Moved

Well, we moved.

We sold our house to just the nicest and easiest buyers ever. The last few days were beyond frantic and the actual physical move wasn’t easy. I felt like I needed to cry inconsolably for about a week. Thankfully that passed…!

We have moved, temporarily, to my parents home, while we let things settle a little and calm down, before continuing on on our journey (I don’t want to say “final resting place” as it sounds like we are all about to die!!, but yes, hopefully, the final leg of our moving-home-journey).

Initially I was adamant we wouldn’t stay here; I felt it would be too much for my parents (gentle souls that they are) and our noise, madness, messiness, not to mention an extra eight people stomping around their home, would send them to the brink of despair. But… two weeks in and, well, WE love living here!! And they haven’t begged us to leave, nor have they retreated to the shed weeping and wailing incoherently ((yet)) so that’s all positive. I am slowly moving through my mother’s cupboards, obsessively folding things into neat squares and rectangles and colour coordinating the rigid piles of folded tea towels. It’s great.(Ginger and Anna planning an attack on the flowerpots… and later on lining up the Babas to begin the first wave of the Kiss-The-Babas-Assault on my unsuspecting, hiding-in-terror parents)

The small ones, despite being completely bonkers the first week and not sleeping at all, are settling down at last; although they are watching waaaay to much television (the novelty!!) and Anna is really dementing my parents shoving one of her seven “babas” in their face every few minutes to kiss them and James has been found at the top of the stairs with a beanbag contemplating sliding down on it… But, apart from that, they are not too mad.

The older ones have started classes and joined youth clubs and generally having a very full and sociable life. There are loads of Home Education meet-ups over here, all within a half hour or so of us, and that is a wonderful bonus. The move has not changed Anna’s dislike of being in the car, and driving anywhere is a royal pain most of the time; so the shorter the distance, the better!

The best thing though, about being here, is that most of my family are around, living within minutes of us. I see most of them every day, and see my nieces and nephew a few times a week (being family, I am allowed to squidge and smooch them as I do my own. That’s the rule of being an aunt). I feel really blessed.It has been hard. I said more than once (usually at 5am when removing an hysterical baby from the bedroom) “WHAT HAVE I DONE? Am I insane?!” (Insert several expletives in there for good measure) I spent a week feeling a bit traumatised, very displaced, hugely ungrounded (and constantly in my mind was the realisation that if I felt so awful like this, what in god’s name must all the thousands of refugees flooding across Europe must be experiencing. It was very sobering and really put things in scale)

But, we have moved. It is getting better, easier. I am painting (sanity!) and have incredibly exciting news to share with you shortly (squeeee!) (Actually, two bits of incredibly exciting news! Double squeee!)

Things are good. And getting better. Whew.