Well, it's been a busy couple of weeks since the last update...
I turned 40!
If you're going to start getting old, why not celebrate it in a house that is far, far older than you are to make yourself feel better about it?
The amazing Claudia organised a fantastic weekend away to Towcester (pronounced the same as the machine used to make hot breakfast goods from bread), where we took over a country house with an awesome group of friends, both from my time in London and old friends from uni.
Over the last couple of years, the London gang had drifted further and further away from central London, as life (and kids!) started to impose their various demands. So two whole days where everyone could hang out together and reminisce was a fitting way to celebrate a pretty major milestone. The good food, nice beds, huge garden, hot tub and occasional beverage didn't hurt either.
All in all, I couldn't have asked for a better birthday. It was also an island of calm in an otherwise chaotic fortnight, because...
We sold our house!
For those of you who haven't got first hand knowledge of the UK's real estate and conveyancing systems, let's just say it's... an experience.
Our house was listed by the real estate agent at the end of April, and we had our first (and only, as it turned out) offer a couple of weeks later in May.
We accepted the offer at the end of May and then spent the next 4 months going through the conveyancing process with solicitors. A large part of this is down to the UK concept of "the chain". Essentially, if the person buying your house needs to sell their existing property to find the purchase, then your sale needs to be on the same day as their sale so all of the money transfers at the same time. And if their buyers are selling, they need to sell theirs on the same day too! You can see how this spirals pretty quickly.
The practical upshot of this is that even if you yourself have decent solicitors and surveyors, the whole chain moves at the level of the slowest link. And until everyone has finished their checks, surveys and negotiations, a date for completing the sale (or even signing a contract!) cannot be done.
In any case, we finally settled on a sale completion date of the 6th of October. Which, as some may have deduced, was the Friday directly after my birthday. So that "island of calm" I talked about earlier was really "a break from packing" 😉
It really was a mad couple of weeks trying to pack up the house. I guess normally when you move house, you just shove everything into boxes, take those boxes and ask if your furniture to the new house, and then unpack. But when you're moving to the other side of the world and not taking your furniture with you, then you're trying to sell or donate everything, which is a much more involved process.
Unsurprisingly, it came right down to the wire - we were packing and cleaning right up until 5pm on the 5th. But we made it out with enough time for a breather at the pub before picking the girls up from nursery. Speaking of...
Evie, Lucy and Rhi finished at nursery
This was a really sad milestone. All of the girls have been attending Kiddi Caru at Writtle College since before they could walk, and they have all loved it. Even better, the staff (and especially their key carers) all loved them. There were a lot of sad faces all around when they had to leave.
Luckily, they managed to fit in a final official photo session, with truly hilarious results. 🤣 Ask me to show you the photos sometime...
They had a bit of an extended farewell tour because...
We lived in Hertfordshire for 6 weeks
What to do when your house is sold 6 weeks before your flights to your new home depart? If you're as lucky as us, you have some amazing family friends who let us act as amateur caretakers for an empty house.
This was very much a time of mixed emotions for us - we had moved out of our home, but there were still a million and one things to organise. Leftover stuff that made it out of the old house but needed to be sold, changes of address as well as a million and one other bits of life admin.
Add that to the fact that I was still working (a lot, even for me) and Claudia was having to look after three unsettled toddlers in an unfamiliar house and city, and it all added up to a very stressful time. But it was counterbalanced by the fact that we had some very good friends with kids roughly the same age as ours living in the same city, which is something we'd never really had before.
And so we also entered a world where friends dropped by with their kids for play dates, there were brunches out on the weekend, and we just generally had a lot more support. Once I finished work at the end of October, things got a bit easier at home as well - instead of 1 parent looking after 3, we had the chance to cover for each other and have a bit of "me" time.
Of course, course quite a lot of that time was spent...
Planning a move to Newcastle
Claudia has managed to impress the folks at the Mater Calvary Hospital in Newcastle and had been offered a 12 month position, so that's where we'll be living until at least December next year.
Newcastle should be a good fit for us - my brother and his family live there, it's not super far from Sydney (where we have friends), and we loved it the last time we visited Australia. The only real downside (and it's a big one) is that it's about 10 hours drive from the rest of the family. Hopefully we can find ways to get up to Queensland on a semi-regular basis.
And of course, while we've been doing that, we've also had to get...
Ready to fly
And here we are! It was the night before the flight when I started writing this, but now it's the day of the flight. Our bags are packed (possibly over packed), we've said our goodbyes, and now we're waiting nervously for a taxi to whisk us away.
The twins are currently sleeping, and Evie is making good use of the book selection at her grandparents house for the last time in a while. I think I'm still in a kind of denial that it's actually happening - we've been planning and working towards this for so long, it seems surreal that it's actually time to go.
But it is time to go - a huge leap for the five of us into the unknown. Wish us luck!
Yours etc,
Patto
P.S. Flying out of Heathrow with three small children at 10pm may not have been the smartest move. If you're anywhere in the Greater London area and you hear a baby screaming after 8pm, it's a fairly safe bet it's one of ours.