Irvine, CA anyone?

Can anyone provide information about Irvine/Orange County?  There is a slight chance that DH may be offered a job there.  Am I right in assuming that the cost of living is pretty high? What about schooling?  Both our girls currently attend our village primary school-the 8 year old has a statement(for moderate learning difficulties), the 5 year old is quite bright. 
What about quality of medical care?  I know that so much of that depends on what type of health care that one has. 
Even though our 8 year old's syndrome is rare, there is an active association in CA that I will be getting in touch with. 
Anything else that anyone can add would be very helpful.   Thank You 

I grew up in Orange County (Laguna Beach), and went to school at UC Irvine - though that was yeeeeeeeeears ago , I still go back to Irvine sometimes - the campus as well as the city, and it is lovely.  I'm sorry I don't know specific details as to the cost of living, but my guess is it's fairly expensive, but it's a large area, still a growing area, and my impression is the school system is very good.
I have Kaiser Permanente Health Insurance, and my GP is located in Irvine, which is a really nice facility - most of them are (I go between various facilities), but I like this one the best because it's smaller, newer, has lots of parking, near shopping and the freeway, and is never crowded.
If you could live there, I think you'd be in a great place... and surrounding areas are very nice as well.
UCI has its own medical school and facility as well.

Here's something that should give you a good overview of Irvine and then there are loads of resources at the bottom of the page under external links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine,_California.

Thank you Elizabeth for your reply.  WebyJ, thanks for the link-I had already read it and was hoping for more personal experiences on living in the area.  I thought there were more people on UK-Y that were from CA, perhaps they are not from the Orange Co. area. 

I'm probably getting a bit carried away anyway, as DH doesn't even have an offer yet!  My fear is to move back to the States and be in an area similar to where we lived before (north of Houston in The Woodlands).  I really did not enjoy living in The Woodlands. 

I am from CA, but unfortunately near enough 900 miles from Irvine...remember that Great Britian is 1/2 the size of the state of California...in fact I've never even been to Irvine, CA...Irvine, Scotland yes.