Life is good!!!

This is sort of a visual for the next 4 months of our lives....many twists and turns and several variables....

It's Monday morning in Shanghai and I am sitting at the dining room table...which has become my office during the past month.....I can see 3 and a shadow of the fourth bridge. The construction began again at midnight of the evening that the Expo closed. Rumor has it that the dump trucks were lined up outside of the city counting the seconds to midnight so they could resume work on their buildings. Only in China could it be decreed that all construction be stopped for 5 months! The city was so quite during that time and the air was so clear. Now it is back to business as usual..... They are building two new structures in front of our building so it is now non stop pounding and drilling and exploding.

So....here is an update on the Spoffords....

Tim and I are officially moving back to America at the end of January. They called and asked what day we wanted to leave so they could book our air tickets....That makes it very official!!! Our flight is January 29th. We are both very excited about the next chapter. So...what do we have planned you ask......

Arrive in the US on the 29th of January......When we fly from here we always get a "do over day" which is very cool....I tell my parents that we can be there 10 minutes before they call us...

Tim will officially start his 3 months leave from HP in mid Feb. We negotiated this leave into our package when we extended our stay in China this past year.

We will be in Vancouver for about 3.5 weeks and then we are off to Germany to pick up a new car (we sold my car before we left so I am now car-less) and then we are driving to Scotland where we will stay for one month. I am calling this "Tim's re-education program"......I am taking him to the country so he can get away from the phone and computer for the first time in four years!!! We plan to relax and hike and probably freeze our bums off. I think this will be a great way to transition back to "real" life in America. We have several variables in our future so we are just going to roll the dice and see what happens....

When we return to America in April....Tim will still have about 4 weeks remaining of his leave and then he will begin looking for a new job within HP. He has been offered a position outside of HP so we will see what happens.....we don't know the future!

I am planning to return to graduate school and I am in the process of applying to several design schools across the US........Tim said he would follow me this time...... so....again...we don't know the future!!! It is sort of an exciting place to be right now.....

I will be spending the next 3 weeks working on my portfolio for school.....