - i have spent hours on the phone, without a single charge. the process for a green card is many & varied. some types of application aren't even being accepted atm, and could then take another 3-4 years after that! we're on H visas, but it sounds like you're on J ones, so very different situation.

i sort of feel that a green card would give us the option of staying longer, without forcing us to. if we don't apply, then we are forced to leave, though. also, once dh gets a certain way through the process, i could get a work authorisation card, whereas atm, i cannot work & am getting a bit bored. keep myself busy with the house (about to paint the laundry room & learn how to make a bench!) but once that's sorted, i'd like to have a job, even if FT teaching doesn't appeal right now.

dh was losing his job in the UK, so i keep telling myself that we'd have had to move anyway - which could have put us (timewise) nearly as far from family as we are now. tis 12 hours from our house to my parents from here, so not too bad.

oh, and just realised.

after all my wittering on here about dd, had another paed. appt. today - they've analysed all the scores from us & teachers about her behaviour & think she's 80-90% likely to be ADHD. So, we think a med trial is about to take place. dh & I have a week or so to read things & then decide.

feeling a bit odd about it, part of me still can't believe it - after all, she seems totally 'normal' to me, but then, i HATE when she's in trouble at school & just want her to be happy, so if medicine helps ....

hi everyone, happy new year!

angel, we are in the same boat re ds1 - he's undergoing referrals for poss adhd/ asd. i'm a bit torn about it too, we have dd2 who has cerebral palsy and i'm not sure i need another sn tag to complicate immigration further lol. doc wants to do a ritalin/ similar trial, but i'm not sure.

he's never in trouble at school, they just find it impossible to get him to actually do anything... like i do at home. he's more ad i think, but stubborn enough to add odd into the mix as long as you don't want traditional 'behavioural' problems, which he doesn't exhibit at all... to complicate matters, he's scary bright, but so rarely does any work...

urgh, anyway, thought i'd say hello!

we have two labradors that shed like crazy. i thought labradoodles weren't supposed to shed that much? mine get frog-marched to petsmart to get the fur-minator treatment. after two days we still wade through fluff. i'm not exactly queen of the housework lol, but these two create way more dirt than the 3 dcs!

Good luck with dcs and what you decide angel and madwoman.

thank you