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2007-06-08 - 11.20pm previous entry next entry
Big news for us!!
I owe emails, I owe emails - I promise I'm not ignoring anyone who has recently sent me SUCH lovely emails, but I just have to update both my diaries first. Today can not end without updates! I will get to emails soon (maybe not tonight though)!
Neil had his other job interview today. It was a second interview as he passed the first one with flying colours. He came home this afternoon saying he felt that he'd impressed them and he was confident, but that they had someone(s?) else to interview yet. He did say that the lady told him, "Thank you Neil - hopefully we'll see you soon!" so that sounded very promising! Within an hour of arriving home, Neil's agency phoned and told him HE GOT THE JOB!!!! Wheeeeeee!
Will now copy/paste all the info about it and what it will mean for us (moving wise) from 2 entries ago, in case anybody missed that and thinks I haven't said a THING about where and what it means for us, etc! I'm too lazy/pushed for time to actually write it all out afresh! ;)
"He has another interview on Friday, somewhere we'd both REALLY like to live. It's a couple of hours southwest of London and we've heard nothing but wonderful things about the place. It's a thriving town but drive anywhere and you're in the countryside. It's nearer the coast for easy access to/from my parents via the ferry, and it's not a million miles from family nearer London. It has a huge friendly charismatic church which appears to be the centre of the community (someone new at our church went there!), and people are actually moving there for the great schools. The house prices mean we can afford a 3-bed house in the area, but if we live up to 45 mins commute from where Neil works (if he gets the job, of course!), we can afford a spacious FIVE-bed house. Which would just be a dream. I can feel my eyes shining, just thinking about it! ;) And fresh air, ohhhh fresh air! The pollution here STINKS, and I'm fed up with it. What we are longing for is SPACE, both green/countryside type of space, and inside our home, and fresher air. I'm excited about this job.
The two jobs are very similar but Neil thinks the London one might hold better long-term prospects. I am REALLY not thrilled about the London one. We'd still have to move away somewhere more affordable, but staying near enough London would mean not affording a hugely spacious place and probably not getting too far away from the pollution. And it would guarantee a commute for Neil. I hate the idea of him commuting. Commuting SUCKS!
Anyway. We'll see. The interview for the job further away is actually a second interview. They were very impressed with him at the first one, so now he has to meet the partners in London! Yikes! I suppose he COULD get offered both (or neither, come to think of it), and if he does he will have to choose. I am anxious that he'll want to choose the London one. We'll see. I'll update about it as and when!"
We're so thrilled! But also just whirling with everything that needs to happen. Neil is accepting the job as soon as the written offer arrives next week. He won't bother waiting for the London one. They offered him less than he expected, but still more than he's currently on. We have spent the whole evening looking online at properties in a 10 mile radius of where Neil's work is, to get an idea of what we can afford in the area (if anything!). At the moment we�re feeling encouraged because while we can�t afford anything suitable actually IN the town where Neil will be working, we can afford a 3-bedroom house in nearby towns/villages. About the same kind of distance that Neil currently travels to work (15 min train journey) except hopefully near enough to a station that he doesn�t have to walk the same length of time to get to the train. Anyway, a nice short commute! :)
There�s so much to think about and do. I don�t like to say place names online unless they�re pretty broad (like London, that covers a HUGE area!), but we�ll be moving to Hampshire. Anyone who already has my address will of course be getting my new one when we move � I don�t mind telling people I already know and trust through my diary! :)
Neil�s notice period at work is one month, so I reckon he�ll be starting his new job in about 5 weeks time! Yikes! I can�t imagine we�ll manage to clean up the house, fix up the DIY things that still need doing, put it on the market, SELL, BUY in Hampshire, close the sale, and move all within 5 weeks!!! But I DO know that God is faithful and can make absolutely anything happen. We have ALWAYS been amazed in the past whenever we�ve moved house. Only twice, but both times God has done something amazing for us, that just couldn�t have been possible without him. Like, oh, thousands of extra �s just falling into our laps as a gift the DAY we realised we were that much short on the deposit for the house we currently live in. The exact right amount. God is so faithful to us when we have these big life changes, and after seeing him provide time and time again, I am confident and expectant that he will provide again. I�m so excited to see what he chooses to bless us with this time! I don�t know if it will be a miraculously speedy sale/buy process, but even if it�s not, Neil has figured out that he can commute on a fast train from here, just over an hour each way. So he wouldn�t have to live elsewhere for the working week, and we wouldn�t have to all move into rented accommodation while we try to sell our house here (which we can�t afford to do anyway). So, already � thank you God! :)
But, there are some aspects that nudge my negativity into action (*sigh*). I�m worried that we won�t get a home in a nice area. Nice areas are really important to me now that we�re settling down to raise our family, and our kids will get to an impressionable age and play with other kids in the area, while we live there. We can�t see what it actually looks like because we don�t live near enough, and I can�t think how we�ll actually go about viewing and seriously putting offers on homes. It just doesn�t feel like it will work to haul the little ones there (1.5-2 hours drive?) and back to view houses and do boring stuff all day. So far, we haven�t done much travelling with them because they don�t seem to do it too well! They act like pent up animals, and I don�t blame them! So I wouldn�t like to do that. BUT we can�t leave them anywhere while we go and view and stuff. Neither of them have ever been without me for any length of time. Just since February I have been doing the weekly supermarket shopping on Saturday afternoons while they nap. Neil naps with them and by the time I get home they are awake, so they know I have been gone. But that is it. We have not had any other separations. I don�t plan on changing that any time soon. They are so little and we don�t have anyone we could leave them with anyway, even if they WERE used to it. So hmmm. Maybe Neil will have to go and I�ll have to trust his judgement, and God! That�s what we did for the place we currently live in (which I love sooo!), because I was housebound with M.E. then and was too poorly to view this particular property. It�s soooo long ago now, but HOW WEIRD that all that stuff is actually journalled about in my sheepdip diary. That goes back a long way in our history now! I started it in Jan 2001, which is only 17 months after we got married, and now we�ve been married almost 8 years!!! I love that it�s all here. If Diaryland ever goes under or gets wiped out or something, I think I will need therapy to get over the loss! Seriously.
Anyway. The other thing is that I am currently 4.5 weeks pregnant. Soooo early, yes, I know. But I also know that from 5 weeks and 6 days (yes, that precise!), morning sickness will hit me like a sledgehammer, and not ease off till at least 13 weeks. That covers the entire window of our big relocation!!! Aaaaahhh!! I am honestly not sure how to manage it all with morning sickness. I�m not sure how to manage life WITHOUT the big move/new job thing, just looking after the boys with morning sickness! Yeurgh. I am praying for a merciful first trimester with minimal morning sickness (none would be marvellous but then I�d freak about whether the baby was okay, etc).
Also, getting the house sorted. I can�t even begin to describe the state of the house! I don�t know how we can possibly sort it out FAST so that we can have it ready to have people come and view it, so that they�ll like it enough to want to buy it! Neil says he�ll ask his brother (who recently moved quite near to us) to come and help a couple of evenings, but that seems like it�s going to barely make a dent in the huge mountain of everything we need to do. We can�t do much in the evenings because they boys are sleeping. We need to pay for:
� A cleaner to clean the house up
� A packing company to sort and pack everything for us
� A decorator to finish ALL the painting jobs
� An electrician to do all the odd electrical jobs that need finishing
� A handyman-type-person to do all the other stuff like hanging doors, finishing door frames, etc.
And I can�t think what else. Oh, garden related stuff. We can�t realistically do much of it ourselves, because we�ve been trying for EVER and it never happens. We are just too tied up with the little ones at this stage of life, and we don�t have any family nearby who can actually take the kids on while we get stuff done. I wish we did! It would make life so much easier.
Anyway, that is our current thinking. Now it�s so late � got sidetracked by more properties Neil wanted to show me on the computer (I�m on the laptop), and Matthew woke twice (toothie #6 arrived today! It�s the other top lateral, on the right (my right) next to his top front teeth) and cried lots and was hard to resettle. But I must must update my pregnancy diary too, as it�s been days since I did so, and I like to update there as frequently as I can when I�m actually pregnant! :)
Two quick things: Arthur has a big thing about �Mummy doing me!� rather than Daddy, when it comes to things like getting him down from the table (cleaned up and lifted down), nappy changed, and dressed after baths, etc. I don�t know why, it�s just some stage he�s going through. He gets really quite stroppy and tantrummy if it has to be Neil � poor Neil! If I�m upstairs sleeping or something, he doesn�t mind a bit. It�s only if both of us are there that it has to be Mummy doing him! Anyway. Usually when the boys have had their bath (which they now share, I think I forgot to say! They�ve been sharing a bath for a month or so now, and it�s going great. Neil no longer baths with them, which is kind of sad to leave that behind, because he has done so since Arthur was born. Matthew does still sit in his bath seat though, but Arthur isn�t awfully safe in the bath and tends to go crazy hyper and not do anything he�s told (a whole �nother story for a whole �nother entry!) so I couldn�t bear to think about Matthew being unsupported without a bath seat while they share a bath!
Anyway! So after their bath, Neil usually wraps Arthur in a big towel and takes him downstairs while I wrap Matthew in a big towel and take him down. Then I change Matthew into his night nappy and sleepsuit, which Neil does the same for Arthur. This is sometimes an �I want Mummy!� moment for Arthur, but he doesn�t usually push it. Yesterday Arthur was out of the bath before Matthew, because he�d been whacking heavy sheets of water into Matthew�s face (let�s not go there right now! Urrrgh!) so after he�d been told off and he was ready to go downstairs, I wrapped him up and took him downstairs while Neil did Matthew. As we left the bathroom, the warm bundle of towels in my arms suddenly said, �Oh, you�re so lovely!� His voice was full of delight! I said, �What?!� (not expecting such a compliment!) and he said, �I. Really. Love. You!!� and then sighed a happy sigh and said, �I�m so glad you�re doing me!� :) You HAVE to love that boy! He�s the sweetest little monkey mischief maker I ever did see :)
And, oh bother, I can�t remember the other thing. Tsk. Oh but thank you SO much for the lovely compliments on the photos last entry!!! I�m glad you guys like the new diary photo! I wish they looked a little more like �themselves� because their little faces are a bit squished onto each other�s so that they don�t quite look like they normally do, in the face. But it was tooooo lovely not to use! It�s my online signature for the message boards I post at now, too! :)
Oh I remember! Matthew�s birthday is only SIX days away!!!! I was already past my due date with him this time last year. How weird. And Arthur is 31 months old today, since it�s the 9th! I just can�t believe there are only 5 months till he�s 3. Five months will go in NO time. I want time to slow down a little, for Arthur!! But speed up a little, for my tiniest bean!! I can�t wait to meet him/her!
Okay, time to move on to the pregnancy diary methinks! :) I�ll be back again soon!
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