Living in a house again

It's been a hectic few days for us.  We had just one night out at the caravan.  Saturday evening I got a message from my brother, Anthony, saying he and Leanne would come up to see us.  What a bonus that turned out to be.  They arrived in their Mitsubishi Triton so we had a heap more carrying capacity to take things to our house.  We were pretty tired by the end of the day but had the bare minimum belongings with us to sleep at the house that night.  Despite having a really good sleep our first night we were both up watching TV at 3am which seems to be the jetlag hour for us.

We had gone into town to get fish and chips for lunch on Sunday and it was so busy we could barely find somewhere to park the car!   There has been a few changes of shops in the Main Street and it was a weird feeling walking around our town feeling like a tourist among the crowds.  It was a long weekend and the weather was fine so it seems everyone was making the most of it.  I will have to make time to go and check out the new shops that have opened since we left.

We had another day Monday of moving a load of belongings from the shed to the house.  We didn't want to bother with hiring a truck or furniture trailer so have just been fitting what we can into Mick's "1 tonne" and the little 6x4 trailer. It helped that Peter happened to come out to the shed for some timber and drove a load of boxes back for us in the back of his ute.

Yesterday, being the first working weekday since we got home, we made it our mission to buy a car.  I don't enjoy the process and either does Mick.  We set off intending to buy one a couple of years old and got home having spent $6000 more than the budget we had set ourselves and bought a brand new Mazda CX5!  I'm not sure what happened there except we were fed up with trying to find what we were looking for without it having too many kilometres already on the clock.  We didn't want to spend another day on this and we had both had enough by then...... just sign here on the dotted line.  As we drove home we figured our money won't last long if we keep doing this!

I ordered a washing machine, a bread maker and a food processor on Monday night when I couldn't sleep.  It reminded me that we are home again...... first available delivery date..... next Monday.  I had a look on the Currys website in the UK.  Free next day delivery or £19.99 if you want a fixed time slot.  We paid $66 to have those three items delivered almost a week away.  We will miss the land of convenience that's for sure.

The other thing we have been battling with is our phones.  We had our two handsets from the UK.  The smartphone has gone home with Anthony to try and unlock it.  Mick is happy that his cheap little plastic UK handset works with his Aussie sim and I am resorting to an old flip phone in the meantime but I have none of my saved phone numbers on it.

It's been lovely to catch up briefly with family and friends.  We don't have a lot of time at the moment with rushing about moving and unpacking and getting set for returning to the reality of a working life.  I had coffee with Tracey who bought our previous house.  We are neighbours now.  How lovely it was to wander our old garden and see how well she is managing it on her own.  It was great to see the chook houses getting well used as she has not only her first half dozen layers but now a little family of fluffy Pekins and a pair of turkeys. 

Yesterday made me happy.  As we were heading out on the car buying mission my dear friend Tammy drove up.  How exciting it was to see her again.  We cooked up a plan for a quick catch up later in the day.  We are both looking forward to our weekly lunch dates again.  First one next Monday.  I had to laugh when she said she had been to our favourite Thai place and it felt like she was being disloyal going there without me.

So that brings us up to today..... 4am on Wednesday morning.  More moving, more shopping, more unpacking.