8 months in the UK

8 months, 8 months ago we embarked on a massive life change that I have talked about before, we decided that we were going to move our little family of 4 to the UK. We wanted to leave with enough time to get used to the UK and have a rest before starting the girls in school to start a new school year with all the other kids. We are now half way through that so I thought I'd pen a little post about the move, I actually wrote most of this 6 moths ago whilst on a trip to London for a couple of nights. I want to share more if anyone is interested in the logistics of moving a family across the world with only 5 suitcases ( not for the faint hearted). So here is a little about how we packed and left Australia.

 Packing up our house

First of all lets talk our move and how it was finalised. We had a good plan and we stuck to it, but little things change how you feel, it doesn't matter how much you plan, things will go wrong. We booked our storage shed and then I had fun selling things on Gumtree. I went as far as drawing a diagram of the dimensions of the shed and the size of our furniture and then worked out how they were all going to stack into the shed, and we ended up stacking it in a perfect Tetris order. The whole time I had a vision of sitting on my sister in laws back deck drinking a nice glass of red wine, this vision is what I thought about as my final destination, the end of everything we were going through.

So much stuff!

Now, this my friends is were my mood changed, and the stress levels reached an all time high. A time when you start questioning your life choices and realising the magnitude of what we were actually embarking on. We began putting things in the garage as we emptied the house as we needed to get it out so the cleaner could clean it (This was my happiest decision as it meant one less thing to worry about, this is what sucks about leaving a rental), the reality of this was that our garage soon looked like the house of one of those people on Hoarders, it was full of stuff that we just didn't realise we had. Even after doing a car boot sale and selling loads of things, there still seemed to be mess, and lots of it. Where did this all come from? was uttered constantly and I'm surprised I wasn't found rocking in the foetal position at any given time, and I almost cried when Chris suggested we buy a bottle of wine for the evening.A full trailer load was taken to the tip and we ordered a double council pick up. We managed to finally get everything out and into the shed, we stayed with my Dad and I went though everything that was left and then took the last lot of stuff to the shed.

My mini breakdown

Now at this point with only 2 days before we flew out, a little memory dawned on me, something I had thought about and that I had actually thought of and sorted out. CV's! You know those things? They contain all your working accomplishments and you need them when you want to look for work, where the bloody hell were they​​??? I had kept them out especially and I put them in the garage on a shelf, this is the same garage that began looking like an op shop on steroids, that had been completely cleared out! I was a mess, I've not lived with my Dad before and for the first time he saw me freaking out, I'm normally the laid back one, if things are getting to me, no one knows about it, I keep it in. This could not be kept in, how was I going to work? All my certificates and references and documents where gone. Dad quietly went off and made me a strong coffee whilst reassuring me that it wouldn't be that bad. It wasn't so bad for Chris he started his own business and his work have kept him on doing contracting work. But for me I have no idea! I calmed down and got a moment of clarity and thought that “I love buttons” will be my full time job and I would make a good go of it as I would have the time.

Off we go

We left, I was so upset to leave my family but we have our little family and that has 2 parts to it. There is a part from Australia and a part from the UK, we had to give this a go otherwise we would never know and would eat away at us for the rest of our lives. The plane was the best and the girls watched Boss Baby 53 times, or near enough. I couldn't believe when we landed that we had actually done it, all the planning and work had finally met its grand finale when we finally landed on UK soil, and I was finally drinking a glass of wine looking at the beautiful English countryside.

I'll leave it there as that s pretty much how we got here. I want to write some more posts regarding how we have furnished our house and what we have done since being here. We are really enjoying our time in the UK and loving what it has to offer.

Em xx