I'm In Love.

Utterly and absolutely in love with our new house and land! We have been here for just over a week and it is already feeling so much like home. It is so quiet and peaceful. At the moment I'm sitting on the verandah with a cuppa listening to the birds. Life doesn't get much better than this!

Elliot, who doesn't always take change well, has been having the time of his life. His favourite thing is showing visitors around and giving them the guided tour. He runs through the house "This is the bathroom ... this is Archie's room ...(and my favourite) this is a toilet for Mummy and Daddy when they're busting in the night time". Ah, three year olds! Elliot's room looks down the front towards the dam next door and out the back to the neighbouring horse paddock, so he can see the horses from his bed which he loves.

Archie, who has never been a good sleeper, has only been waking once or twice for a quick feed and then straight back to sleep.  His talking has also exploded in the past week or so and one of his favourite words at the moment is "duck" which he says (in that 17 month old way) over and over and over again at full volume on the verandah, calling our new duck that lives on the dam next door. His other favourite new word is "Pop" which he also repeated endlessly while following Pop around the house wanting cuddles.

Both boys are spending so much time outside, digging in the enormous sandpit, exploring in the jungle/forest/secret garden, running up the hill, rolling and tumbling back down again. I can only assume that they both love the house and are feeling very comfortable and happy here.

Matt and I have been unpacking and organising but thanks to the help of my wonderful parents we're pretty much done. They worked like Trojans and I'm sure were very much relieved to get home and away from boxes and heavy lifting! Now I'm just spending time enjoying the house and yard and fitting in organising around that. All the important stuff is done (ie the kitchen ;) ) everything else is just figuring out where to store things. I just got new curtains for all the bedrooms on Monday when a homewares shop had 20% off everything so I'm spending the next few days hanging curtains and installing a couple of rods that were missing.

The planning work in the garden has begun. We now have 2.5 acres! Yay for space! Yay for room for the boys to run and yell and yahoo and not wake the neighbours up at 6am! Yay for room to grow more of our own food! Yay for Matt mowing the 2.5 acres of grass that is here at the moment! Ha! Actually the ride on is a lot of fun to drive, the boys are loving going for rides too! There are three very young fruit trees already here a mango, an avocado and a citrus of unknown variety. We've got ideas for an orchard, veg garden, chook house and compost placement but just need the time, money and hard work to get it all done! But now we're here, we're not planning on going anywhere soon so we've got time. Well, Matt has until my birthday in October to get me chickens, but apart from that deadline, we've got all the time in the world!

A friend came around last week to check out the new place and as we were sitting in the sandpit with the kids she said "I bet you feel like you can just exhale". And it is so true. I can feel that all of us have 'exhaled'. We're home.