Happiness is moving, and realising that you’ve done completely the right thing

Love this garden. And the wood that’s in it (the fence isn’t the boundary).

Our buyer’s wife was bawling her eyes out all week prior to the actual move date. I found out that they’re from a VERY nice part of Exeter. Which is slightly annoying as if I’d known that earlier, I’d have held out for the asking price.

However, there were no tears from myself, nor my wife and kids when we moved. My youngest has never lived in a different house and so we expected that this might be a bit hard on her. Thankfully, she loves this house. It probably helps that we have a stream running through our land, a stretch of woods (literally a stretch, it’s only about 30 feet deep, but hundreds of yards long) populated by squirrels, owls, woodpeckers, some bird I can’t identify, and all the usual suspects. There are even rumours of deer. Add to that a pond supposedly stocked with 60 goldfish (we suspect only 5, they probably slaughtered the rest in a battle for survival), and she’s as happy as a dog rolling in fox shit.

We went back to the old place to pick up some rubbish that we’d left behind and although it was odd to be ringing the door bell to be let into a house that we’d lived in for nearly 9 years, both me and the wife said ‘Thank God we moved.’ It felt just wrong. There were absolutely no regrets. The missus walks around saying ‘I’ve got such a shit-eating grin, I can’t believe that this place is ours’. That’s how chuffed we are with it!

We bloody love this new place. We have an office to work in. I have a library for all of my books and RPGs. The kids have large bedrooms and loads of things to do. Heck, my eldest can even do backflips in the lounge. We are all, most definitely, happy. Although I’ll be a lot happier once everything is unpacked!