Explanations

It was a bit rude of me, at the end of my account of our brilliant holiday at Easter Convention, to casually mention that we have sold our house and are moving when we have not mentioned this on the blog before. It is such a slow market at the moment that we were concerned that it might take ages to sell and we really didn't want the pressure of even more people asking "Have you sold yet?" So we put it on the market at the beginning of February and, thankfully, it didn't take all that long for us to receive an offer we liked and we settle next Thursday!

We aren't leaving Wagga! We love it here and, in fact, are not even leaving our suburb in the long term. We are building a house not far from where we are now,  but far above the reach of the river. We have discovered the joy of living close to something we do every week day. Joss has been riding her bike to school this year and it gives her so much more time in the day! Toby will follow her to high school in a year and a half and Bethany later on so, given that we also have friends in Estella and have always loved the outlook of the suburb (it is less than 10 minutes to the centre of town but you drive through countryside to get here), we decided to build a more teenager-friendly house here.

Of course, it takes a long time to build a house. The people who have bought our current house are moving in to it so we can't rent it and stay. Rental houses are in high demand at the moment because there are many uninhabitable houses around thanks to the flood. We are very thankful that our good friends have a house that is being vacated by long term tenants this coming Thursday and they are willing to let us rent it and bring our dog!

The house is in Central (Wagga's CBD) so Andrew and I will both be able to walk to work and we'll all walk to church. It has only three bedrooms so Toby and Bethany are going to share. It will be snug but there are lots of advantages to it. This time next week, we'll be there!

For a while now the kids have been heading off to play at the ramps. I knew that someone had built some ramps in the reserve in the middle of our suburb but I hadn't seen them.

Wow, they are serious ramps! Bethany ripped her pants sliding down that one.

There will be busy roads to cross on the way to any park in town and we will be far less keen on the kids just heading off on their bikes. I'm not sure I'll be happy to walk late at night like I currently do either. We have that lifestyle, sadly old-fashioned and rare now, where our kids can just go out and play for hours, in the parks and riding around the streets of our suburb. We'll be keen to get back to that. In the mean time, we'll enjoy having cafés and shops within close walking distance. I wonder what impact the McDonalds around the corner will have......