I went out all day Wednesday with our relocation agent to look at houses. I think I looked at 12 or 13, so it was quite a busy day. Unfortunately I was only allocated 1 scheduled (payed) day to go out with the relocation agent. If I didn’t find anything I would be responsible for searching on my own. To say the least I was concerned I wouldn’t find anything. Instead I ended up finding 4-5 houses that I really liked. I took tons of notes and pictures of each one to show Sara. That night we spent about 3 hours looking at all the pictures and going over my notes. We narrowed it down to our top 2 and put an offer in the next morning. Fortunately in London even rental properties are negotiable so we were able to get it down considerably from its listing price.

Our final contract is conditional on a second viewing after the current tenants have vacated. That way we can do another walk though to make sure we didn’t miss anything that was “hidden” by their junk. Pending that viewing we can move in Sept 8th.

If you click here it will take you to pictures of the house.

Well the move is becoming official. This morning at 4:30 am Jeromy left for the airport. He packed all of his clothes and things so his closet and dresser are completely empty. Such a strange feeling! We finally got all the passports corrected and the visa papers submitted. He comes back on the 20th, and then he and I will have to make a 2 day trip to Chicago to do biometrics and go to the British consulate. During the 2 weeks he’s gone I’ll be packing and getting things ready on this end. We had a great time last weekend in Lincoln for Jeromy’s brother, Tim and Katie’s wedding. It was nice to see all the family and our friends from Trinity. We’ve posted pictures from the wedding here.

Blake received his passport Friday but unfortunately they mixed up the photo and name. Blake’s passport has Nolan’s picture and vise verse. Monday I plan on calling the passport office to determine how to correct this. I am sure this will delay their passports at least 2 more weeks. This in turn will delay my completion of my work visa, which i was hoping to complete before I left on Aug 6th.

I also sold the Neon Saturday afternoon. This is a huge relief, but will require Sara taking me to work for the next week and a half. I have Thursday and Friday off this week and leave next Wednesday so I only have 5 days of actual work remaining, so it was perfect timing.

Nolan has taught Blake on of his first words. When you say, “on your marks, get set”, Blake will finish it by saying “go”.

He continues to work on the word “down” as he hears that quite often as he attempts to climb all the stairs.

We had a really special “last” 4th of July before we become Brits for 2 years! Troy and Beth Ashby hosted a going away party for us and we spent the day playing games, eating fantastic BBQ (courtesy of Troy), and enjoying the great friends God has blessed us with in the 6 years we’ve lived here in Kansas City. After dark we moved the party indoors where we rocked out on the karaoke machine until midnight! Check out pics here.

Our agent came by today to do her walk through and everything passed. She officially put the sign in our yard and the listing goes up tomorrow morning. Now we just pray that we get some great traffic and it sells in a timely manor. See our listing here

I got my work papers submitted that i will need to file for my work visa. The processing takes about 4-5 weeks to get the papers back and at that point we start working on visa forms. That process will involve Sara and I going to Chicago or New York to the British Consulate to complete the bio-metrics portion of the visa. We will likely have to do this step when I return around Aug 20th. We will work out the details as the day closer approaches.

I had the rare opportunity to visit the NYSE trading floor. Though the practice of physical traders and specialists executing trades is a dying practice it was still very interesting to see it in person.

I spent much of the week of my birthday in New York for a business trip. I was attending a SIFMA traders conference from Tuesday - Thursday. Check out some pictures of my trip in our photo album.

Today we worked out the final details of the salary and compensation package. Right now what is being discussed is my official start date as a Europe employee. Tentatively it looks as if I will make that transition sometime in July while working out of the US office. My official move will be around the first week of August after Tim and Katie’s wedding. Sara and the boys will need to be here at least through August 20th to complete Blake’s 1 year checkup. After that they will follow within a week.