Home is Where the Heart Is

A home is where the family all comes together.  It doesn't have to be fancy, it just has to have a place for a table to share meals and beds to snuggle in safely.  A room with a couch for watching movies is also a plus.  Well, we have found such a snuggly home in the UK.  Our new address will be in Camberley England.  Steve found us a great home.  It looks like any 1970's construction around Naperville, but our goal was not to be charmed by the house.  We want to be charmed by all of the adventures we will be able to enjoy.  The modest home allows us a little extra cash for those trips that I have already started planning (more on that later!).  There are four bedrooms that aren't too much different from what we have here, other than the master.  Steve and I are spoiled with our master suite now and will be able to look forward to returning to it. In the meantime, we will be a bit cozier and maybe have to rethink the wardrobe as we will have to share (*gasp*) the closet. 

There are two big differences from the home we are in now versus the one we are moving into (besides 700 sq ft less and no storage in the UK home).  The first is that there is only one bathroom for the whole family to share.  There is a half bath on the ground floor, but otherwise we will all be tripping over our wet towels in a very modest (read that as small) family bath.  I don't believe there are any closets for storing linens or towels.  This is going to be interesting.  The next difference is there is no basement, so no place to let the kids run wild and let toys be free from their confines.  Life will need to be more orderly and some of those toys will have to take a break and go to storage for a few years.  The children are already balking at my directive that only 7 stuffed animals per child would be allowed passage to England.  I see some negotiating on this item in the near future.

So as we prepare to move to England we do so with the comfort of knowing that this house has been let. Now that the paperwork has been signed with the tenants, we can mess our home up again.  The kids are thrilled by this as making the bed everyday is a very daunting task during summer vacation.  Over the next week we will be moving stuff from the basement to the bedrooms as a way to classify what goes to England and what stays.  When it is all sorted, we will wonder why we actually need all that stuff that is going into storage.  But there is no need to fret about that today; we can address that when everything comes out of storage in three years.  Then we will open the boxes and put half of it at the curb.

"Oh, I can't think about this now!  I'll go crazy if I do! I'll think about it tomorrow." (Scarlett O'Hara - Gone with the Wind)