You Asked...

So, how did you find this million dollar home you're currently living in?

Well, let me tell you.... (do you want to grab a cuppa before diving into this?)

We moved to England during one of the hottest summers on record. Grass was brown-- if you can believe it--and the heat was stifling.
There's a law of some kind here that requires workers to take a break during exceptionally hot hours of the day, and that meant the room cleaning and maintenance people of our lodging were working limited hours.

That alone wouldn't have been bad, had we any air conditioning (I tend to be even more impatient than normal when I am hot-- luckily for my husband, I am freezing most of the time) and if the bathroom above the kitchen hadn't had a pipe leaking-- water dripped through the ceiling light fixture. Enough to soak several towels per hour.

Cooking was life-threatening (more than normal) and a little gross to consider. Add summer heat to this and the kitchen had become our "Rain Forest" that we only visited long enough to get something from the refrigerator.

The room was also plagued by ants.

We were roughing it in England.

I was very pregnant.


We were waiting for our car to arrive by a slow-moving ship, attempting to acquire UK's driver's licenses, the husband was doing his "In-processing" into his new workplace and we were thinking about getting the children enrolled into schools.

The only problem was that we didn't know what schools they'd be attending.

The base also requires you to find a place to live within a specific time period AND you're required to see a certain number of houses per week. You are not allowed to turn one down because it was too small (?!), too far, etc...

Did you spot two problems here?

1. We had no car, no licenses, and four children and we were supposed to be out finding a home. We had to rely on other people to take us around (we went in shifts).
   
2. And why are you even looking at a house other than to determine whether or not it's suitable for your family?

Despite the obstacles, we found an unbelievably beautiful home. It fell into our laps really-- but that's another post.

We were planning our move when we got the terrible phone call, "The current residents had their new home purchase fall through and have extended their lease... I'm so sorry."
He really did feel bad and kept apologizing and then added, "There's a good mate of mine and he has a house that's not five minutes from here..." and The Hubby booked an appointment to see this other house.

I was devastated. We had trampled through so many places and, well, look at the place.... how could I possibly even care about another home?


So I pouted. Not one of my finer moments, but it was hot, I was pregnant and coming up on homelessness in a foreign country ( I am NOT dramatic and that wasn't nice to say it).
I even said I didn't care to see this "other stupid house" and was not impressed by the photos online. Not. Impressed. At. All.

Just before my husband left for the appointment, I said, "Fine, I'll go, but I'll hate it."

As we pulled up to this Spanish-style bungalow (mostly one level and not very English looking), I repeated, "I hate it".

This giant of a man met us in the front garden. A garden devoid of trees or shrubs, just miles of brown, dead grass.
From our car, a teenager (with a red mohawk) sulkily stepped out (he loved the other house too and is very much like his mom), three young, very energetic boys toppled out over one another and one fat, grumpy woman who obviously knew nothing of birth control waddled out after her husband-- can you imagine what the giant was thinking of us?!

He opened the door, my jaw dropped and hung that way for the whole tour.
This is the back entry way we came in through. It leads to the kitchen.

There's underfloor heating, the towel racks are heated and there are radiators in each room.

Every room is en suite (which means we have 6 full bathrooms and one bathroom in the garage with just the toilet and sink-- the "Loo"). No, that wasn't a misprint. We have SIX full bathrooms. One purple, two dark blue, two burgundy and one Forest green.


The house is massive.

He even wanted less money than the house we had previously fallen in love with. We committed to it as soon as we got back to the Rain Forest and have been here ever since.


And now we're leaving it. I think.




It's not 100% final, but we've found a much smaller place (I can get my life back from the constant cleaning) right next door to the boys' school in a cute little village. We may end up buying a home over here.... but for now, one issue at a time.

So, THAT is really our house. Well, a bit of it anyways.

Thanks for stopping by to see me. Next time, could you bring a few boxes with you?