From Number 15 to Duck Down

NB - This post was written back in November, just got round to adding the photos into it today :/

It's been a while! We've just been reconnected to the net having moved into our new house! This past month has been hectic but we have been abundantly blessed. As the hymn goes 'count your blessings, name them one by one' I feel it is important to record some of the specific blessings we received this month.

An amazing new home - with all the space we need, in a location we love at a price we could afford, a lovely garden and with bags of character. Seriously I keep looking around, not quite believing that it has happened. A real faith building experience which I will cherish. Last year we couldn't work out how we would be able to move though we felt with the arrival of our third baby we would need to move on to a bigger space. It didn't happen at the time but we felt OK to wait. We couldn't work out where the right  house would be with the space we needed and the right price. We couldn't control when our house would sell and what would be available at the time. It actually felt easy to hand over to Heavenly Father to work out the details and in the time that was right, everything fell into place and His hand is certainly visible in the detail.

 We loved our old house - number 15, The Cottage. 

I will miss the view of the trees from the kitchen window;

the view of the housetops from our bedroom,

  

the fireplace -what a find and I will miss our bedroom, those beams which Nathan sanded for me night after night, amazing!

 I love the imperfection of them and the wooden pegs. Our last night I carved our name and initials into the back of one of them - out of sight but I wanted to leave a 'we lived here' mark which I hope will remain for as long as the beams are there. It was a privilege to live there.

We already love this house, Number 68, Duckdown Cottage. The space is fab.I feel more in control as we have places to put things.  I love the dining room, the garden is gorgeous and I can't wait to get the fires going.

So many people helped us to move including our four aptly built missionaries and Martin with a tractor and cherry picker to enable us to remove furniture through the first floor bedroom.

 On Wednesday night 12 brothers from church came to help as well. Carol and Simon were there most of the day to help too and they stayed until very late at night. Mum and Dad had Joseph and Ben for the day. On Thursday, Ann, Nat and Becky came to help me clean and Andrew and Dave came to help with the rest of the move which included ripping up the kitchen floor. How could I forget that little nutmeg lol! Perhaps as it doesn't come under the category of 'blessings!' No, not really a blessing but one of those - we'll laugh about it in years to come!

So, I had a speaking assignment at Saturday evening session of Stake conference. Remarkably I finished it 10 hours..that is 10 hours ahead of time. Anyone who knows me well this was extremely out of character. I even bragged about it on facebook and got messages of congratulations (including my procrastination partner in crime - Jane!). Literally it was pride before a fall. An hour later as I was surrounded by boxes in the bathroom, Joseph ran upstairs ' Mummy, there's water in the kitchen!' Nathan I sprinted downstairs to find the kitchen floor covered in water - no joke! Ben had left the tap on after getting himself a drink, it must have been running for a while. Towel after towel was rung out, it was then discovered that the dryer was no longer blowing out hot air - minor detail really! It took about an hour to mop up the surface water but unfortunately it had got underneath the boards and a couple of hours later the floorboards tee-peed, lifting off the ground! In the seven years we lived in that house we had never made a claim on our home insurance! A day after exchanging contracts on the sale of said home - it was flooded! You know obviously moving house wasn't stressful enough we just needed something to mix it up a bit!  Monday, I had to ring the insurance, the solicitor and the estate agent to inform them of the issue. Tuesday evening the sellers were coming round at 6:30 to check it out and discuss what they wanted us to do about it. At 6:05, Richard who came to fix the loo posted the keys through the door whilst Nathan and I were at number 68 unloading some more boxes leaving us locked out!!!! I felt like I was in some sort of 'Some mother's do av em!' sketch. The thought is having to show the couple their wrecked floor through the kitchen window whilst balancing on the wobbly brick work of the flowerbed nearly tipped me over the edge!!! Fortunately Nathan and Richard scaled the roof and spiderman style head first Nathan squeezed himself through the 2nd floor velux window. The couple arrived 5 minutes later unbeknowing to the slight chaos which had ensued moments before!