This morning we woke up to the second morning ever in the house that looked and felt like it would never ever be a home. We woke up all together as a family of three for the first time in almost a whole year.

It’s been a beyond surreal experience from signing the acceptance papers on an awful place, through the transformation and the sweat and tears and nails and screws. The descent of bloggers and the descent of things from bloggers and the hard work and the buckets of white paint. So much time and energy (both physical and emotional) have been spent turning somewhere horrible into somewhere habitable.

We’ve done it. We’re here and surrounded by all of our old things in this new place in the city that I grew up in and we now all call home.

I’ve already cried twice since we arrived. I didn’t know how I felt or how I would feel about finally being here and that led to a rushed – we decided on Sunday night that we would move the following morning – Monday of diving in feet first before I could give myself any chance to worry or fret or change my mind. From the moment we arrived and Beans burst in with breathy exclamations of woooooooow and wide eyes and wider grins it felt OK. It felt right.

Believe it or not, things aren’t quite finished yet. There are still plenty of things waiting to be put up, put away and assembled. The garden is a tangle of knee high nettles and thigh high dandelions and therefore totally unusable but hey, it’s raining, and we don’t need a garden when we have a conker tree right outside and lots of new places to explore do we?

All of our old things and new things and new old things seem to be sitting quite happily side by side making what is still a fairly barren white box more lively and interesting. I actually feel happy and it’s actually genuinely nice here now. And that’s what it’s all about isn’t it?

Sometime over the next few days there will be a vlog or at the very least a tonne more (better) photos.