Freedom

Today is the day we'll finally complete on the sale of our flat in sunny South London.

I feel sick, excited, nervous and a little bit nostalgic.

Despite growing to dislike our compact and bijou residence, many happy times were had there.

Both boys took their first steps in the living room. The kitchen, although tiny, was the heart of our flat and saw many jam making, cake baking and toddler fairy cake decorating sessions.

The garden had a mind of its own and resisted all of my attempts to encourage hydrangeas to grow. I'm sure next door sabotaged them to maintain her position as hydrangea queen.

But later today, it will officially be part of our history. We'll no longer have a mortgage and all property ties with lovely London Town will be severed.

Instead, we're loving the light and happy dust motes dancing around in our sun infused new house in Scotland (sun does not necessarily mean warmth, so don't be too envious!).

Here's a sneaky peak of some of my favourite views so far:

Bird watching

Sunshine

At last! A place of it's own

View out the front

Just for old times sake...

Pinch me

Gosh, where to start...

I had this great series of posts planned covering our epic move to Scotland, but...I just can't seem to make the words flow.

Possibly because we STILL haven't completed on our flat down south. We finally exchanged contracts on Friday, but it's another 2 weeks until we complete.

So until then, I think we'll still feel like this is all a holiday. A brief glimpse of what life could be like. It's just all too dream-like at the moment to be our new reality.

The house is everything we hoped for. Right on the very edge of town with nothing at all in front of us except fields and forest and pheasants and deer.

Everyone has their own bedroom, we have more bathrooms than we know what to do with and the kitchen...I'm sure I achieve my 10,000 steps a day just preparing dinner. It's huge! Now, please keep in mind that we've just moved from a shoebox 2 bedroom flat. So anything is going to seem huge compared to that. But seriously, it's huge! I can go to the loo (any loo) and by the time the kids have found me, it's too late to interrupt me. Bliss.

Have we unpacked properly yet? er no. There's been too many impromptu trips to the beach to concentrate on unpacking to be honest. And we're still recovering from 3 weeks with the in-laws.

But is it our dream life? Yes and no.

The 2 day a week freelance contract that I was verbally promised didn't materialise in the end, so Husband has thrown his hat in the ring and is freelancing too. Trouble is, he's far better at making contacts and securing work than me and is working crazy hours at the moment. So I need to up my game and get more work coming in so he can ease off a bit.

But the rest of it is pretty much how we dreamt it (so far). The boys spend hardly any time in the house. If we're not at the beach or walking in the woods, they're out playing in the street. There's no traffic on our road, so the boys can safely scoot up and down without worrying about cars. They've met the children from 3 other houses in the street so far and spent an hour this morning playing football with them in the street and an hour this afternoon pestering the landscape gardeners building the new play park for a completion date.

TV consumption has drastically been reduced while fresh air consumption has rocketed. There have been a few tears, a few teething problems and the odd tantrum. But I'm sure we'll get used to this new life soon. I'll stop the tantrums just as soon as I get blinds sorted for the lounge, promise.

Exploring. Never enough exploring. 

Hello from Scotland!

We arrived safely. Our furniture arrived safely. We're finally in our new home!

While we finish unpacking boxes (or not) and wait for our internet to be connected, you can read a guest post I wrote for the lovely @MerrilyMe over at her blog Patch of Puddles. Merry is celebrating 10 years of blogging and is hosting all sorts of wonderful blog posts from lots of wonderful people. I'm honoured that she's included one from me.

Pop over and have a read and explore and I'll be posting an update of our move to Scotland soon.

Until then...better get on with unpacking those boxes!

Goodbye dear London

You gave me a career, our first home together.

You made me cry.

And laugh.

You helped me grow up.

You shocked and surprised me.

You opened my eyes and my mind.

I gave you 14 years and two boys (but I'm taking them with me).

I gave you my naivety.

And maybe a little bit of my faith in humanity.

There's so much of you I haven't explored (but you'll keep).

There's so much we've shared.

Oh London town. It's been a blast.

But it's time to go home.

Jumping for joy

You cannot always wait for the perfect time. Sometimes you must dare to jump.
— Epic Women (@Epic_Women) March 28, 2013

On Thursday we jumped. Fed-up of waiting for solicitors and paperwork, we linked hands and jumped feet first into Operation Relocation by booking our removal van...for this Friday! *scream*

We signed off of the new house just after lunchtime on Thursday and decided we just couldn't wait any longer. We need to start making our new house our home, even though our London flat still isn't officially sold. If we're paying for 2 houses, we may as well be living in the one we've dreamt about for the past 2 years!

So there you have it. We've finally taken the first steps on the last lap of our journey back to Scotland. A 600 mile drive lies ahead of us and we're already exhausted. The husband is a one man packing army, he's a man possessed. If you stand still for long enough you're likely to find yourself inside a carefully labelled cardboard box, along with anything else that isn't nailed down.

Meanwhile, the 6yo can't decide whether to be sad to leave his friends or excited about finally having an 'upstairs'. Turns out, his definition of a 'posh' house is one that has an upstairs and having been denied an upstairs his whole life, this is what he most excited about. Typical.

The 2yo is mostly confused. He can't understand why his usually tidy daddy, who normally shares his love of 'a place for everything and everything in it's place' is suddenly disrupting the order of his world. We've had to repack a couple of boxes while he's safely asleep as the tantrum that ensued when we dared to place any of his belongings in a box were of epic proportions.

We also have a 7th birthday to contend with before we move, but the birthday boy in question has thankfully decided that this year, he will be like the Queen and have a real birthday and an official birthday. The real birthday will take place on Thursday, while the official birthday will be conducted in Scotland. He's already been warned that this plan does not entitle him to another round of presents. Nice try sunshine.

So we're now counting the sleeps, watching the boxes pile up as our cupboards empty and hoping for dry, pleasant driving conditions next weekend.

Yikes.

The view from our front window...I can almost smell the pine trees from here!

For the love of mince and tatties

Christ on a bike. This moving to Scotland malarky is proving to be a serious test of my mettle.

I'm now in my 5th week of being freelance. My 3rd as a full time, permanently at home, sellout tickets to every toilet stop mum.

And we're still in London.

When we first hatched this plan to move home to our beloved Caledonia, we know it wouldn't be easy. There would be unexpected bumps in the road, hurdles to overcome. Solicitors that would make a saint swear.

But...seriously, Universe. Cut us some slack now please. I'm begging you.

I keep reminding myself that this is the way it's obviously meant to be. This is the path that fate has decided we must take. High road, low road, who knows. But I'll bet you'll be in Scotland afore us.

It's a bit spooky really when I think about it. It's must be almost exactly 14 years to the day since we moved down to London.

We booked one-way tickets on sleazy jet and flew from Aberdeen to Luton (or was it Inverness...I honestly can't remember. How did we get to the airport? Were there tears? Nope. No memory). We'd booked a mere 4 nights accommodation in the nurses quarters at the hospital I was to be working at. All we had with us was what we could carry in our beaten up student sized rucksacks. Thankfully, we'd had the foresight to post a large box of kitchen essentials ahead of us. So at least we could cook.

By the end of our first 24 hours in London, we'd found a flat to rent and my boyfriend (now husband) had found a job. Yeah! We were rocking it! Moving to London? Piece of cake. Lets gloss over the fact that it never entered our naive little heads that renting a flat would require an eye-watering deposit as well as the first months rent. Lets also forget that we shared a single bed for those first 4 nights because we were too skint to afford a double room and too in love to sleep apart (aaaaah).

By the end of our first 36 hours in London we'd bought a bed and arranged for it to be delivered in time for moving in day. I'd dreamt of a gorgeous wrought iron number. We ended up with the cheapest duvan in the shop but didn't have enough for a headboard. But we didn't care.

The night we moved into our bijou one bedroom flat, we splashed out and bought a bottle of wine and scampi and chips. On the way to the chippie, we wandered past the newsagent and had a quick look at the For Sale postcards in the window. Huh. That's weird. Imagine advertising your massage business in the window of the newsagent. Extras available...extras? What, like specially blended massage oil? Geez, Londoners are weird. hahahahahahahahahahahah....oh...euuwwwww (naive? us? oh yes).

So back home to our bijou flat we skipped, slightly more enlightened by the types of businesses advertising in our locality, scoffed our scampi, quoffed our wine and had a minor emotional breakdown.

WHAT WERE WE DOING?

Who were we kidding? Living in London? Two country mice like us? We were obviously insane. So we promised there and then that we'd give it 2 years. Two years and no more. We'd move to Edinburgh. Or Glasgow. That was the plan. 24 months in London was going to be more than enough for the likes of us.

But then we got a foot on the property ladder.

Then baby number 1 came along.

Before we knew it, we'd been in London 10 years and baby number 2 was on the way.

Woah. Time. Fun. Whooosh.

Huh. 14 years in London town. Two sons born as Englishmen with London accents to boot. But our hearts still belong to Scotland. All of our hearts. No two boys can love mince and tatties that much and be true Englishmen.

Scotland runs in their veins as much as it does mine.

Operation relocation

Yes, yes, I know. I'm beginning to sound like a stuck record...I feel like a stuck record. But here we are, still in England, still no completion date.

So it's time to launch Operation Relocation in earnest. This week, I will not tolerate inactivity. I will not take no for an answer.

We WILL be in Scotland in 3 weeks.

I'm going to start by phoning our solicitor 3 times a day for the next 48 hours. If that doesn't yield results, I'll increase the frequency to 4 times a day. By the end of Wednesday, I'm hoping they'll be so sick of me, they'll move heaven and earth to to secure a completion date.

Next on the agenda, packing. If we're going to be in Scotland in 3 weeks (positive thoughts, positive thoughts), I need to give the cosmos a good nudge in the right direction. I reckon if I start packing, fate will catch on to my plan and help me move things in the right direction.

Then there's my new mantra: "We will be living in Scotland by the end of March, mortgage free and ready for new adventures".

What do you think? What else can I do? We NEED to be in Scotland by the end of March.

Any positive vibes, thoughts or advice gratefully received!