.....Thank you for your patience. Normal service has now resumed.
Yes! We are back!
New house, new family office room, same reliable pc, same me dying to blog all the adventures of the last few days!
To sum it up, it has been exhausting.
Rain, rain, rain.
Mud, mud, mud.
New white carpet, new white porcelain tiles.
Cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning!
Byron sprung a surprise on us last Saturday morning by announcing that we were moving that day. Never mind that the removalists were booked for Tuesday. Never mind that we had no fridge or beds in the new house. Never mind that there was not a single blind or curtain on a single window. Never mind anything practical. Mr B was moving and by default that meant that we were too!
Off we went to a local DIY store and bought blackout roller blinds for the kids rooms. I spent two hours cursing them as I tried to cut the metal "easy to fit to any window size" pole that the blind was wrapped around, and recut it because I had been too timid with my cutting, and RECUT it because I still had been too timid with my cutting. During that time an adrenaline pumped Mr B drove back and forth like a maniac to the old house and transported the kids beds in a trailer single handed. By 8pm we had Rhiannon's blind up and her bed sorted. Gareth was lying in bed waiting to go to sleep while I was standing on his toy box drilling his blind in place and Sian had to make do with an old curtain pinned onto her window frame. Then I was in the car again back for the zillionth time to the old house to get the kettle and toaster and a bag of ice for the Esky that was going to be our makeshift fridge over the next three days. I came back to the new house at 10pm to find a hot bath run in our en suite and a chilled bottle of bubbly waiting to be drunk. Maybe this wasn't such a daft idea after all. It didn't take long to finish the bottle and by then I had mellowed considerably. I mightn't have been ready to admit it to Byron but it actually was quite exciting to finally be in our "real" house.
The day of the big move was on Tuesday. A day of torrential rain. Loading up the lorry at the old house went smoothly. It was when a slightly panicked Byron rang me from the door of the new house (with pale carpets and tiles) to say that the men had no drop cloths to protect our floors from their huge, muddy boots that I started to feel a bit apprehensive. The sight that greeted me as I pulled up outside nearly terrified me. I have never seen such massive, tattooed, bald bunch of ex-convicts in my life before. They were built for brawn not brains. One was called "Tink" short for Tinkerbell??? I think it was because he had been caught listening to opera music once and had never lived it down? Anyway, they worked tirelessly carrying heavy items out of the back of a precariously tilted removal truck and at times I think it was sheer luck that the items made it in in one piece! The piano was the heart stopper but it too made it safely to its new room. I was very relieved when the men announced that they were done and added up the bill. They were charging based on time and we got away with 4 hours. They charge from base to base and had allowed 30mins to return back. We handed over the wad of notes and a few extra for beer money to say thanks. Then we chatted for another few minutes as they entertained us with stories from their various (colourful) pasts! After a firm shake of hands they were off..... Except they weren't because the truck sank in the mud when it was 90% on the road. With the road completely blocked by the removal truck I was directing traffic onto the reserve next to it for the next hour and a half in the pouring rain while Byron , Tink and the other two dug and dug and dug the back of the truck out of the swamp that used to be our driveway. It was a long day and we were very relieved when they finally pulled away and we could get on with the unpacking.
It's Thursday today and the last few days have been a blur of cleaning the old rental house till it shines. I finally finished it this afternoon and will meet our landlords to give them all the spare keys tomorrow. I really feel for them because they have all this yet to come over the weekend. And they are using Tink and crew to move too! Good luck!!!
We will of course be posting photos of the new house in the coming days and weeks but right now we are surrounded by chaos, boxes, bags, paper, cardboard and bubble wrap so hang on in there until we are a bit more organised.....
