Our new old house!

Just a very quick blog here with photos! Having posted these to Facebook last night, I remembered I should put them on here too, for those friends & family who are *not* on Facebook. We went down to England last week to spend a few days getting the house cleaned up and ready to move into. It's been vacant all year, so needed plenty of scrubbing and dusting, etc. Still more to do (of course!) but at least we got the floors all mopped and cleared out some junk, and kitchen cupboards cleaned (huge thanks to kind friends who came along and helped with that job! :-) ) Anyway, we got back home on Saturday night, so this week is mean to be filled with packing, ready for the removal company coming on Tuesday next week!

So, some photos of our new home! :-)

The main bathroom

Master bedroom

Abigail's bedroom on the top floor. If you're British, then it's the 2nd floor - to an American, that would be the 3rd floor! ;-) 

Deborah's bedroom, also on the top floor

Another view of Deborah's bedroom 

Benjamin's bedroom - also on the top floor.

What is to be Peter's office, on the ground floor at the back of the house - away from all the noisy main rooms! ;-)

Another view of Peter's office, with Fergus enjoying the view out the patio doors

Utility room! Yes, I've always wanted one of these rooms!! :-D

A spare room at the back of the house - which is likely to be used as storage for "yet to be catalogued" books

Looking up the stairs from the ground floor

Looking out from the lounge to the stairs and foyer room.

A huge room, which is to be filled with shelves of books (the for sale/catalogued ones)

Another view of the huge room for books

Dining room windows

Lounge

Lounge

Lounge

The overgrown jungle of a garden! :-P

Another view of the overgrown garden!

Yes, lots to do to tidy up the garden - but I think the kids will have lots of fun out there. They already have, even with all the high weeds! ;-)

A huge bedroom, for lots of little boys! ;-)

Boys' bedroom

Another view of the boys' big bedroom

Looking down at the driveway from the middle floor

Looking out from the top floor

View from Abigail's window in the top floor, with the ancient 13th century St Andrew's Church in the distance

Zoomed in view of the ancient church

Looking down the stairs from the top floor

Hall and landing on  middle floor

Looking down to the landing halfway up the first set of stairs. Built in seating?? and shelves for books! ;-)

Landing on the middle floor. I just *love* how filled with light the house is!


Well, better get this posted, and get on with more packing. Or perhaps some sleep would be good too?! ;-)

We're moving!!

My blog is rather "behind the times", as life has been busy and I've failed to update it! I figured I'd write a post about it when it was certain, and then the weeks swiftly passed with various delays and nothing much happening.

So at last, I can finally post here and say we've bought a house in Bishop Auckland (County Durham in England - over 300 miles away!) and plan to be moving soon, God willing. We had hoped it would happen some weeks ago, but we only finally completed this week, which means the soonest we've been able to book a remover to move us is the 18-20th of October - when I'll be just over 38 weeks pregnant! Yes, a bit "eek" to be happening so late on, but my babies are usually at least a few days late ;-) so hopefully this one stays put until we're moved in!

Here are some photos of the place we hope to soon call home! :-)

Front of the house

Lounge

Kitchen

Dining room

Stairs

Another huge reception room, which we plan to fill with Peter's books! ;-)

Here's a post I shared on Facebook a month ago to explain our move - saves time to just copy & paste what I said before! ;-)

I wasn't on Facebook in 2003 (maybe it didn't exist yet?!), so no "on this day" memory to pull up! ;-)But 13 years ago today I landed in Scotland, which has been my home ever since. I've always loved the country, and having been here since I was 21 (and with all 6 of my children born here), it feels like a good bit of my lifetime has been here. 

BUT, God willing, we are relocating to the North of England soon! :-)We're in the process of buying a big Victorian house (seen in photos here) on the outskirts of Bishop Auckland, in County Durham. Our offer has been accepted, deposit paid - just waiting for the solicitors to sort out something about a land title (something that got omitted when it sold last time) and hopefully it won't be much longer before we're able to complete and get the keys! The plan is to *hopefully* get moved & settled before the baby is born (due in only just over 8 weeks), as it's much easier to do things when pregnant, than with a newborn!  

Over the past couple of years we've thought about the possibility of moving to the area, as we have good friends here (who Peter has known since he was a child). Since Peter's parents have both passed away, we're not tied to the area in the same way as we were previously. But it wasn't a set plan - just something that we thought might happen eventually. But then we spotted this house! ;-)We thought it was sold to someone else twice in the past month, but when we realised we had another chance, we went for it! It seemed too much of a bargain to let it slip by, and soooo much space (twice as big as our current house!). It's more than 2/3 of what was originally a very large Victorian house (small bit at the back corner is an attached neighbour's house), but it's still massive - 6 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 4 reception rooms, large kitchen, utility room, etc.

Apologies for the wordy post here, but just a quick update of what's happening here! Lots of changes and a bit of an adventure, but feeling very excited about this new chapter of our lives!

This is the page I put together to sell our own house - we accepted an offer on the house within a week of advertising it!! :-) It was an amazing blessing to get such a quick sale for it! And the people buying it don't have to sell their own place first (as they're just renting) so that makes things a bit easier - still to complete the sale after we move out, but we've formally accepted the offer.
https://tain5bedroom.wordpress.com

And should anyone wish to buy our lovely holiday house ;-) that is also on the market, though no offers for it yet. Only one viewing, but hopefully someone will come along and be interested in it too! 
https://edderton2bedroom.wordpress.com


One final set of photos, of wee Fergus who is growing up so fast - only just over a month until he's 2! 

And here's Fergus making sure he doesn't get left behind! ;-) He's packed himself in a box! 

Well, that's all for now. I'll try to update when we get moved - or at least post when baby #7 arrives! :-)

PS
Apologies for the messy formatting! Blogger seems to get more confused each time I write a post, and I just don't have the time to make it tidy tonight! Sorry!

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Blog Catch-up Part 1

It looks like this year will be the most neglected my blog has ever been since I started it! :-P Not sure I've ever ended up with so few post by half-way through the year. I mean, I'm certain it's never been so blank! And I have no promises of making it better, but will try a brief update and catch-up of at least some photos, etc. I might split it across more than one post - but here's a start at least! :-)

So, in May we spent two lovely weeks down in Yorkshire on holiday. It now seems a very long time ago (I guess it was quite a while ago! lol). We had a fantastic house to stay in (with a book theme too - Storybook Cottage). The children loved it there, and animals to enjoy outside on the farm - very peaceful. And we got to spend quite a bit of time with our friends the Mohons, which was really nice - always the highlight of our holidays down there! :-)

After getting back from our holiday it was all go getting things organised in Edderton at the holiday house. There's always plenty of gardening to do after the winter, so that kept us busy for a while. And then it's been booked solid since the middle of June - with a run right through until middle of September! Though we did just get 2 weeks cancelled at the last minute when the people weren't able to get away to come up - but I was rather glad of a wee break in the middle of a very busy summer! ;-)

It's been a rather chilly, cloudy, damp, and lack of sunshine summer up here - again! :-/ I have to admit, when you grow up in Texas, you are rather in need of a bit of brightness! Not that I expected Scotland to be sunny, but after a long dark winter, you always look forward to summer being a *bit* better! ;-) And then when summer is so dark and cold, it's a bit of a disappointment. The first several years I lived over here, it was quite warm and nice in the summers - not bad at all. But this must be the 3rd summer in a row where you might only get ONE proper day that's decently warm (and by warm I mean just being around 21c - which isn't even quite 70F!). Anyway, we got one day like that - one day only this summer. Oh well! Guess that's life, right?! :-)

We've been enjoying a break from homeschooling over the summer - though it's gone by too fast. Can't believe we're already back to lessons in just over a week!! But it's good to get back to normal routine and all. I think I've got everything organised (as in, a few new books bought, etc) and we're ready to go!

Oh, last month I got my results back from my Open University course - good marks for my final essay and I passed the course. So that was nice and means I've officially finished the first year of a BSc Psychology degree! :-) Just 2 more to go! NOT that I have any plans to finish it in that time - IF I manage to do it, it will be at a much slower pace! I hope to be studying "The Science of the Mind: Investigating Mental Health" this autumn/winter - it's only a 30 credit course, but I've been told by those who have taken it, that it's easily as tough as a 60 credit one. But hopefully less essays to write, since the course starts the same month as baby #7 is due! :-) But the topic sounds fascinating and I can't wait to start it! 

I'm just coming up to 28 weeks in this pregnancy - still can't believe how fast it's gone by. But certainly each one seems to pass by faster than the previous one. (I still remember how slowly my first one seemed to go by! LOL) So, due in only about 12 weeks! Yikes! At least when it's your 7th baby, you've already got everything you need - so quite easy to be organised! ;-)

So, time for some photos from our holiday. Certainly not all of them - I took too many. 

The amazing stairs in the holiday house we stayed in - painted like the spine of books! :-D

All 6 of them!

Mummy and a tired Elijah

Fun at the park in the Danby Visitor's Centre

Dressing up fun at the Oriental Museum in Durham - absolutely fab place!

Durham Cathedral

A huge model of the Durham Cathedral - made out of Lego bricks!! Yes, the kids absolutely loved it!

And they got to put a brick on the next section of the building project! yay!

A lovely day at a country park with friends

Picnic with friends

Abigail and her friends

National Railway Museum in Shildon - Fergus thought it was fantastic to see these huge trains in real life!

So, that's all for now. I'll *try* to get a few more holiday pics posted sometime soon. But this will have to do for today!