some good news and bad news ..

The good news is that the both the kids got into San Francisco School in the city. The bad news is we needed to make a decision and figure out some long term plans. Most of you who know us, realize that we like to avoid making any long term plans, but in this case some quick decisions had to be made. They give you a week to decide. Mari and I had an informal agreement that if the kids do get into a school that we like (sf school, live oak and friends school met that criteria) we'd head back to the US.

So we are off to the US for good in September. I'm a bit sad since we do enjoy living in NZ and have a great circle of friends. I really like our work and play schedule and the amount of time we spend with each other as a family. The less traffic / population density and close access to all the things we like doing make it a great place to live. As with everything in life, there are pros and cons with everything. Will be interesting to see how we react to life back in the US for the first few months.

This also means that if you are planning to visit us in NZ, you better do so NOW :). The NZ winter starts in may/june so the earlier the better. We plan to do a fair amount of travelling and seeing a few places down under before we head back. Some of the places we'd like to visit are queenstown, wanaka and southland in the south island, taranaki, gisborne and coromandel in the north island. We'll also try to visit australia (melbourne, tasmania) and potentially stop over in some islands (fiji, tonga, tahiti) on our return trip home.

Seems like we'll switch our travel schedule and go to places when the kids have summer vacation. I'm currently thinking it might be a good idea to spend time in a different country every summer for the next 8-10 years (assuming the kids still like hanging out with us!). Some countries we'd love to visit and stay in include South America (Argentina or Costa Rica), China and Japan.