Its the not knowing....

Getting so big!

We have officially made it through a Thursday without going into hospital - hooray!! While Abi is still knocking back antibiotics like they are going out of fashion, it does at least feel like we have made progress forward. She has been feeling good all week and made it back to school on Friday after a month of disrupted attendance. She probably could have gone back a day earlier but I didn't want to rush her after all the false starts, and she was still so tired in the morning that I didn't have the heart to dig her out of bed when she could easily do the bulk of her school work at home. She's also been enjoying the peace and comfort of home after so many days stuck in a busy hospital. Either way she had a good day, it's been a good weekend and, apart from a few tunny rumblings which I think are more to do with too much chocolate ice cream than colitis, she is looking a million times better than this time a month ago (when we were just bringing her home for the first time).

So with Abi feeling well the main topic of discussion, and cause of excitement and anxiety (equal measures for the most part), has been the big move. After much debate (and a lot of googling on my part to ascertain what the 'experts' think about the housing market), we decided not to wait until the new year to launch our sale. With continued uncertainty about Brexit and availability / impact of Covid vaccines, plus the anticipation that the stamp duty holiday could possibly be extended for a few months at least, it felt like the quicker we go the better. We are also very mindful that there feels to be relatively few houses that we are interested in to actually buy, should we be lucky enough to secure a buyer quickly, and so the sooner we can get things moving the better. 

As ever with houses, the biggest challenge is managing the unknown. Everybody pulled their weight last week and the kids sorted their bedrooms and we tidied up any clutter we could find into bins and cupboards, in order for the photographers to come in and do their stuff. Of course we should be selling this house in late Spring, when the garden looks at its best and the sun is shining. But no, we are selling in early December when everything is at its most dull and drab. Having said this, the sun shone for us and the photos are probably about as good as they could be for the time of year. We paid for both the standard photos and a virtual tour. The former are OK but the latter is brilliant - you can move around the house at will and even look out of the windows and its this that gives you the real sense of the space, light and proportion of our home in a way that static photos could never do. And now of course, the worst bit of all, the wait. We ended up launching on Friday evening and while I wasn't expecting to be inundated over the weekend with the estate saying we have interest, of course I was hoping we would at least have them phone us once. But no, no immediate rush. The realist in me says this isn't surprising. At this price we aren't going to have lots of interest, and we only need one person to want to buy it at a price we are prepared to accept. But of course its nice to know there is at least some interest. It's early days. We must dig deep for patience, something this family has in very, very short supplies!

In the meantime, the whole family is obsessing over property websites and analysing all the (relatively few) options there are. I'm advocating for something at the lower end of the budget that we can add value to while we minimising the mortgage. Glenn is advocating the ones over budget but ready to go, most of which are exactly not what we have agreed we want! The kids just want to move NOW, and would quite like to be home schooled (core subjects only please) if we end up landing in Somerset before the end of the summer term. Nothing like trying to manage a diverse set of expectations. I'm just hoping someone wants our house and we get a move that allows us to fulfil the main criteria - to be closer to family and old friends by next summer.