MARKET

Today we are going to take a break from moving stuff, and go out to the fairly new mini market at King's Plant Barn in Takanini.

We went once and saw some lovely stuff, so we are going again.
Hopefully there is one particular stall guy there today.  He sells really lovely wooden boards and so on. We were really impressed with his products last time we were there.

Once we have been there, I suppose we will come home and continue with the packing.  I'm saving a lot of money by doing it myself, so it's worth getting on with it.

I shall probably be taking another load of breakables and wall hangings/paintings down to storage on Monday.

ONWARD...

Well the wood guy wasn't at the market. Sad.

So next thing to do.... buy a chilly bin for our fridge stuff when we move.

Ever tried buying a chilly bin in WINTER? 

YEAH. DIFFICULT.

2.02 pm: Well it was a fruitless hunt for a chilly bin.  We shall now just buy a couple of really cheap polystyrene ones to use for the move.

We ended up at Sylvia Park for lunch.  Now we are home and it's getting VERY DARK outside!

We had an awesome thunder storm last night, and another one is due tonight... something tells me it will be soon.

ABOVE: There was hardly anyone at the Kings Plant Barn, Farmer's Market today.  Too wet and ikky.

Tomorrow we plan on going to the Cleveland Market, hopefully the man who sells wood products will be there.

Chilly bin search is over.  Kelly has a big one we can borrow for our move... EXCELLENT!

We will buy a new one next summer for ourselves.

Pizza for dinner... ate too much, as usual.
I really am hanging out till we move to join WW again!  

HE RECKONS HE'S GOING BACK TO WORK

Stew seems to think he will go back to work today.  I'm not so sure he should.  His cough last night sounded even worse, like it's going onto his chest.  *sigh*
So, I suppose we will see once he's up and moving around.

Today I plan on doing some more packing, and putting the last of the fragile stuff in one place, in readiness for taking down to the storage unit in Hamilton.

Our moving plans are firming up.  Wednesday the 8th of June the moving company arrives and packs and wraps and gets everything ready to load into the trucks.

Thursday 9th of June they load everything into the trucks.

We will spend the afternoon/early evening on the Thursday cleaning the house, then we will either get a motel here in Auckland, or we might drive to Cambridge and spend a night in a motel there.

Then on FRIDAY, 10th of June we get the keys to the new house, and meet the moving trucks and MOVE into our new home! 

It's getting very exciting... after so long, it's finally happening.  3 weeks from TODAY.

I still find it hard to believe we have bought that house!  I love it so much already.

So, that's all for now... I'm going to get busy with the housework, them sort more stuff to pack.

ONWARD...

8.37 am:  And the man decided to stay home.  Well done.

Kids are about to leave for school, and I'm going to potter around the house.

I reckon Stew stayed home cos he's loving MORNING TV!  I've never watched tv in the mornings.... ellen is on right now and he sure seems to be enjoying it! lol
Meanwhile, I'm slaving away packing, packing, packing.  

Poor Stew just spent ages on the phone sorting out the insurance for the move, and the new house/contents.  What a mission!

MEH..... feeling ikkk.  Tired.  Just got too much going on in me head right now.

Going to bed early tonight.

OFF TO HAMILTON

Well, even though he's still not well. ... Stew is going back to work today.  edit:  Scrap that, he's staying home and going to the Doctor's. Good idea I say.

And I am driving down to Hamilton too... with a load of 'fragile' boxed stuff.  And some of our paintings and pictures off the walls.

Once I've put it all into the new storage unit, I will probably be going over to Chartwell Square to get a little 'something' I saw a while ago.

I promised myself I would ONLY get it when we got a new house.  Hopefully it's still in the shop.

I will show you later IF I get 'it'.

Before I leave, I will take a photo of the interior of my car!  It's stacked to the gunnels...  it's going to take me a while to unload it all on my own, but I can do most things if I take my time.

ONWARD...

Our bed is all wet!  Stew has been sweating so much his side of the bed is WET! I know he's a hotty, but really!  I hope the Doctor can give him something to get him well again.  But I have a feeling it's a virus, and all they will give him is panadol!  Time will tell.

Right, I'm gunna get ready to go.

11.24 am: very happy to say I got that special little something. And I've unloaded all the boxes in the storage unit in Hamilton. Now I'm in Cambridge.... met one of our new neighbours... lovely old chap named.... CHRIS😊  I wont be forgetting his name in a hurry!

2.53 pm:  Home.

Stew is on antibiotics till he is  better.
We now have a definite date for our move, as the people who own the Cambridge house are moving out a couple of days early.

So I'm in communication with the moving company, and it looks like we will be heading to Cambridge on the 10th of June!

That is in 22 days!  WHOOP WHOOP!
We will probably need to stay in a motel for only one night, excellent!

I forgot to take a photo of my car stacked to the gunnels with boxes and pictures.  Oh well... how about that special 'something' instead?

 ABOVE:  When I saw this painting a few weeks ago I knew it would be mine!  *smiles* 
I have the PERFECT place for it in the new house... as you go down the passageway, you turn left, and at the end of that part of the passageway is where it will go.

He/she will be staring at you as you round the corner!  So cute.  Needs a name?

Sorry BEX, it's MINE.  I know you love giraffes, but they only had one.

ABOVE:  While in Cambridge this morning, I had a browse around the shops, saw this gorgeous scarf and got it.  It's much colder in the Waikato, so scarves will be handy.

ABOVE: This is Mary, our estate agent here in Auckland.  I gave her a 'Thank You' gift yesterday.  A lovely apricot scarf, two blingy coat hooks and the little fabric box I made some time ago.

She loved it!  I love giving suprise gifts to people.

After some discussion, we have decided the giraffe is a girl.  LOL.  Clearly we have nothing better to do right now that ponder if the giraffe is a girl or boy!  *smiles*

And now she has a name:  Zambi.  (short for Zambesia, where giraffes live, among other places).

We have had a very nice evening.  Had a lovely long chat with me Mum.  She looked at our new home on the internet last night, and lucky she did because the Estate Agent pulled the ad offline today.  She loves our new home, I knew she would.  *smiles*

FINAL INSPECTION

Today I have the purchasers of our home coming for a final inspection before settlement on the 10th of June.

It's fairly early for a 'final inspection', but apparently they want to measure up rooms for their furniture and so on.

It will give me a chance to talk them through various things in the house, like how to turn on the gas fireplace, the alarm system, how to open and close the Archgola curtains, how the spa works, and so on.  I've got quite a list!

Once that is done I can relax for a couple of hours before I have to take Tallulah for her post-op check up... her 3rd one.  Did I tell you she got an infection at her incision site?  Well, she did.
It's looking HEAPS better now I must say. So I'm not worried about her at all.  She has another 2 days of antibiotics, then she will be all good.

After that I want to put in the car lots of 'fragile' boxes that I have packed, and some of our pictures.  I'm getting another, smaller storage unit in Hamilton to put it all in.
I'm hoping to take 2-3 loads down there over the next few days.  Then I can leave all the rest of our stuff for the movers to take.

It is starting to feel REAL now!

Stew pays the deposit on our new home today... *squeals*!

 ABOVE: Mid-afternoon nap time for the girls...

 ABOVE:  Gay abandon.  Totally blissed out.

 ABOVE:  ??? Yeah, don't ask.
He has a little girl's headband/veil on his head.

ABOVE:  I packed all our wine glasses didn't I?  Steve and Bex bought their own, we had two tall glasses, and Stew drank his wine from a coffee cup!
Didn't matter, it was a very nice bottle of wine.

Right, I must go and start cleaning and polishing and tidying up in readiness for the 'inspection'.

ONWARD...

Hee hee... I can now reveal WHERE our new home is....

 ABOVE: It is in Cambridge!  

Cambridge is a little town roughly 15 minutes from Hamilton.  We found the vast majority of homes in Hamilton were being sold by Auction, and homes were going for way over their expected price, thanks to Auckland investors.

So, when we lost our first two houses due to auction prices going too high for us, and the fiasco of the leaky home, we started looking in Cambridge.

Thankfully, Cambridge prices were not quite so ridiculous, and we managed to secure our new home there.

Cambridge is a lovely town, very pretty, lots of lovely, boutique type shops and it has a good High School for the kids.

ABOVE: This is a gorgeous church not far from our new home, and Weight Watchers hold their weekly meeting there on a Monday night.

I am going to attend that meeting every week just as soon as live there.  I'm really excited, as I feel ready to 'do it' all over again, and succeed.

It is COLD today, so I've turned on the heatpump, and will put the gas fire on once the people come to view their new home.

12.11 pm:  Well the inspection went excellently!
The buyers are just lovely.  I had a chance to take them all through the house, showing them how things worked. They were here for over an hour, which went really fast!

Now it's lunchtime, and I might get something for Stew and I now.  YES, poor darling is still home sick.  

6.24 PM:  And we have just loaded almost ALL of my 'fragile' boxes and paintings in my car, in readiness for taking to Hamilton Storage tomorrow.  
Things are ticking along nicely.

Time to feed the family, then relax for the evening.

SO HAPPY!

I'm still buzzing with happiness!

Today I am going out to buy some really lovely wine to have tonight.
Jacqui from Tauranga is staying the night tonight, and Steve and Bex are coming over too.  We can have a really good chin wag, and sip (NAH Skull)... some wine.  *smiles*

I've got a few more photos of the house, but they are 'screen grabs' from the website, so not that good.

 ABOVE: This is the front of the house, not exactly pretty... but I will make it look better with pots and plants eventually.

Stew wants to put a carport to the right for his car, as my car and the gym equipment will be in the garage.
I bet I can make a carport look pretty!  *smiles*

 ABOVE:  this is the 'back' of the house, where it's all happening!  There is a lovely BIG back yard.  Heaps of room.  We will probably put in more fruit trees and a grape vine or two.

There is so much we can do to this place to make it ours.

 ABOVE:  the floor plan.  The bedroom up by the front entrance is going to be my sewing room.  The bedroom next to the family bathroom will be the 'spare' bedroom for guests.

 ABOVE:  this is the big kitchen/dining/family room.  We will make this our 'lounge'.  
I'm already placing furniture in my head!

Did I mention we get to keep the big Fridge/Freezer too?  How cool is that.  It's plumbed in, so comes as a bonus.  I think it produces ice or chilled water, not sure yet.

ABOVE: this is the smaller, separate lounge, which will be for the kids. 

I hope you have enjoyed this sneak peek of our new home.

ONWARD...

ABOVE:  Really, really nice wine!  It's the same as the wine the estate agent who sold our house gave us... I'd never had it before... probably because it is freakin' expensive!  
But I felt the occasion warranted it.  I've also got two other bottles of wine... but less expensive ones.

I looked at beds today, we need one for the spare bedroom.  Every time someone leaves home we let them take their bed, so we are a bit short on beds.  lol

I'm going to be having so much fun soon, getting our new home just how I like it. *smiles*

We still don't have a moving date, that will depend on when the owners of our new house can find a rental to move into.  Hopefully it won't take long.

I popped in and visited Bex and the boys too this morning. Dante is like Stew, coughing and feeling ikkk.
Hopefully they both improve soon.  

MORE GOOD NEWS:  Our purchase has gone UNCONDITIONAL.  Which means the house really is ours... 100%.

I can now breathe ... and move on with packing up our house, organising the move, the kid's schooling, dogs, insurance, bla bla bla.  *huge smiles*

Well a lovely evening, had a wine, lots of yakking... spoke to 'the boyfriend'... and then said nite nite to his wife!  She's sleeping in Brylee's room tonight.
Bry is on a mattress on the floor in the family room. *smiles*

FINGERS CROSSED ... AGAIN X'S 4!

Today we expect to hear from the Real Estate agent who is selling the house we put an offer on yesterday, with high hopes our offer has been viewed and we can negotiate till everyone is happy.


OH I SOOOOOooooo want this one to work for us. We deserve some good luck don't ya think?


This has now been almost a year long mission, to sell and buy/move to Hamilton!

I never in a million years thought it would be such a nightmare!


But hopefully by the end of today it will be ONWARD... with a new home to look forward to?


Meanwhile ... I will get the dogs immunised for Kennel Cough, just in case they have to go into a boarding kennel for a while. And I will start writing a list of things we must do/arrange for when we do move.

There's so much to remember!



I still have a bit more packing to do too... so I might get on with that today... try to take my mind off things until I hear from the estate agent.


OH... our lovely 'Hamilton Agent' has stopped texting me. Funny that. I just hope no one in Hamilton sees her and gives her any grief on our behalf. We will deal with that issue in our own good time, in our own way. Message received? Thanks.

OK...I better go and get the kid's school uniforms out of the dryer! I had to quickly wash and dry them last night cos I forgot to do the washing over the weekend.


Stew is home today. He's not feeling well at all. Hopefully he recovers soon.


ONWARD...


12.32 pm: Just heard from the real estate agent who is marketing the house we put an offer on yesterday.

There is now 2 offers on the table, ours and one other.

We now have to put in 'our best and final offer'.... which will be presented, along with the 2nd offer, to the vendors tonight.


I am literally shaking with nerves...AGAIN.


Please CROSS EVERYTHING for us!

BAWLING MY EYES OUT.

WE GOT THE HOUSE!!!!!!

STILL BAWLING ME EYES OUT... we are just so happy.  I can't believe it.  We have a new home.  We can put the last 11 months behind us and move on.

WHERE'S THE FRIGGIN WINE???

 ABOVE:  My new kitchen!

Slowly coming down from a massive high... now starting to think of what I need to do next.  

I was going to have a wine to celebrate, but as Stew's still ill, it can wait.

Signing off now... catch ya tomorrow.  Thanks for all the congrats!

WHAT'S UP TODAY?

Well, we are going back to Hamilton of course!

Steve and Bex and coming too... so Steve can cast his builder's eye over the house in question.

There's actually two houses top of the list, so if we miss out on one, we can always go for the other one.  They are both beautiful homes.  Each have their pro's and con's, because no home is PERFECT unless you build it yourself, and you know exactly what you want.

ANON from last night:  I just have to point out something.  Get your facts right before you mouth off.
NONE of my children are STEP CHILDREN.  Stew adopted my first 4 kids, so they are legally HIS KIDS.
We treat all OUR KIDS equally, and no matter what they do with their lives, we love them, no matter what.

Our finances are none of your f**king business either!

Now, how about you crawl back under your bridge, you petty troll.  

Ya know, I often read nasty comments and all I can think of is... they are JEALOUS of my life.  Why else would they try to bring me down?  Pity it doesn't work. Total waste of effort. 

ONWARD...

4.22 pm:  and a successful day!
Steve took a long look around prospective house no # 4... and declared it totally sound.
Nothing to worry about with brick and tile!

So we put an offer in on it, and should have a response from the Vendors sometime tomorrow.

We asked for a Solicitor's clause, effective for  3 or 5 working days, I can't remember now!

But... it's a totally sound house, we love it, we want it.  Fingers crossed!!!!!!!

 ABOVE:  waiting to get inside the house.

ABOVE:  Bex and Archer standing inside the master bedroom walk in wardrobe.  It's a really good size.

ABOVE: this is down the south-west side of the house, and would be where we have the dog run/poop area.

 ABOVE:  All the gardens are well looked after, and have concrete edging.  This one has nice rocks in it too.

 ABOVE:  While I'm not a cat person, I had to give this one a pet, it was a lovely, friendly cat in gorgeous condition.

On our way home I stopped in at Animates and bought a 2nd pet crate.  Coco has been sleeping in a much smaller travelling case, so I wanted her to have a better sized 'bedroom'.

ABOVE: I will put Coco in the bottom one, and Tallulah in the top one.  Talulah is the smaller dog, so she gets the smaller bed.

Poor Stewy is sick as a dog.  Coughing, hot 'n' cold chills, headache etc. Clearly I'm not looking after him... NOT.
It's just winter ills, they catch up with most of us at some point over winter.

Now... time to relax for a while before thinking about dinner.

Ha Ha!  No dinner.. just whatever you could find in the fridge/cupboard.  Perfect when one is tired.

Just had a wonderful chat with me Mum, it was her Birthday yesterday... but I didn't get a chance to natter to her yesterday.  So a good catch up tonight. 
Time to sign off for the day.

HAMILTON HERE WE COME... AGAIN

Today we head of to the Waikato again to hopefully find a home.

I'm feeling very optimistic.  We have 4 homes lined up to view.  One isn't even on the market yet, but an estate agent told me about it when I was enquiring about another house, so we get to view it first.

I am sure we will enjoy our day.  There are no cloudS of doom hanging over us now, and we are much more aware of how important it is to read and re-read a contract for 'tricky' little added clauses!

I found myself missing my sewing yesterday.  I will be so excited to get all my fabric out of storage again!  I have packed up my sewing machine and so on now, so won't be sewing anything till after we move.

I've pretty much forgotten what is in storage in Hamilton now!  When I look around our house right now, I can't imagine how we fitted anything else in it?

Hopefully it won't be long till we are settled again and happy to put this shitty, horrible moving experience behind us.

ONWARD...

4.50 pm: and we are home after a very good house hunt.
We are going back tomorrow for a 2nd viewing of one house. And we are seriously thinking about putting in an offer!

We are trying not to be rash.... but its PERFECT.  More later.... we are at Steve 'n' Bex's for dinner.

Photos later too.

 ABOVE:  A screen grab of one house we really like, it's got a lovely big section, but not so big that we would have to spend all day mowing the lawn.
It has a lovely kitchen, and 5 bedrooms. 
Stew thinks if we got it we would add a carport for his car, as the double garage would have to be used for the gym and my car.

 ABOVE:  Another one that we really liked, it's got a really lovely kitchen, on top of 5 bedrooms and a triple garage.  Perfect size for us.
It's at the very top end of our budget, so some serious thinking to be done.

 ABOVE:  Side view of a house's yard we are interested in, I can't believe I didn't get any more photos of it! Derrrr. 

We are going back tomorrow, so I will try to remember to take more photos.

BLACK FRIDAY!

Black Friday?  Nah, not for us!
It's a wonderful day... after the leaky house fiasco, every day is great right now!

Of course, we DO still have the stress of finding a new home and getting out of here by the 10th of June... but we have contingencies in place for most scenarios now.

I've got 4 lovely houses to look at on Saturday, and maybe we will make an offer on one of them and it will go swimmingly and all will be good?

It COULD happen... though any contract we sign now will have all the right clauses in it, and it will be checked by our solicitor before we go unconditional on anything.  AND we will give ourselves more time to make sure it's ok!

Man have we learnt some hard lessons this week!

But it's behind us now... moving on. 

And on that note I shall bugger off and do some housework.  I got some washing out of the washing machine two days ago, and have just realised it's still in the  laundry basket waiting to be hung out!  WHOOPS.  I will have to re-wash it now cos it's musty.  Ikkkk.

ONWARD...

12.18 am:  Well I got to meet our solicitor today and I gave her a gorgeous bunch of flowers and a dozen donuts for the office morning tea.
She is just lovely, and we shared a big hug.  I couldn't thank her enough.

After that I came home and am now doing some housework.  Yaaaa.

5.38 pm:  I'm starting to get excited about tomorrow.  Maybe we will find the perfect house for us tomorrow?

If we do, we will make an offer, with all the 'clauses' and so on double checked!  *smiles*

Our 'friend' the estate agent in Hamilton has text me every day since the shit hit the fan, and she is asking when are we coming back to look at more houses with her?

I chickened out and just didn't reply.  If I were to reply, I am quite sure I would just blast her.
As Stew has said, no point going there.

Stew thinks maybe she was trying to look after OUR interests by making sure if the building inspection came out bad, the owners of the house had to fix it and lower the price?  Somehow I don't see it that way, not at all.  By giving them the right of repair, and denying us the right to back out on a builders report, I totally believe she was looking after the vendors, not us.

Luckily that is all behind us now, and I really should just let it be.  But I will never forget how it made me feel... the hell it put us through.

I'm looking forward to a nice quiet evening in front of the telly. 

A NEW CHAPTER

Today is a new start to our house hunt.
I have a few houses on my list to look at on the weekend.

They are all brick and tile homes.

Funny that.

I've got a bloke coming here at 8am from Allied Pickfords... a moving company.  He's  giving us a quote on our move to Hamilton.

After that I will ring around the agents and make appointments to view houses on Saturday.
I already have one appointment locked down, so just need to co-ordinate the others.

I'm hoping we can get something signed up fairly soon, as we have to be out of here by the 10th of June.  Shit, that is only 4 weeks away.

At least this time around we will be getting any contract sighted by our solicitor before we  commit to it.  AND we will add every clause possible so our solicitor can get us out if necessary... (Builder's Report, Finance, Title, Lim, you name it!).  Huge lessons learnt from the leaky house debacle. 

Now, as for our 'friend' the Estate Agent... we are going to move on, buy a house and then think about where to go after that.  

We will probably just send her an email detailing how we felt over the leaky house situation, how we felt she did us wrong, how she used her additional Builder's Report clause to seemingly try to lock us into actually having to buy that house, and then just leave it.

She ain't no friend of ours anymore.

ONWARD...

Moving company man has been and gone.
Kids are at school, and I have me feet up in the lounge with the fire on.  It's fairly cool in the house now.  
Winter really is here.

I've spoken to the receptionist at our solicitor's firm, and seems everyone in the office knows of the 'H*#*&# STUFF UP'!
The reason I rang them was because I intend taking a lovely bunch of flowers to our solicitor tomorrow, by way of a thank you for saving us from a disastrous situation. 
I reckon our solicitor's bill is going to be much higher than normal, but it is money well spent to get out of that contract.

I'm waiting for a parcel to be picked up by couriers, then I plan on going grocery shopping.  I keep putting it off... until we literally run out of food and loo paper!
I can do without the food, but NOT loo paper!  lol

I am a good girl, I did the grocery shopping.  It's something I really loathe, and sometimes people get cross with me cos I let everything run out before I do it. *sigh*  But, it's done now and I can relax for a while.

Me back is KILLING ME... I think I've pulled a muscle in my upper back.  Such a drag.

Well... it's been a very good day.  My fear and dread is all gone and it's back to 'normal' here.  I can't wait till the weekend when we go looking for our new home... on our own.  

I'm off to bed shortly... and expect to get a really good night's sleep.