My 21st and the new place

No matter how hard we try, the universe seems to be conspiring against us in our efforts to slow down our pace of life. The last fortnight has been a hectic one. Appointments, meetings and church events/stuff, cleaning our rental property, has seen us make trips to Toowoomba, often more than one a day, six days a week. The lease on our last rental house finishes up on Tuesday, so hopefully after that we won’t be needing to do stuff to sort out the two houses again.

Our new place in Grantham is shaping up quite nicely. We’ve made a very conscious effort to downsize and the resulting space has been quite enjoyable. This house is much smaller than the last one, though we aren’t sharing anymore. I have been having fun making each room nice and part of a home. Having a downstairs area is great for that because anything that I don’t want in right now has gone down there. The kids room was the first to take shape. We moved Nathan’s cot and change table in, and that was all. As we have no built in cupboards in this house, we really needed more storage space, so I had my eye on the expedit shelving at Ikea. We priced the wood it would take for us to build them at Bunnings, and then had a look at Ikea and for the time and effort it would take, plus the end result, it ended up being easier to buy them new. For my birthday mum gave me the money to go get them. A 2mm dent in one of the corners (that is absolutely not noticeable) pulled the price down over $100 and we got to bring it home! I’m planning on making some fabric boxes to slot in, so their clothes, books and everything will be in that unit.

With the left over money we bought the supplies needed to build Nathan a new toddler bed. It’s close to the ground, and fits the same mattress as his cot. He moved into it a week or so ago, and we haven’t had any worries at all. He is quite proud of it, and I loved the feeling of building something together as a family that will stick around for a while. I love looking at it and thinking, ‘I made that bed!’ The cost came out at about $70, but there is enough fabric, batting and possibly wood to make another which I am considering doing for Grammy’s house. That was my birthday present from Tim, actually getting that done. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while.

One of the goals we have had for this year was actually celebrating events. We have always been quite bad at it, hence we are coming up to our third anniversary and never done a thing. This year, we have become more intentional about it. We had a picnic lunch at Spring Bluff for Australia day, and for Valentines Day Nathan had a sleepover at his grandparents and we grabbed some noodlebox, baked brownies and watched a movie.

Doing something for my birthday felt like more of a challenge though. 21 is a big one, but I really didn’t want it to be. So we had a BBQ at our place downstairs as a joint housewarming. The turn out was better than I expected, even though Tim smoked the place out trying to burn some trees that had blown down a week previously. Daddy made me some damper which was absolutely brilliant!! It’s just good to hang out with friends, new ones and old, some of whom I haven’t seen for quite some time. I got a sewing machine for my birthday too from Tim’s family, which I am super stoked with. I’ve sat down and read through the entire manual, which was extraordinarily funny. Then again we were probably just both really tired.

Uni is starting up again for Tim this week, I started back about a month ago. He is still full time, I have dropped to part time, and am really enjoying the break from clinical. The baby will arrive within two months, and although that still feels like ages, I’m starting to see the weeks roll before my eyes. Time will fly, as it has already this year.

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